Japanese baseball is AWESOME.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I still love MLB, but Japanese baseball is different. Right now it's the all Mie-ken High School baseball tournament, so all the baseball teams in my prefecture are competing. Actually, all the prefectures in Japan are having sudden death tournaments--once you lose, you're OUT! The top 2 teams will play at Koshien Stadium in Osaka, the coveted glorious gold-medal Wrigley Field of baseball stadiums in Japan. And high school games are SO DRAMATIC (or as they say, "gekiteki"). These are scrawny Japanese 16 and 17 year olds playing what could be the final game of their lives. If they lose one game, that's it. No more games for an entire frickin' year! They spend their entire school year eating, breathing and shitting baseball all for one game. I'm talkin blood, sweat and tears. Oh, the tears. These boys cry. They cry when they win, and boy, do they cry when they lose. The shame. The agony. Did I mention the shame? And the camerapeople LUUURVE zooming in on those tears. Makes for good TV ne?
But that's just the gekiteki part. I also enjoy the technical aspects of Japanese baseball. It's much more defensively strategic than hit-the-damn-ball-out-of-the-park-with-your-giant-steroid-pumped-muscles baseball (yes Barry, I'm talking about you...asshole). I've never seen so many bunts and stolen bases and that thing that pitchers do to psych out the man on 1st. It just seems so much more calculated than American Baseball. The fields are different...the space between the foul line and the crowd is much larger which makes for more outs than fouls. And maybe the outfield's larger but don't quote me on that. It's very formal as well. At the end of the game the players line up and bow to eachother, and then to the crowd. Sometimes the Umpire scolds the boys if they're being disrespectful.
My high school boys? Lost in the first round. They lost real bad. I stopped watching in the 4th inning it was so bad. 12-0 bad. They were a mess. The first pitcher hit 3 batters--in a row! Wild pitches everywhere. Oh man. Just thinking about it is making my hangover worse.

reading: The Money Book for the Young, Fab & Broke by Suze Orman and Yasashii Shuwa, a Japanese sign language manual.
listening to: Interpol
feeling: like shit warmed over.