 As perplexing as kanji
(Chinese written characters used in Japanese writing) may
be, it's really not that difficult to read a Japanese
scoreboard. Written numbers are the same as the ones used
by Americans and Europeans, so it's easy to tell which
team is winning or losing just by looking at the line
score. Though teams are sometimes listed in abbreviated
English (a C for the Carp, D for the
Dragons, etc.), that isn't always the case, so it may be
a good idea to familiarize yourself with team names as
they are written in Japanese.
Like
most North American scoreboards, the visiting team's
players are listed on the left side and their runs at the
top of the line score. One minor difference that may soon
disappear as Japan tries to comply with international
standards, the Japanese list strikes before balls. In
Japan, the payoff pitch comes when the count is at
two-and-three. But minor problems like these are nothing
compared to trying to read names written in kanji.
Jingu Stadium scoreboard:
Though
the Japanese have three different writing systems, only
two are regularly used on scoreboards. Foreign players'
names are written in simple phonetic katakana
while the names of Japanese players are written in (more
complex) kanji. Some native players, like Orix superstar
Ichiro Suzuki, prefer to have their names printed in
katakana.
Used
almost exclusively to convey words and names of foreign
origin, katakana is by far the easier system to read and
write. While there are about fifty or sixty katakana
characters, the Japanese language features several
thousand kanji. Fortunately, most family names use simple
kanji, so if you learn as few at ten characters, you'll
be able to figure out a lot of names. And if you can
identify the 100 most basic kanji, you'll be able to read
more than half of the names on any given scoreboard.
While
most Japanese names are written with two kanji (
means "Ta-naka") foreign names often require
several katakana ("Hosey" is written as  ).
It may be difficult to tell the two kinds of characters
apart at first, but katakana are usually much more
streamlined than most kanji.
If you
look at reading a Japanese scoreboard as a logic puzzle,
it may not be so intimidating. Suppose you want to know
when Yakult catcher and 1997 MVP Atsuya Furuta will be
batting. You know that all Swallows players are listed on
the right side of the Jingu scoreboard and that the
second kanji in his family name will be 
("ta").
Since
there are two names on the right side that end with , you can
safely guess that one of them belongs to Furuta.
To the left of each name is a number, indicating each
player's defensive position. The lead-off hitter is
number eight (center field) while the third batter is
number two (catcher). Therefore, Furuta is batting third.
Because Tetsuya Iida is the only regular Swallows
outfielder who's last name ends with "ta," you
can also assume that he is the first batter. And since
there is only one name in katakana, and it begins with  (ho), you know that
the clean-up hitter is home run king Dwayne Hosey
().
Doing a
little homework before going to the ballpark can make the
game a much more rewarding experience. Skimming through
the katakana and kanji lessons in this web site can help.
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