Japanese baseball.

Baseball have become more and more popular in Japan since it was brought into the country in 1870´s by an Amaricaborn englishteacher living in Japan. As it occures to me, baseball is not just a sport, it has a big place in the japanese culture and society. As they mention in the movie Kokoyaku, the Japanese people have taken baseball to their hearts and their homes and i read that many Japanese people says that the rising sun in the Japanese flag should be replaced with a baseball. That statement certainly define their love to the game. The love for the game is equally big when I see ten thousends of Hanshin Tigers fans at the arena as when I pass by a young Kansai Gaidai student everynight on my way home from school or when the Komatsu employees play baseball every Sunday. Baseball is a very fascinated sport to me although it dosn´t exist in Sweden. Europe in generall pays more attention to their own sports while Japan seems to be more Americanized. Of all the numbers of sports which Japan has given to the rest of the world like Judo, Karate and Sumo it is only fair that they incorporate foreign sports in return. It would be very interesting to watch both a American baseballgame and Yakyo (Japanse baseball) to see if the sport differences from country to country. According to this article the sport is similar in the basic but differs in other ways. For example how they pay attention to different thing in the sport. Baseball relies on power and physical skills while Yakyo relies on finess, speed and mental acuity. The article also describes how the audience act different at the games. I took some nice pictures while I watched the Japanese students practice at Kansai Gaidai baseball field, I will definitly spend more time there, watching this fascionated sport!