This last is the one men usually play, using the rules of hardball but with an elusive hard-rubber ball about the same size for safety. Hardball tends to be for school teams, semi-pro and above, while women play softball and men play softball or nankyu. Softball is not necessarily relaxing, as both sexes often employ windmill-style fast pitching. Professional baseball is ubiquitous on TV, and several national daily sports newspapers concentrate on it even during the winter when there is little but speculation to report. The public are casually familiar with the American major leagues, and are curious to see how big-leaguers tend to excel while marginal players more often are foiled by the wily pitchers.
Culture shock can be either amusing or traumatic on both sides.
Baseball as it is altered in Japan provides some insight into Japanese organizational skills. All of Japan is in the same time zone, making it easier than in America, but many sports tournaments are organized nationally. Each prefecture has its elimination tournament to choose its representatives, then everyone has a team to root for at the national level. When their representative loses, their loyalty naturally switches to the nearest prefecture still in the running. This is particularly true of the bi-annual high school baseball tournament, on TV all day long for over two weeks and followed in great detail with passionate interest from Hokkaido to Okinawa.