H-TEN Featured in Yomiuri Newspaper!

The professional baseball Climax Series is underway and things are heating up. The Hanshin Tigers won their first Central League pennant in 18 years. Through covering the team, we have come across various passionate fans. What exactly draws them to the team so powerfully? This time, we look at a foreigner and an artisan, and think about what it means to have “Tiger Love.”

Canadian Trevor Raichura (48), a Nishinomiya resident and English lecturer at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, has been a Tigers fan for roughly 10 years. He came to Japan back in 1998 as an Assistant Language Teacher. He moved to Hyogo Prefecture in 2011 in order to marry a Japanese woman who was from there.

His gateway into the world of the Tigers was attending a game at Koshien with his wife (tickets were a birthday present) in June 2014. It was an inter league game against the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. In Canada, there are no cheer songs at baseball games, nor are there are instruments played in the stands. Trevor says he was blown away by the wide-open atmosphere and the overwhelming crowd noise.

As he went to the stadium more, he was moved the first time he heard the crowd singing Rokko Oroshi (the team’s official song). He became a big fan of one of the team’s core players at the time, Matt Murton. He says he felt a commonness with him, as both men left their homelands to forge a living in Japan. From there, following the Tigers became an obsession.

He opened up a site on which he introduces the team’s cheer songs and history in English, and also began writing a column through which he expresses his experiences as a foreigner following the Japanese game. He has received messages from various players’ families, including Randy Messenger’s mother, who reached him through his social media account: “Thanks for reporting about my son in English.”

Trevor says there is definitely a language barrier that is felt by those who come from outside of Japan and have different cultural backgrounds and norms. But when it comes to talking about the Tigers, those walls break down and communication becomes a breeze. Every year in his university classes, he introduces himself to students as a Tigers fan, which instantly bridges the gap between himself and the students.

“Hanshin has acted as a bridge between Japan and me. It has helped me to feel like I have something in common with people here, and that having a different home country no longer matters. All the fans no doubt feel that way, too.”