Youngsters in Chiba Prefecture will have the opportunity to take a stadium tour where they will be taught english baseball terminology. This is a great idea and cheers to Larry LaRocca, the Marines' promotional director, for coming up with it. 

Nippon Ham Sapporo, the capital of Japan's northernmost major island, Hokkaido, is famous for its yearly snow festival, which features elaborate representations of Japanese historical sites and the visages of celebrities carved out of ice and snow. It is normally held in early February, but the Fighters are mulling playing off of that by having an Opening Day snow festival where you can see the likes of pitcher Yu Darvish and Tsuyoshi Shinjo captured in the icy medium outside Sapporo Dome. 

Speaking of Shinjo, if he decides to retire at the end of the coming season, he might be brought into the team's front office as a special public relations adviser. Whether Shinjo would take the job or not is hard to say. He is already a popular tv personality and once said that he would like to be a clothes designer when he hangs up his spikes. The team obviously hopes to keep the goofy centerfielder around in order to use his popularity, especialy with female fans, to draw people to the stadium.  

Orix Outfielder Yoshitomo Tani erased the memories of an off year on New Year's Eve, as his wife, two time olympic judo gold medalist Ryoko "Yawara" Tamura gave birth to healthy son. It is their first child. They have yet to name the new addition.

After adding former Seibu and Yomiuri first baseman Kazuhiro Kiyohara and erstwhile Kintetsu third baseman Norihiro Nakamura, who spent the majority of the 2005 season at Las Vegas, the Dodgers' AAA ballclub, to its lineup, the Buffaloes are now said to be going after another onetime Buffalo, outfielder Tuffy Rhodes. The 37 year old former Cub was hampered by injury last season and basically quit the Giants after he was told that the floundering kyojin would focus on giving their younger players some big club level face time. Rhodes is still well liked in the Kansai region (Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe) for what he did during his stint batting ahead of Nakamura, especially when he tied the all time NPB homer mark with 55 in 2001 and then followed that up with 46 and 51 dinger campaigns before going to Yomiuri via free agency. However, Rhodes has deteriorated defensively and Kiyohara has also clanked his share over the last few seasons. Nakamura is thus the only improvement with the glove, even being praised by Joe Morgan for his quick feet. Yet, he can be considered a question mark offensively since he didn't do all that much in the hitter happy Pacific Coast League and had a pair of subpar seasons in Osaka before heading to America. 

Speaking of Kyohara, he says that he isn't holding any grudges against Yomiuri for how they treated him this past season, as he desperately hoped to remain with the Tokyo outfit. He did confess, though, that he did think about retirement before deciding to accept a proffer from the Buffaloes. Now he hopes to play in the Japan Series against Hanshin not because he hates the Giants, who he has been a fan of since he was a boy, but because it will energize the folks in Kansai. The burly slugger is a native of the area. 

Softbank 2004 Triple Crown winner and 2005 Pacific League homer champ Nobuhiko Matsunaka is likely to be the cleanup hitter and DH for Japan's WBC team. It will be interesting to see if he can overcome his weak showings in the playoffs the last two years, where he was a combined 3-35.