We’re a little disappointed that both hanami and baseball season have arrived at the same time this spring, but we’ve been doing our best to take in as much of both as humanly possible. To help you catch up on the latter while you may be busier doing the former, we offer you a quick-and-dirty preview of what might be expected from this year’s NPB season.

Team news for all 12 clubs in the Central and Pacific leagues is presented in the accompanying podcast. Changes, both good and bad, and some expectations for the coming months are discussed in this edition of TPR Spotlight on NPB.

League standings after games played April 4th, 2008: (Read on …)

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In this edition of TPR spotlight, Debito Arudou joins TPR’s Garrett DeOrio and Ken Worsley to discuss the upcoming release of his new book, Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants, which is set to go on sale from March 15.

In the interview, Debito speaks about why the book was written, what kinds of resources it offers for people moving to Japan, his relationship with co-author Akira Higuchi, the upcoming book tour, and what might be in store for the future of Japan’s increasing number of foreign residents who decide to stay in Japan long term, if not permanently.

For more information on the book, and on Debito’s upcoming book tour, please see his blog at www.debito.org.

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 Spotlight #6 - Debito Arudou: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Baseball season is coming!

There was one hell of a free agent class this year with 17 players reaching free agency for the first time. A total of 68 players became free agents at the end of the 2007 baseball season, and there are some notable names in that group.

It appears that all 68 free agents have signed contracts as of March, 2008. Several guys will be trying their luck in the majors this year.

It was reported that six guys switched clubs in both 1994 and 2001. I don’t know if that was some kind of record, but far more than six guys moved around during the 2007-2008 off-season. And might I be so bold as to suggest that the trend will continue in the future.

Here are some of the names that have made the news this off-season:

Kazuhiro Wada (Seibu Lions) was looking around a bit before the Japan Series got under way. He became a free agent after 11 seasons with the Saitama-based team. The team had signaled its intent to keep him on and even mentioned a future coaching position as a symbol of its interest in the 35-year-old veteran’s services.

In 2005, Wada was the batting champion of the Pacific League. He had been a solid contributor to the Lion’s many winning campaigns since he arrived.

Unfortunately for the Lions, he eventually worked out a three-year deal with the Chunichi Dragons worth a reported 840 million yen. The veteran has put together a solid career so far, and it should be interesting to see if he is able to keep performing at the .300-plus level for the next few seasons. I don’t see any reason, barring injury, why he shouldn’t be able to do just that.

(Read on …)

Chris Parham, the director of the upcoming Black Stripe Theater production of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, sat down with me and had a short chat about the play and the Tokyo theater scene.

BST is planning to bring a couple more shows to the stage during the 2008 season, and Glengarry Glen Ross, brought to life by some of the Kanto region’s most dedicated actors, is likely a sign of big things to come.

Black Stripe Theater’s production of Glengarry Glen Ross hits Theatre Iwato this weekend, February 22nd through the 24th, and tickets are available at blackstripetheater@yahoo.com.

Update:
The Friday and Saturday evening performances (both at 7:30pm) are now sold out.

Tickets are still available for the Saturday and Sunday matinees (2:00pm) and the Sunday evening performance (6:30pm).

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 Chris Parham Interview: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Editor’s Note: Production of this episode started before the end of the regular season. Many of the predictions made in the article below, and the accompanying podcast, have since been shown to be right or wrong (but mostly right). The 2007 final standings below are an example of the information not available to us when we recorded this installment of TPR Spotlight.

OK, here come some of the teams that you may have heard about before.

If you haven’t listened to the podcasts that accompanied the first two NPB installments, you can give them a listen by clicking here and scrolling down.

The Central League is home to the most powerful team in Japanese baseball. Not powerful because they’re the best (at least not since the ’60s and ’70s), but rather because they have the most money and their owner basically controls the league. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

We’ll get to them later. Again, let’s proceed in alphabetical order so as to avoid as much bias as possible.

(Read on …)

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 NPB #3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

EDIT: I have added links to blogs where current and past instructors are discussing the Nova situation. The links are after the ‘more’ cut.

Back on September 20, we asked that any employees of the Nova Corporation who were willing to talk with us about the company’s current situation get in touch. I was surprised at the response we received, and was able to conduct phone interviews with many of them towards the end of last week. We heard from new instructors, long-timers, former employees, and titled instructors.

