There are several clubs at PPC. The baseball club, in particular, has made a highly successful showing. This season the club recorded a winning rate of .789. The club was victorious in three of the Fuji tournaments of major tournaments including the National Sports Festival of Japan, Prefectural Intercity Rubber Baseball Tournament, and Emperor’s Cup National Rubber Baseball Tournament.

The field manager Hiromitsu Seitoh from the Research and Development Center told P-Mates, “The baseball club practices twice a week at the company athletic field. Right now we have 27 team members.”

We’ll be looking forward in anticipation to the baseball club’s success in the future, too!

On July 20, a summer night festival was held in the Fuji area where PPC’s Plant and Research and Development Division are located. Fortunately, the weather was fine on the day of festival. PPC employees and a large number of local residents—some 750 in all—gathered to enjoy the festival.

The festival opened with a powerful performance by the Miyajima Shinden Kannon Taiko drum ensemble, and a lively, cute cheerleading dance by C-STAR. Then there was a fugashi speed-eating contest. Fugashi is a stick-shaped airy, flaky confection coated with brown sugar that is a standard snack eaten at summer festivals. The customary lottery was also held. The festival bustled with a crowd of kids and grown ups who all enjoyed the many events and attractions.
The festival was a great opportunity for employees, their families, and people living in the area to interact and get to know each other better.

The Hayakawa Apartments, PPC’s company housing in the Fuji area, was in use until 2010. Before this old building was torn down, PPC lent it to a local fire station to use as a stage for training in firefighting techniques.

Training was carried out two times a day for two days.
The firefighters were grateful to be lent the old building scheduled for demolishment because it gave them the opportunity to train using an actual fire-resistant building. They said they rarely have such a valuable experience.

The training was conducted according to a scenario in which a fire breaks out in an apartment building and people are trapped on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Each time firefighters entered the building, they used an engine cutter on some of the doors to sever and remove the lock, then searched for and rescued the people who were trapped. After performing the task of sorting the sick and wounded to determine medical priority, firefighters carried them on stretchers. The whole process was then repeated. Also, the hoses were unrolled from the fire truck and water was applied to extinguish the fire.

Local residents passing by stopped to watch the training with great interest.
We are glad that we were able to put the housing building to good service one more time at the end of its life.