|
 After
more than a year of work, during lunch breaks and late at
night, I've often wondered, "Why am I doing
this?" I certainly don't anticipate making any money
off this site and since I don't have any pictures of
naked or dead bodies, I don't expect to get a million
hits per day. Still, I have my reasons.After living in Japan for four
years and hearing so much broken English, my writing
skills had gone to hell. I began to forget what good
grammar sounded like, and even now I'm not always
certain. My job didn't often require me to put pen to
paper, so over the years I got a bit rusty. But after writing about two
hundred pages of text for this web site, it got a lot
easier to put nouns and verbs in the right order.
Currently,
I teach in Japan. Eventually, I may switch careers, and
I'm certain that good writing skills will be a
prerequisite to moving up. And if I learn a few things
about computers, that can't hurt.
Also,
it's been a lot of fun. Back in December 1996, my wife
and I got a computer loaded with Windows 95, Netscape and
Internet Explorer, and we spent the next two weeks
surfing the web, almost non-stop. Within a month, I began
to think about making a web page.
After
consulting all the on-line computer magazines, I noticed
Microsoft FrontPage 97 got the best reviews. Since it was
also relatively cheap, that's the one I went with.
Because I couldn't afford Photoshop or any of the other
expensive graphics programs, I ordered Paint Shop Pro.
All the text for this web site was written on my 386
laptop using MS Word.
The
next step was deciding on a topic. My first idea was
something political. But since I'm in Japan, I'm not in
the best position to make such a web site dealing with
American or Oregon politics. Yet I still wanted to make
something that was topical, and which would provide
useful information that would be difficult to find
elsewhere. That's when I hit on the idea of Japanese
baseball.
I
had never been a huge baseball fan in the states. I'd
watch two or three games on TV a year, and maybe the
World Series if I had a chance. But I enjoyed going to
minor league games, drinking beer and acting like a
blithering idiot. Coming to Japan, however, renewed my
interest in the sport if for no other reason than it was
one of the few things I could watch on TV and understand
given my lack of Japanese fluency. (There were also the
late-night shows with bare-chested women, but my wife
soon put an end to that viewing option.) And going to a
ball game turned out to be pretty fun.
Still,
when I first arrived here, I had some problems as far as
watching the Japanese game. I had always been rather
independent in the states, and it was annoying not to be
able to find the ballparks on my own. I'd have to ask
someone to translate a map for me or to give me
directions. Partly because Japanese scoreboards are
(believe it or not) written in Japanese, it can be a
little difficult to figure out what's going on. Not much
information is available in English, so it takes a while
to develop an attachment to a team.
Eventually
these problems evolved into the theory with which I
approached this web site, to make the game more
accessible to foreign fans. Hopefully there is enough
information here so that any English-speaking fan can get
a quick feeling for the Japanese brand of baseball.
While
it took me a year to make this site, much of that time
was spent reading, researching and, with the help of my
wife, translating. There is a lot of information on this
web site that is not available anywhere else in English.
Also,
to make the pages more interesting, I've tried to include
as many graphics as I could while sticking to three basic
rules: all graphics had to add something important, they
had to directly relate to the text on the page (except
for navigational aids) and had to be low
bandwidth-friendly. To lend a sense of unity to the site
and also to make the pages easier on viewers' eyes, I've
shaped most of the pictures with soft, rounded corners.
Since
this is a rather large web site, navigation is important.
The green bar on the left gives a pretty concise summary
of the choices available, and on the bottom of most pages
there are links with short explanations of pages with
related content. I wanted to create an environment which
could be explored with both a linear and hypertext
approach.
When
I started planning this web site, I would frequently
travel to Yurindo, a Yokohama bookstore that sells
foreign publications, to thumb through computer
magazines. Most of what I've learned about layout and
organizing a web site came from those sources. While I've
tried to adhere to as much of the advice as possible, I'm
sure I've also made plenty of mistakes along the way.
I
realize that this is a work in progress, it's not perfect
and there is plenty of room for improvement. I'd like to
smooth out the text, add more interactive features, maybe
make some quizzes for the Basic Japanese section,
and expand the area on Surviving Tokyo. Some of
the flaws I see already and have plans to fix; others I
hope you will bring to my attention. Don't hesitate to
criticize what you don't like. And if there is something
you find interesting or useful in this web site, let me
know.
As
you thumb through these pages, feel free to drop me a
line if you have a suggestion, find a mistake, have a
question, or just want to shoot the breeze about living
in Tokyo or watching Japan's national pastime.
 Dan Latham
March 26, 1997
|
