In September, I attended a baseball practice at a local Japanese HS in Tokyo. This was at the tail end of a baseball trip to Japan during which I saw several professional games throughout the country.

Here were a few of my observations from watching the practice (I saw about an hour-hour and a half of the workout).

1. Culture of Respect

In Japan, respect for all things is important, and this was noticeable during the workout. After taking infield/outfield, all players bowed to the field and to the coaches. Also, while walking into the workout, all players removed their hats and greeted me as a visitor to their practice session. Also, anytime that a player spoke to a coach, the player would always remove his hat while listening to the coach.

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2. Hustle and communication

Players would hustle from station to station, even during the clean-up after practice. You can see some of the hustle here in this video.

Communication was also evident during a competition that occured later in the practice.

The competition was setup like this -
5 players would start near home plate, closely lined up along 3B line. You’d have a player for each INF position plus a catcher.

Before taking the field, each player would yell something - mostly just random “rah rah” type stuff.

After all the players have said something, they would all take off for their positions. The SS and 2B would both be in the same position at 2B.

The competition would start with the catcher taking the ball and throwing it to 3B, who would then throw to 2B, who then throws to 1B who then throws back to the C. The team would throw around the horn in this manner 3 times (2B and SS alternate receiving throws at 2B). The goal was to complete the throw it around (3 times) within 17 seconds). You can see a video of the compeition below. If the team failed, they would start over from the beginning, starting from where they took the field.

As you can tell from the above, there was a lot of communication/talking/enthusiasm going on while the drill was happening.

The middle school team also practiced at the same time as the HS team - while the HS team was using the infield, the Jr High team would use the outfield and vice-versa.

3. Japanese live batting practice.

Another thing that the teams did during BP was to do a batting practice with a live pitcher and the bases loaded. The runners at 1B and 2B would always steal, working on jumps, while 3B would work on live reads of batted balls. Each batter would have live counts.

Video of the BP session is below.

Other videos of the practice session are below.

Generally, here are some other observations from watching Japanese professional baseball -

• During INF/OF, when hitting to the 1B, never have the 1B throw to 3B. How many times do you see a 1B make a throw from 1B to 3B in a game, yet this is pretty standard in most people’s infield/outfield routine. Instead, have the 1B make a play that is more likely to happen, like starting a double-play to 2B.
• On the throw it around - most coaches will have their 3B finish off the throw it around by flipping the ball back to the pitcher. In Japanese throw it arounds, they would finish it off by having the 3B make a real throw back to the SS. So, on an out at first, if you would do 1B-SS-2B-3B-P, have the players do 1B-SS-2B-3B-SS-3B with the 3B making a real throw to the SS and back to the 3B then have 3B flip it back to the pitcher. Some Japanese teams would have the SS and 3B make multiple throws back and forth between the SS and 3B before returning the ball back to the pitcher.
• When turning two on the INF, don’t forget about your catchers - after the 1B has done his “turn 2”. Roll a ball out in front of HP and have the catcher do a turn 2.

Here are some video of various Japanese professional INF/OF routines -

Here are some other scenes from Japanese baseball -

This is part 3 of my journal of adventures in Japan. You can read the other posts about this trip by visiting my Japan blog page.

Riding the Shinkansen
After my stop at T's Tan Tan, which I wrote about here, I was off to catch the train to Kyoto. The train trip between Japan and Kyoto covers about 320 miles and will take you past Mt. Fuji. If you're headed towards Kyoto you'll want to be on the right side of the train in order to see the famous mountain. By the time I realized where Mt. Fuji was on the route, I never ended up seeing it.

From Tokyo to Kyoto, or trying to, at least 
After my night at the hotel in Tokyo, it was time to get over to Kyoto, which is about a 2.5hr (320 miles) bullet train ride from Tokyo. While at O'Hare, I had started to doubt my initial plan, which was to go immediately from Tokyo to Kyoto the first day - thinking about it I thought that I might not be optimizing my time in the best way but I knew that I wanted to make it to Mt Koya before the baseball tour began and getting out to Kyoto would get me close to Koya. Anyways, despite doubting my original plan, I set out from the hotel that morning to the local JR (Japanese Rail) station which was a short shuttle ride from the hotel. At this point, I hadn't exchanged my rail voucher for the JR Pass yet and thought that I would be able to do so over at the JR station.
Riding the Rails in Japan - the JR (Japanese Rail), the Shinkansen (bullet train) & more!
Before I go any further, it's worth explaining how the rail system works in Japan. I already mentioned that I had bought a rail pass before heading over to Japan, which was FedEx'd to me via the rail company. The company will mail you what basically amounts to a coupon that you take with you and then exchange at a JR station in Japan. Once you have your rail pass, you'll get access to bullet trains (the Shinkansen) that criss-cross the country in addition to a special train system referred to as the JR. The JR is available in most Japanese cities but is separate from each city's subway system. You'll need separate tickets in each city in order to ride each city's subway system but in some cities, like Tokyo, the JR train might be all you need to get around the city so your JR pass will suit you just fine.
Just to keep this straight - you can think of there being three train systems in Japan. The Shinkansen (the bullet train) which gets you between major cities very quickly, the JR (Japanese Rail) which gives you around within cities, and the individual city subways which, like the JR, gets you around each town. The subways, generally, have much more coverage & stations within cities than the JR. 

Okay, so here's my first travel post! I'll be writing several posts about my September 2016 trip to Japan. I traveled there for two weeks between September 9th and September 24th. Here's part #1!

Before Leaving for Japan
So, the question a lot of people ask is why did I travel to Japan? The biggest reason was baseball. I had always heard that Japan was big into baseball and had wanted to see games over there for some time. I had originally thought that I would go see games on my own and had scanned the Nippon Baseball League website for tickets and dates. However, the more I searched I eventually came across Bob Bavasi's JapanBall website. Bob runs a yearly tour of Japan baseball, usually in September.  I was attracted to the idea of traveling with a group while there and enjoyed the idea of someone taking care of all the ticket details. I'll write more about Bob's tour later in this post.

While making travel plans, I bought a two week Japan Rail pass. There are various sites that you can buy this from, but I ended up going with the site recommended by Bob here. Note that if you want to buy a rail pass, you should buy it before leaving for Japan. If you don't, you'll find that buying tickets in Japan is very expensive and could cost you many thousands of dollars once you're in the country. I later found that bullet train travel in Japan is very expensive to native Japanese people but the pass is subsidized for tourists if bought before arriving in Japan. Rough cost estimate for the two week Japan Rail pass was about $450. More on how to use the JR pass later.