Hawks Town Mall: Dead and Loving It

Yesterday I got to see the last regular season game at the Fukuoka Dome. This was courtesy of Ena`s employer, who gave her a pair of tickets. Unfortunately they didn`t give her the day off to go with them, so it was a bit of an empty gesture on their part as she had to work that day.

The seats were great, just behind third base. The Hawks lost the game 2-1, but it didn`t matter much as they had clinched the Pacific League about a month ago. After the game the team did a victory lap to celebrate the pennant win, which was cool to see:
After the game I made my way through the Hawks Town Mall,which is where I parked my bike. The Hawks Town Mall is something of an albatross in the Fukuoka landscape and I`ve been meaning to write something about it for the longest time, so I thought I`d use this post to do just that.
This is the story of what is slowly turning into a `dead mall`. Dead malls - that is to say malls that are either completely or partially empty and abandoned - are a relativly common part of the landscape in North America but they are relatively rare in Japan. Japan of course has tons of abandoned buildings, especially in the countryside, but malls are a relatively new phenomenah here so most haven`t been around long enough to have completely failed yet.
The Hawks Town Mall is pretty new, having opened in 2000. It was part of a larger development of the area on reclaimed land which included the SeaHawk Hotel and the Fukuoka Dome itself. The original plans date back to the late 80s during the height of the bubble when the Hawks first moved to Fukuoka from their old home in Osaka. The overly ambitious early plans envisioned two domes being built, though the second dome was later dropped from the plans.

The whole place was bought by a Singaporean fund, GIC, in 2007 and by the looks of it they have had some trouble trying to keep the Mall running.

I say this because when we arrived in 2008 it was very obvious that they were having trouble finding tenants to fill the place. Back then most of the shops were at least open, but there was an abundance of empty space. It seemed like they were giving massive stores to businesses that only had enough merchandise to fill about half the space they were given. This Hawks souvenir shop I visited yesterday would be one example:
Huge aisles and racks about half full. You almost never see this type of inefficient use of space in Japan, where shops are normally packed to the rafters with almost no elbow room.

Over the years though even this strategy proved incapable of keeping all the shops occupied and boarded up storefronts began to appear.
By the time I visited yesterday, it was apparent that the problem was spiralling out of control. Empty shops were everywhere.
Wandering around I discovered that a couple of entire wings of the mall had been closed off:
Behind the temporary screens, dozens of store sit empty and silent:The Hawks Town Mall has two floors and before these wings were closed off it had a rather sprawling layout. Just about everywhere you go you see bits where they have closed hallways off: I`m not sure why the mall has done so poorly. It is one of three major mall projects in Fukuoka. The first one, Canal City, is doing quite well and in fact just expanded. The second one, Marinoa, is having problems. It used to have the largest ferris wheel in Japan, but a few months ago the thing collapsed while workers were disassembling it, crushing a few cars and damaging a hotel attached to the mall.

Canal City, it should be noted, is in a very busy part of town right next to the Nakasu entertainment district, so it has no problem getting people in the doors. Hawks Town Mall and Marinoa, on the other hand, are in much less convenient locations on the periphery of town and neither has a direct subway or train link, which probably explains part of their problems. If you visit the Hawks Town Mall on a day when the Hawks aren`t playing a home game it is likely to be almost completely deserted. It also doesn`t help much that Hawks Town, despite what the tourist information says, is not a particularly interesting piece of architecture. While a lot of people don`t like it, Canal City at least has the benefit of looking interesting and having a lot of flair in its design. Hawks Town Mall is, in contrast, your typical cheaply made piece of functional dreck that most malls are built like. And the shopping isn`t particularly good either, other than a Toys R Us its largest shops seem to mostly be ones selling Hawks souvenirs, which do all their business on days when the Hawks have home games (less than 80 days a year) and are of limited interest to anyone the rest of the time.

Anyway, if you enjoy that sense of schadenfreude at seeing big, ill-conceived mega projects that have failed completely - a trip to the Hawks Town Mall is for you!

Hawks 7 Baystars 1

Ena and I saw our first Hawks game of the year yesterday.

They've been having an amazing season so far and are comfortably at the top of the Pacific League standings. Their lineup is a murderer's row full of stars, the guy batting 7th in the lineup, Matsuda, is currently leading the league in home runs and their big free agent acquisition in the off season, Uchikawa, is hitting close to .400.

We got our usual seats in the right field cheering section.
I had to go to the game from work in the morning so I didn't have my Hawks shirt.

