Noise Makers

It's "megaphones" (メガフォン that you're looking for. The "V-megaphone [Rakuten BayStars' Shop - in Japanese] is one of the most popular as it can be clapped together with itself. The "kung-fu bats" or "twin bats" is below it.

These are the most popular items for the crowd to make noise with, although they don't appear to be used in Chiba.

We always called them "cheer bats" the whole time we lived in Japan. Not sure if someone told us that or if my sons made it up. Those were the older style bats that look like plastic bowling pins.

The Anaheim Angels use these during the games and called them "Thunder Sticks."

I prefer the older-style "megaphones" because you can wad up pieces of paper and hit them around with friends on the train before and after the game. Presuming, of course, that you're on a train where excesive baseball fandom is tolerated!

- The Anaheim Angels use these during the games and called them "Thunder Sticks."

They're not the same. The Angels' ones are softer, and you have to blow them up I believe. The Japanese "megaphones" are made of a rigid plastic, and in fact are more "thunderous" than the thundersticks.

- The Angels' thunder sticks are nothing like the Japanese cheer bats. The Japanese bats are hard plastic. The thunder sticks are inflatable.

My first Japanese game ever (1995), I got a standing-room only ticket and inadvertently wound up in the Giants' cheering section in the right field bleachers of the Tokyo Dome. Some of the fans gave me two cheer bats and taught me the routines. It was one of the loudest game I've ever attended; I think I got my hearing back in 2 or 3 days.

I made the mistake of not having the cheer bats at my first Japanese baseball game (Fighters vs. BlueWave at Tokyo Dome). I sat right by the Fighters' oendan and I couldn't feel my hands after about 2 innings of clapping. Now, when friends ask me about seeing games in Japan, I tell them, "Sit in the outfield, and make sure you buy noisemakers!"

I love the routines with the cheer bats. I've only seen a handful of teams play, so I wondered, do most teams' fans only have routines for a player or two, or do some have them for all players, and some for none? (The Fighters only really have one for Yukio Tanaka, I think?) Or does it just depend on how creative the oendan are in a particular year?

What do you mean by a routine? Each batter has his own song, of course, but only a few have dances and they are usually spontaneous things that catch the crowd's imagination and become routine.

For instance, while each Hanshin batter has a song, I can only think of three instances of choreography:

• Hamanaka, whose boogie is made up of the umpires' homerun signal and a beckoning gesture;


• Hiyama, whose dance is almost like a robot on prozac doing the monkey; and


• The pre-song chant for long-hitting batters when the call is "koko-made motte-koi" or "home run", which is accompanied by the aforementioned beckoning.

In all cases, these were just spontaneous gyrations by fans instead of whacking their clackers, if ya' know what I mean.

Incidentally, there are always sporadic attempts by fans to establish a dance involving a running movement for speedster Akahoshi's song, but it never seems to catch on.

I think "routine" in this context means the clapping rhythm, not dancing.

Nope, I actually did mean the dancing. Yukio Tanaka's, for example, involves putting up your right noisemaker, then your left, then kinda boogieing/lowering into a squat, and then everybody jumping up in the air at the same time. I just thought that was awesome how everyone cheered, sang, and danced together in unison that way at the games.

(Anyone want to explain the crazy Yakult umbrella dance to me, maybe?)

That's neat if they're just fan ideas which get incorporated into the general usage. And so much fun!

I stand corrected then. I was just thinking that whenever I go to Koshien there's not much room to even turn around, let alone dance!

- (Anyone want to explain the crazy Yakult umbrella dance to me, maybe?)

Again, this was a spontaneous fan thing that caught on. There was a story about it on TV a couple of seasons ago. One fan, an old man, one of those insane fans that attend literally every game and have the ticked stubs to prove it, was watching a game on a rainy day. The atmosphere was gloomy and the fans subdued. Apparently someone hit a homerun and this old guy cut a rug with his umbrella in his hand. Apparently it tickled the fancy of the Yakult fans.

My memory is not clear, but I think the TV segment was shown when the guy died or decided he was too old to actually go to Jingu Stadium everyday - some milestone like that, anyway.

The words to the "Umbrella Dance" are on Dr. Latham's site here: "Link]

The guy whom Torakichi mentions, Masayasu Okada, passed away in 2002. Jim Allen writes about him here: [Link - Daily Yomiuri]

[Editor's Note: I don't think Latham-san is a doctor. I believe that it's Dan R. Latham. But I may be wrong.]

So these noise maker bat things can be bought at the stadium, right? Wow, I am really looking forward to this.

Yes. You should be able to find them for both the Home and Visiting teams at every stadium.