The baseball battle

I would have associated Japan with several sports before I came here. Having been an active judoka a few years ago I certainly knew a few things about Japanese martial arts, I knew that they have a few good downhill skiers, J-League is a retirement place for European soccer stars and of course there`s the famous sumo fighting. What I didn`t know is that this nation is so crazy about golf and above all baseball.
Baseball seems to be an issue of major national relevance. Numerous tv reports are dedicated to it, every decent sized city features a huge baseball stadium and you see school kids practise everywhere. Actually the Yahoo baseball dome in Fukuoka was the first Japanese sight that I noticed when arriving in this country last year. Baseball players are superstars here and a baseball game draws masses. Right now it`s not season, so I`ll still have to wait for my first visit to a game. To my disgrace I have to admit that I haven`t been to one yet, though Fukuoka especially is a center of baseball. I enjoyed playing it back in High School and have a rough idea of the rules, so it should be fun.
I just watched a tv show on baseball and it was quite funny. They were dwelling on Japan`s successes over and over and namely comparing it to Korea`s. Japan and Korea in baseball seems to be like Switzerland and Austria in downhill skiing. Both are good at it, for both it`s a higly relevant sport and the neighbour is the (perceived) biggest competitor. Of course the statisticc picked made Japan look good, the players compared made Japan look good, etc... They talked about some other baseball nations as well such as the US, Cuba or Australia, but it was quite obvious that the topic of the show was the baseball rivalry between Korea and Japan.
I remember having watched a live baseball game between Japan and Korea from the Beijing Olympics on tv while being on the ferry from Japan to Korea. I can tell you that was quite a spectacle with both Korean and Japanese spectators on board... Thanks God they do not have much hooligan tendency on either side of the Sea of Japan...