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		Besuboru very, very big in Japan By Catherine Heins Special to Page 2

			The girls knew two words of conversational English, but that was all they needed. "Boyfriend?" they inquired hopefully of their new American teacher. "Love, love?" It came out as "boifureindo? Rabu, rabu?" but since I couldn't say much more in Japanese, who was I to criticize? Discussing the merits of Hideki Irabu is an easy way to start conversation with Japanese youth. The boys were more of a challenge. In my first months at a Japanese high school, we rarely got beyond, "Good morning, Catherine-sensei. HowareyouI'mfinethankyouandyou?" I'd never heard of the comic books they devoured -- sometimes during class -- or the video games they played, and in a grievous oversight, I had never managed to meet Michael Jordan. But we all knew baseball. They knew Sammy Sosa, I knew Hideo Nomo. They have the Tokyo Giants, we have the guys in San Francisco. Many Americans never realize it, but America's favorite pastime is Japan's too. I discovered this cultural connection when I was reading my English-language newspaper at my desk one day after school and a passing student glimpsed a photo of Hideki Irabu winding up for a pitch on the back page. He stopped for a closer look. When I peered over the top of the paper he grinned and proclaimed, "Irabu very good." "Very good," I agreed, although I wasn't sure that I did. "New York Yankees very good." He paused, momentarily at a loss, then soldiered on. "Dream Team." Of course, Irabu had been traded to the Expos by then, and I didn't think telling him that George Steinbrenner had called Irabu a fat toad would do much to improve Japanese-American relations. So I casually let slip that I had actually attended a Yankees game earlier that summer, and when I saw his eyes widen in wonder I knew I was onto something. A few weeks later, when I had 10 minutes left at the end of one class and the students were bracing themselves for another vocabulary review, I dug out my Red Sox cap and recounted how Bill Buckner's fatal bobble cost us the 1986 World Series. They didn't understand it all, of course, not even with the helpful diagrams I drew on the blackboard. But then, no one who isn't a Red Sox fan could really understand. Soon the boys were regularly fishing my newspaper out of the trash to see if any Japanese pitchers in the major leagues had won a mention. They told me about Mac Suzuki of the Kansas City Royals and I showed them where those unpronounceable-in-Japanese places, like Milwaukee and Anaheim, are on the map. "California very good," they would say solemnly. "Beverly Hills." I wasn't the first English instructor to think of this. After all, it was American teachers who introduced baseball to Japan back in the 1870s, just as the island nation was opening itself up to international trade after 300 years of isolation. Now baseball is not only the most competitive boys' club at our school, with its own posse of female "managers" who keep the water jugs filled and the uniforms folded, but also the most popular professional sport in the country. Most of my students had a favorite team, which -- unlike in America -- was as likely to be in Tokyo, five hours to the north, as in the closer cities of Kobe or Hiroshima. My most fervent fan, 17-year-old Mutsumi, favored the powerhouse Yomiuri Giants but her mother supported the Tigers of Osaka while her father cheered for the Hiroshima Carp. This lively family rivalry kept everyone glued to the TV for most of the season. Since most Japanese homes had just one TV, that was probably just as well. Baseball news was a little slow during the winter. But by spring training time, I had launched our own version of classroom baseball, played with a plump beanbag named Pi-chan, a pair of dice, and a distinctly unprofessional proportion of players in plaid skirts and pigtails. The goal of the game lay not in smacking the hide off a 100-mph fastball but in describing the feat in English with a triumphant, "Watanabe hits a home run!" Fortunately for my less academically inclined students, the Japanese word for home run is the same as ours. The kids complained that English was an impossibly difficult language, but baseball -- sorry, that's besuboru -- English is a snap. A pitcher is a picha, a catcher is a cacha, a batter is a batta. Foa boru earns you a trip to fasuto and three sutoreiko means you're outo! Most Japanese teachers rarely allow students to leave their seats during class, or to speak except to answer a direct question. So my students were a bit baffled when I first ordered them to clear the desks and take their places in the outfield. By the end of the 50-minute period, however, the game was in full swing. Other students, dismissed punctually when the bell rang, gathered outside our classroom windows to watch us wrap up the inning. "Fujiwara hits a fly ball to right," one girl announced, rolling the dice. She chucked Pi-chan to the right fielder, who dutifully tossed it on to the pitcher, who waited. A hush descended as everyone turned their expectant gazes toward right field. "Yamamoto catch boru-ball," our bemused right fielder said finally, and with a sigh of relief, the next batter stepped up to the plate. This is not how my native tongue is traditionally taught here. In most classes in my high school, the teacher lectured in Japanese and the students filled in workbook exercises with the proper preposition. English here is supposed to be about the arcane forms of the present perfect verb tense, not karaoke renditions of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (my Japanese got pretty good but I never was able to explain Cracker Jacks). So I knew that my classes were a hit, if only by comparison. But I was still touched when in my final week of school, students inundated me with going-away presents: hair clips, stickers, photos, Pokemon erasers and Godzilla stamps. Had I been a Japanese teacher, these perfectly wrapped packages would have been handed over with a 45-degree bow of respect. But as ye teach, so shall ye receive. "Hey, Catherine-sensei," one of my cheekier charges shouted, lobbing his gift from the back row. "Catch!" Catherine Heins, who taught English conversation for one year in Japan, is now a reporter for Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest daily newspaper in Japan. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories		breaking barriers  ALSO SEE: Caple: Where have you gone, Ichiro?
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