It was an inter-league game against the Yokohama Baystars, who are currently last place in the Central League. The Hawks had won 7 in a row going into the game and were undefeated in all their interleague games. They extended both streaks by drubbing the Baystars 7-1, which was fun to see. Matsuda hit a bases loaded triple in the first inning, which was probably the highlight.

They changed the big flags that the Hawks' fan groups wave in the 7th inning stretch and after a victory this year:
Usually the flags feature stuff related to each fan group, but this year they all have messages of support for the prefectures devastated by the tsunami. The one in front of us said "Ganbarou Iwate" ("Do your best, Iwate!").

After the win we stuck around for the victory fireworks. I took a video of these at a game last year here. Always the highlight of a Hawks win, not so much for the fireworks themselves but more for the way the dome looks with the lights out.

After that we joined the masses spilling from the stadium into the edge of a typhoon that was passing to the south of Fukuoka.
And made our way to the subway station and home.

Hawks Win!!

Ena and I went to another Hawks game last night and got to watch them beat the Orix Buffaloes!

The Hawks jumped on the board real early before another sell-out crowd. In the bottom of the first inning they quickly loaded the bases with one out, bringing their top power hitter, Tamura, to the plate. He promptly blasted a pitch into the left field bleachers to put the Hawks ahead 4-0. The crowd in right field went absolutely crazy, we were banging our plastic bats together like crazy, screaming and jumping up and down like there was no tomorrow. It looked like the Hawks would cruise to an easy victory.

In actual fact though it turned out to be a close game, with the Hawks only adding one more run and barely squeaking out a 5-4 victory after the closer Mahara nearly blew the lead in the 9th. We were really happy and relieved when they got the final out:
The rest of the crowd in right field was pretty happy too:
We had a great time, it was Ena's first time to see the Hawks win and we got to stick around for the fireworks after the game. I took a video of the post-game celebratory fireworks that you can see here. Actually, probably more interesting than the fireworks themselves is the sight of the Stadium with the lights turned down.

I kind of liked this T-shirt that I saw in the Hawks souvenir shop, I'm not sure what it means exactly. I swore I wouldn't turn "Blog of Sean" into one of those sites filled with stupid "hey, look at how bad the English in Japan is" pictures, but screw it, here ya go:
With that win combined with a Seibu Lions loss the Hawks are now just 0.5 games out of first place. If they repeat that today the Hawks will be in first!

The Right-Field Bleachers of a Hawks Game

Ena and I finally went to our first Hawks game of the 2010 season yesterday. We've been meaning to go for a long time but a million little things ended up interfering with our plans until yesterday.The game was played at the Fukuoka Dome. As indicated in the above picture the Dome is now actually called the "Yahoo Dome" after its corporate sponsor. When it was built it was called the Fukuoka Dome though and a lot of the street signs bus stops, etc in town still call it that. I guess it would be expensive to change all of those things every time they got a new sponsor for the stadium. It kind of annoys me the way they keep changing stadium names (what do they call the Skydome in Toronto these days?) so I call it the Fukuoka Dome.

They've got a nice, tacky statue of a Hawk on a hand giving the victory sign which Ena liked so much I had to take a picture of her in front of it:
We got seats in the right field bleachers, which despite being the cheapest are by far the best seats to be in. We were both wearing our Hawks T-shirts (you pretty much HAVE to wear Hawks stuff if you are in the right field seats):
The reason I say the right field bleacher seats are the best in the house is because that is wear the Hawks Ouendan (応援団） or "Fan's association" organize all the cheering. In the rest of the stadium you can basically just sit and watch the game, cheering whenever you want. In right field though you HAVE to take part in the organized cheering. During the bottom half of every inning everyone stands up and, using plastic bats like the ones that I have draped around my neck in the top photo above, follows the instruction of a lead booster who tells us which cheers we have to do.

This goes on non-stop while the Hawks are at the plate and every player has a different cheer, which requires you to wave and bang those plastic bats in a different way while singing at the player to get a hit.

Its one of those things you have to see and experience to understand how much fun it can be. I tried taking a video of it at one point but my camera didn't do a very good job. This one and a half minute video taken by a fan does it justice though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5DVFyes9Nc&feature=related

You'll notice that he pans the camera across the audience and you see what looks like a pretty normal crowd in the bleachers on the first base side. Then all of a sudden BAM - the camera reaches the right field bleachers and suddenly there are huge flags being waved, everyone is standing and waving their bats in unison, the boosters can be seen standing above the crowd wearing their personally tailored-outfits (kind of a cross between shinto priest robes, construction worker garb and urban motorbike gang-member style) and everyone is singing.

