Today’s guest post comes from Erica at OverYonderlust, someone I’ve been following for quite a while now.

High school sweethearts Shaun and Erica make up the duo behind Over Yonderlust. After their honeymoon 7 years ago they caught a mad case of the travel bug that has lead them to conquer their newest adventure – backpacking from Mexico to Argentina. You can follow their first extended travel trip on Over Yonderlust, Facebook, and Twitter.

One of the cities that you will hear Shaun and I rant and rave about is Hiroshima, Japan. This city single handedly enriched our lives. Japan had been listed high on our bucket list and we weren’t disappointed.

It was a warm, balmy July night in Hiroshima, Japan. We had arrived to Mazda stadium a bit early, not really knowing what to expect. Please note that Shaun and I are by no means sports fans and what we didn’t know at the time was that this was going to end up being our favorite travel experience.

We quickly hailed down the Kirin beer guy (any beer person can understand “B?ru!”) walking around to fill our warm bellies with some cold, refreshing beer. I mean, what is a baseball game without a cold one? Looking around we realize we are in a whole different ball game. Instead of nachos and hot dogs, people are eating bowls of udon and yakitori sticks.

While enjoying our beer and the first few innings, one of the men a bench down from us leans over and hands us a bag of beer snacks. After contemplating what on earth we were eating that was dry and jerky-ish, we came to the conclusion that it was dried squid.

It only took those first few innings to realize how much the Japanese love this sport. Every single player had their own unique music that the audience would play (with a full band in tow in the bleachers) when they came up to the plate. This was the equivalent to a minor league game but the stadium was packed to the brim and the crowd was going wild for every play. The excitement was contagious.

About halfway through the game, we were handed a long, red balloon by our new friend. After watching everyone around us, we followed the trend and inflated the balloon. After a collective song was sung, the entire crowd, in their frenzy, cheered and released their balloons which went screaming into the air. However, unlike everyone else, the balloon we had passed to us floated in the air and slowly came back to earth. We had tied the balloon so the air could not escape. After seeing our small catastrophe the man quickly grabbed the balloon, untied it, and sent it screaming into the air with the others, much to our mortification. We couldn’t help but burst into laughter as well.

Even though the Carps ultimately lost the game, it was an amazing experience – one that aided in Hiroshima becoming our favorite city we visited. If you plan on being there, a game is highly suggested.

And… GO CARPS!

You can find Erica and Shaun on their website, Over Yonderlust, on Twitter, and on Facebook.