What follows is their description of the state of the company - their worries, discoveries, fears and predictions about the future. What struck me was the continual mention of an ‘blackout’ on information coming from the management level. The people I spoke with seemed confused and upset that they were unable to get any information directly from the very company they not only work for, but entrusted to have their best interest in mind when they recruited them to live and work in a foreign country. Some seemed unsurprised by this, with one instructor describing communication within the company as having gone from “bad to worse.”

This article is not the place for me to state my opinion, but rather is a forum for instructors to describe what is happening where they’re working.

Thank you to all Nova employees who contacted us and spoke with us. We apologize to all those whose interviews were cut short or not included due to constraints of time and space. We appreciate that you have gotten in touch with us. We also doubt that this will be the end of our ongoing coverage on Nova.

(Read on …)

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 Spotlight #5: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Japan’s forgotten league has made very large strides of late. Pacific League teams have captured the last three Japan Series titles (Japan’s version of the World Series), and they look poised to take it again this year.

The one thing that has held them back over the years has not been a lack of good baseball teams or a dearth of talent. They suffered in the shadows for decades because they were in the other league–the one without the Yomiuri Giants.

That appears not to make much of a difference anymore. Sure Yomiuri is still the only team that you can watch play on non-cable TV, but the perennial strength of the ballclubs fielded in the Pacific League has nearly made up for any discrepancy in exposure. The Pacific League consistently produces good baseball, and this season is a case in point.

The two teams that are currently battling it out in the cellar are actually only 6.5 and 7.5 games behind the third playoff spot with more than a month and a half of baseball left to play. The same cannot be said for the two weakest teams in the Central League. One could possibly argue that the three best teams in the Central are responsible for the large gap between first and last, but I would bet on any of the top three teams in the Pacific over either of the top two teams in the Central every day of the week.

(Read on …)

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 NPB: Pacific League : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this continuation of TPR’s second extended interview with human rights activist Debito Arudou, Garrett DeOrio grills his guest on the differences between the academic and activist approaches to issues, especially the issue of abuse of foreign workers in Japan, and the relative merits of cold and heartless academia and hot-headed activism.

They also discuss the case of a Mr. Valentine - a Nigerian man cornered and beaten by Tokyo Police officers, refused medical attention for ten days, then denied redress through the courts.

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 Spotlight #3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“If I ever saw myself saying I was excited about going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’d be lying.”

20 points if you can recall who is responsible for that quote. That’s right, it was Ichiro (your 20 points are in the mail). Everyone knows who Ichiro is. Why? Because he’s arguably the best position player to have ever played the game of baseball. And that includes all the professional Dominicans, Cubans, Chinese, Australians, Costa Ricans, South Koreans, Americans, Venezuelans, Dutch, Taiwanese, Canadians, Mexicans, and Japanese that have ever endeavored to be the best in the sport.

Maybe the people in Cleveland don’t like Ichiro so much, but the rest of us do. And everyone knows that Ichiro started his professional baseball career in Japan. He played for the Orix Blue Wave in Nippon Professional Baseball’s (NPB) Pacific league. Huh?

Yes, that’s a fair question. Technically, the Orix Blue Wave do not exist anymore. They are now half of the Orix Buffaloes (the other half being the team formerly known as the Kintetsu Buffaloes), and were Ichiro to one day return to Japan to play out the twilight of his career, he probably wouldn’t have any idea as to where his loyalty is anchored.

But I digress: Ichiro is partly the product of the NPB, and even though there has been (and will continue to be) a steady depletion of the brightest talent produced by Japan (think both Matsuis, Matsuzaka, Nomo, Iwamura, Iguchi, Hasegawa, Johjima, and on and on), it is still a league that generates a lot of interest and a wealth of good baseball.

(Read on …)

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 Nippon Pro Baseball #1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As well-known as he is, not many people know that human rights activist Debito Arudou is as passionate about Duran Duran as he is about anything.

Don’t worry, though - in this interview Debito and Ken Worsley discuss the foreign labor market in Japan - where it’s united, where it’s fractious, and where it still needs help - as well as what is being done to improve conditions and opportunities for foreign workers, and what needs to be done in the future. This is an important issue that relates to Japan’s economic future, and immigration policy (or reform) still seems untouchable within the nation’s political discourse. Why is this so?

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 TPR Spotlight #2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download