This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
- Fighters
- Hawks
- Marines
- Eagles
While I'm glad to see Rakuten actually cooperating with Softbank (who owns Yahoo! Japan), I'm extremely upset with the way Yahoo! is running this. Not only are those of you outside of Japan complaining about not being able to view the games, but I'm in Japan and cannot. They require a Microsoft OS (Windows 2000 or later), Microsoft browser (IE 6 or later - no FireFox or Opera), and Microsoft video player (third party players that will play MS formats like VLC are out). You couldn't pay me to use any of the above, no matter how much I'd want to see the content. (At least there are ways of getting around some of those requirements with the U.S. State Department pages - browser spoofing and disabling/enabling JavaScript at certain times - not something your average user can do, though.)Anyway, perhaps a petition of some kind will help make the powers-that-be aware that these draconian efforts to restrict NPB viewing are not in the best interests of NPB. The address to write to is: Please keep it polite. (My rant above would not be appropriate.) And they'll probably ignore anything in English, but if that's all you know, it couldn't hurt. If you don't get a reply after 24 hours, write again, and again, and again until they come up with a statement as to why they are excluding a segment of their fan base.
Please post any replies you get.