That goes on for the whole game when the Hawks are batting. It takes a while to figure out all the cheers but by about the 5th or 6th inning we had them all down (you just watch what everyone else is doing). During the visitor's time at the plate you can just sit and watch the game. That is because its the visitor's team's turn to do their own organized cheering. There is a small section in the left field bleachers reserved for them. Interestingly people who sit there are contractually obliged to refrain from rooting for the Hawks or wearing any Hawks goods (this is a condition set out in writing on the ticket information form I got when we bought our tickets).

This division of cheering time is by agreement so the two side's cheering doesn't drown each other out. The only time Hawks fans can engage in organized cheering during the visitor's frame is when there is a pitching change. Then they can give one brief cheer to support the incoming pitcher and then they have to give the floor back to the visitor's rooters.
Anyway, the game was a tense one. The Hawks are doing really well this year and are in the middle of a tight pennant race. They were playing Orix Buffaloes. It was a sell-out crowd (we just barely got tickets).

The Buffaloes scored first on a solo home run by Alex Cabrera in the 4th. Ena was not at all happy about that:
In the 5th though the Hawks staged a major rally and scored 5 runs, all with 2 outs. The right field bleachers were going nuts the whole time, it was great. They loaded the bases twice and each time got a 2-run hit by the batter. The Hawks took the lead 5-1 and looked like they might cruise to an easy victory.

Until the next inning. When Alex Cabrera came up to bat again. With the bases loaded. And hit a grand slam. This made me very upset:
Ena joined me:
Way to rain on our parade, Alex Cabrera.

In the 7th we did the balloon thing:
After that, each team added a run each and the game entered extra innings tied at 6. Neither team scored in the 10th or 11th (despite all our cheering) and the Buffaloes got shut down in the top of the 12th.

In the bottom of the 12th fan favorite Shibahara was brought in to pinch hit. And he got a base hit! Right field went wild. A pinch runner came in and the next batter laid down a successful sacrifice bunt to move him into scoring position with 2 out. Tension filled the air and we in right field were cheering with every ounce of energy! Get a hit! Drive that runner in!! Win the game!

And then the pitcher picked the runner off second to end the inning. And the game! Japanese pro baseball games go to a maximum of 12 innings. If they don't resolve it by then, it ends in a tie. Argh! We went through over 5 hours of intense cheering to have it end in a tie? What an anti-climax!!!

Despite our disappointment with the outcome, we had a really great time at the game. Now that we've memorized all the cheers we're planning on going again at least one more time this season!

Hawks Game!

Ena and I went with some of our friends from the Kaikan to see a baseball game at the Fukuoka Dome. The Hawks were playing the Rakuten Eagles. This is a picture of Ena with some of our friends outside the stadium doing some souvenir shopping:
The game was a lot of fun, but unfortunately the Hawks ended up losing 4-0. We had a great time though, it was everyone else's first time to see a live baseball game (they all come from countries where baseball is not a major sport). These are some pictures of us in the stands:

After the game we went out to dinner at a nabe restaurant in Hakata:

Pro Yakyu - Japanese Baseball

I took my parents to a baseball game the other day to see the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks play a pre-season game against the Chunichi Dragons. Unlike most Canadians who follow hockey my sport has always been baseball, so I've been itching to see a game since I got here.

When I lived in the Kansai area I was a Hanshin Tigers fan, which is an experience in itself. But I've decided to become a Hawks supporter since coming to Fukuoka. I can justify it because the Tigers and Hawks are in different leagues so they aren't competing directly with each other in the regular season.

Attending a Japanese baseball game is an experience way different than attending a MLB game in North America - at least if you sit in the cheap bleacher seats like I always do. I wasn't sure if it would be the same in Fukuoka as it was at Hanshin Tigers games but was pleasantly surprised to find that the fans here are just as crazy as Tigers fans.

If you sit in the outfield, they divide the seats between home team and visiting team supporters. This is necessary because if you sit in the cheap seats you HAVE to participate in the group cheering that is directed by the team's supporters. This is my mom and dad trying to follow some of the cheers:
They were good sports and I'm sure their cheering helped in the Hawk's victory.

Another thing they do is everybody in the stadium blows up a balloon in the 7th inning stretch and lets them go simultaneously, causing it to rain balloons. This is what it looks like:
And me about to let my balloons go: