And into the country!

Ah, back in the comfortable, more temperate weather of Kita Hokkaido. Like Minami Hokkaido, their qualifications are broken into regionals although here there are more (Notable teams mentioned in ()'s:

• Asahigawa - 3 teams (Asahigawa Minami)
  
• Kitami - 3
• Kushine - 3
  
• Tokachi - 3 (Shirakaba Gakuen)
  
• Sorachi - 2 (Komadai Iwamizawa)
  
• Nayoro - 2

So far, only Nayoro's regionals have started. But it's already been interesting.

2nd game of the opening day of matches featured Esashi and their ace Ootaka and Rishiri and their pitching tandem Narita and Nakamura. Esashi took the 3-0 lead midway through, but Rishiri came back in the 6th and 7th innings to tie it up. The game goes into extras, and in the top of the 11th Rishiri scores 4 runs to take the 7-3 lead. But Esashi somehow finds a way in the bottom half of the frame and scores 4 of their own to keep the game going!! And in the 12th, Esashi finishes the deal by scoring the sayonara run!

That's it for now here from Kita Hokkaido. More brackets are coming out, so I'll start heading south through the Tohoku region and into the Kanto region as all their brackets are out.