http://www.gothamist.com/2004/04/02/yankees_turn_japanese.php All comments for Yankees Turn Japanese en-us 2007 nyc_daveh Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:32:49 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss daveh@gothamist.com daveh@gothamist.com 60 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/04/02/yankees_turn_japanese.php#comment-19573 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/04/02/yankees_turn_japanese.php#comment-19573 Comments Sat, 03 Apr 2004 05:10:56 -0500 <p>A story about japanese fans (in a roundabout way): I went to Prince's soundcheck before his concert at Lincoln Center last year, where some fans were allowed to come hang out with him and watch him rehearse, and a bit of a stampede developed when the doors first opened and everyone ran for the best seats. I actually got knocked down and everyone else started tripping over me, creating a pile of bodies in the aisle, it was getting pretty absurd. Embarrassingly enough Prince was actually sitting right there on the edge of the stage, watching our little Lord of the Flies moment, and he started calmly repeating: "Everyone slow down. Pretend your Japanese. Let's all pretend we're Japanese." Once we had settled in he went on about how respectful and incredibly well-behaved Japanese fans have always been when he performed there. He said at one show he'd had tamborines given out to everyone in the crowd, but was shocked to find that instead of taking them home afterwards, almost all the fans had simply placed the tamborine on their seat after the showand left it there. When he asked why nobody took them home he was told "Nobody ever said the tamborines belonged to them."</p>