HISTORY

Based in London, it has been more than 6 years since we first started playing softball in UK. The total number of players attended is counted more than 200 people. That proves that not only how is it popular amongst Japanese, but also baseball and softball are one of the most demanded, but difficult to get occations, sports amongst our community.

The initial idea was that we, some baseball fanatic, wanted to play “baseballish” sports ( but not cricket!) here in UK. Then soon found out it was not very easy; first, we did not have any proper equipment! (It is still difficult to buy fine gears such as bats and groves in UK though...)

It sounds like a joke, but what we initially did was that we gather tennis balls as much as we have, and foover’s pipes from each house; then started throwing the balls and hit by the pipe in a small field just wanted to feel as if we were playing baseball!
(Sounds psycho indeed, but that was how we started…)

Then we begun to prepare proper baseball gear step by step.

But what we found next, was how difficult to find a proper baseball ground in a convenient place, in particular, central London.

But we soon realised that softball does not need proper pitch like baseball does. Softball could be played in any large field, so we stuck to playing softball to release our frustration not being able to play baseball....

The softball matches amongst Japanese communities then took place monthly basis. We learnt that softall is much more flexible to play than baseball; it does not require too much competitive skills (even beginners could play if you get the knuck of it!)as much as baseball does; no matter how old the players ages are; even no matter whichever your sex is.
The regular matches were only for a recreational purpose by calling friends/acquaintances amongst us, but we really enjoyed.

Each year, the number of players increased. Finally in 2005, we formed a mens-rec slowpitch softball team, named “Japan Godzillas”, and went for a challenge by entering a tournament (GlandSlam 3) for the first time.

For any other teams in Britain, this may not sound special at all. But for us, (especially when we look back the era that we struggled to find out how to play baseball/softball in UK with what gear we use = surely not using foover pipe nowadays!), we at least took it as a great achivement because challenging such a great tournament by forming a Japanese team.

We will continue to look for a chance to be able to play softball and our main aim is a challenge; what Japanese could achieve!

TEAM

The concept of this club is to challange major tournaments by forming a team amongst Japanese communities in London. But, even if you are not Japanese,do not worry; apparently there have been many non-Japanese players. There used to be just Japan-enthusiasts, other nationalities whoes partner were Japanese, even just interested in Japan. If you can play softball, or just interested in playing with us, you are more than welcome to join us.

Baseball has been the most popular sports in Japan for more than 60 years. As you can see the result of olympics, Japanese baseball and softball skills/levels are known very high although phisically we are not as powerfull as western people. There are professional baseball leagues in Japan with long history. Many Japanese are also playing in MLB and the number of players is increasing and increasing each year.

There are currently more than 60,000 Japanese people living in UK. The majority of them are permanent resident here, but the other half is temporary residents such as students and term-limited businessman. It may be easy to form a Japanese team to play Baseball/Softball in this country but the problem is most Japanese do not know anything about circumstances like where to play, who to play with, when it is held etc. There seem to be not many Japanese playing baseball/softball despite the fact that people would love to play. We know there must be uncountable number of Japanese who miss Baseball/Softball in UK.

We do not want our desire for playing baseball/softball to be put off like this way. We hope we will be able to provide an opportunity for those Japanese people in UK.

If you are Japanese, or even not Japanese but Japanese related person (Half/quarter Japanese, have experience living in Japan or even just interested in Japan!) who can not forget about playing, let’s play with us!