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April 3, 2015 9PM It's springtime in Sapporo and the tourists have departed. The winter season that brings so much snow to this city of nearly two million has ended, bringing an end to the snow sculptures and snow festivals, and the cool moist spring has settled in comfortably here on the shores of Ishikari Bay. The big news in the city today is the recent beginning of baseball season - the famous Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters are playing a special exhibition game with the visiting Freedom City Comets, who themselves are on their way back to Freedom City tomorrow to begin their North American season with a game against Detroit. The 40,000 seats in the Sapporo Dome are packed with local fans and American "super-fans" from Freedom City who have flown in for the special game, many of them following the usual Freedom City pattern of wearing exaggerated superhero costumes alongside the usual Comets merch. It's a big day, and much to the delight of the home crowd, the Fighters are pulling ahead of their American antagonists. (The team's rivalry is old and arcane, as the best sports rivalries are, dating back to the early days of the Comets franchise in the 1950s when they clashed with the visiting Nippon-Ham Fighters in the West Coast of the US) Outside the rest of the city is bustling along quietly, though the cool, wet fog that's settled over most of the town tonight has kept many of the usual late-Friday-night crowd home or at least inside their favored establishments. Fishing is big here and you can walk into a local restaurant to find freshly-caught sea urchin, salmon, or crab on the menu, or perhaps the famous local jingisukan lamb barbecue. From the taller buildings in town you can see the mountains rising off to the east. Hokkaido has been 'tamed' since the late 19th century when American experts helped the Japanese government exterminate much of the local wildlife during the Meiji period, but at night when the Moon rises over the distant mountains of the island, glimpses of the old Hokkaido can be seen in the forest beyond. Inside the stadium, it's the seventh-inning stretch; a good time to wander up to the concession stand and get a beer or some soup curry, or maybe just sit in the stands and curse that bastard Kataoka and his murderous right arm. Errors by his own team have meant that the Nippon-Ham Fighters pitcher hasn't quite thrown a perfect game - but he's come close! The Comets have kept the Fighters dancing too, but the score is 18-9, and the Comets are going to have to pull off a miracle to win this one!

Take me out to the DEATH GAME