This last Thursday night was Japanese Night at the Lake Erie Crushers game. Since the Crushers' stadium is on Avon about 15 minutes from work, I went straight from work. Well, I took a detour to pick up a friend since his wife and kid was coming later to meet up with Arisa and another couple, also good friends. In each of our cases, the husband is American and the wife is Japanese. So it's cool to hook up with them every when we can.
And it was even better on this night since the Crushers were putting on Japanese night. Ken Hill, an American Japanese, or Japanese American, not sure which, is on a summer internship at the Crushers and this was his brainchild apparently. He did a great job getting participation from a variety of groups including JANO, the Cleveland Chapter of the Japanese American Citizen League including Mame Daiko and the Sho-jo-ji Dancers, a Japanese restaurant and a women who teaches shodou, and couple of folks from the Cleveland Japanese Meetup.com group. There were a couple of Japanese folks who are currently working at the Cleveland Clinic. I grabbed some pictures with my cell phone hence they are not that great. Arisa had the camera but she didn't arrive in time for the drumming or dance.
Arisa was going to volunteer at a ongiri contest and some other things, but unfortunately the rest of the evening got rained out. Just as they were about to start, the rain came down and reports of Tornado warnings/watches a county to the west. We waited for about 20 minutes then left for the evening. While we're disappointed that it didn't work out for a longer evening, it was certainly a lot of fun. I really wanted to wear my jimbei but its stored away somewhere and we couldn't find it in time. Next time though!