Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters Champions Parade in Sapporo, Japan ( Nov 24, 2012 )

So many people gathered in Odori last saturday !!!

... and... things were falling down from the sky ! what was happening there ?! riot ?? snowfall ??  paper fall ?? (heh... O.o) ^______^

The day before, my japanese architect friend and senior, Jimmy invited me to watch Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters Champions Parade in Odori on Saturday from his office. I got to know him and his beautiful wife from another friend who introduced us before she left Japan. After that, we started to do a lot of design competitions together for fun and experience. He is a very nice person and also very young at heart. Older people in Japan usually give some kind of strict and serious atmosphere around them, but Jimmy is open to new ideas and culture.

He loves to sketch, and for sure, his sketches and watercolor paintings are amazing !!! He inspired me to learn how to paint with watercolor. I'm always amazed every time I think on how we managed to work together with my limited Japanese. __ __ !

Ok, i'm not supposed to talk about him here !! ^_^ the main thing now is ....

HOKKAIDO NIPPON-HAM FIGHTERS CHAMPIONS PARADE ! ^^

The view of Odori Park during the parade from　道銀ビル

The parade, with a bit of snow on the background and tons of flying papers around, was AMAZINGLY PRETTY !!!! I was wondering how to clean the papers after, as there were really tons of papers and they were blown by the wind all over the place ! well, I will talk about it later.

The team won the Pacific League this year, and the parade was part of the celebration. Honestly, I don't know anything about baseball teams, hehe ^_^!, but I know that Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters is a famous team here. I tried to check a bit online and I'm going to share the basic info with you here.

According to Wikipedia,  the Pacific League (パシフィック・リーグ) is one of the two professional baseball leagues in Japan. The winner of the league championship competes against the winner in the Central League for the annual Japan Series. It currently consists of six teams from around Japan.

The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (北海道日本ハムファイターズ) are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Sapporo, Hokkaido. The team name comes from its parent organization, Nippon Ham, which is a major Japanese food processing company. Through a long history from 1946 with the name 'Senators', the team name had changed several times until it became Nippon-Ham Fighters in 1974, and then Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2004 until now.

Some flying papers we caught and my nails in Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters colors :)

The team's home field is Sapporo Dome, a stadium with retractable surface, designed by japanese architect Hiroshi Hara. Retractable surface here means that the stadium surface is able to switch between two entirely different surfaces; artificial turf field for baseball games, and grass pitch that slides into and out of the stadium as needed, for football games.

As I mentioned before, I don't know about baseball and the team itself, so I'm also not familiar with the players. However, it still made me so excited to be able to see these amazing players in the city with my own eyes ! ^^

The best from the parade beside the team players were ... the confetti and flying papers !! ^_^ (I don't think confetti and flying papers are the same, hehe) They were really a lottttttt, and blown all over the place by the wind, decorating the blue sky of Sapporo. It was so nice that the flying papers also came out from 道銀ビル, the building where we were at. It was nice to know that a lot of papers were cut from old advertisements, pamphlets, and used papers instead of new papers. Environmental awareness must always be kept in mind while having fun. :)

Colorful flying papers from both new and recycled papers pamphlets, etc

This was how they did it !

Flying papers cut from used papers, pamphlets, etc

I always love colorful stuffs ! I believe that each color can create its own atmosphere depending on the situation and condition. That's the reason why although my favorite color is green and I have a lot of things in green, I don't stop using and enjoying other colors. It's so fun to mix-n-match them. I don't believe that by sticking to that certain 'my color' shows that we have character, or even style. No relation at all. To my amazement, there are people who get angry when others are using what they call 'their color'. I really don't know what to say. *amused* Why should we stop expressing ourselves and being creative ?

Just use whatever color we feel the best at the moment.  If you want to buy something and it happens that the one in other color looks nicer in your eyes than the one in your favorite color, do you need to insist to buy the one in your favorite color ? Those people are not flexible at all. Also, I think some of you can understand what I mean by 'choosing color may depend on our mood' too.

Back to those pretty confetti and flying papers. They really gave me excitement ! Who won't enjoy them as much as I do ? ^^ mmm... maybe the agencies who are responsible for cleaning the city ? 

The thing is ...

        

The citizens surprisingly helped the staffs to clean up after the parade!!!! O.o ... Isn't it amazing?!? I couldn't understand what was happening here, really. Is it about education? Is it about self-awareness?? Of course not everyone did that. Some of them were just passing by. Some were collecting papers for memorabilia... Some were taking pictures... but there were so many of them really helping to do cleaning! (We did all of them !!! ... yup2, we helped to clean a bit too !!! ^___^ ... *and be proud. what a gaijin/foreigner...*) We also saw parents and children helping the cleaners together. Japan and its society never stop to surprise us! 

Everything has good and bad, and my knowledge about Japan and Japanese people are not enough to make pro and con judgements. However, whatever it is, I think what they did was admirable. They really have different level of self-awareness, and different definition in mind of... maybe 'responsibility' is the word? 

By the way, winter is really here! Get ready for the fluffy powder snow everywhere for at least the next 4 months !! ^________^

Hello from Sapporo !!!