"Robert Whiting" is a best-selling author and journalist who has written several successful books on contemporary Japanese culture - which include topics such as baseball and American gangsters operating in Japan. He was born in New Jersey, grew up in Eureka, California and graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo. He has lived in Japan for a total of more than three decades since he first arrived there in 1962, while serving in the U.S. Air Force. He currently divides his time between homes in Tokyo and California.

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All of his games -- including exhibition and intra-squad games -- were telecast nationwide, ... It was this that gave the Japanese their first real solid look at the way Americans play ball. They saw how accepting the Americans were, and decided that maybe they could act the same way.

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As a New York-based sports editor put it to me.

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The NPB [Nippon Professional Baseball] is somewhere between the MLB and AAA [in ability].

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He has this exuberance about him that translates into great results.

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You've got loggers and fishermen in Seattle who didn't know what sushi was a decade ago, eating it at the ballpark and wearing headbands with kanji [Japanese characters] on them, ... That's quite a transformation. Ichiro is the one who is responsible for that shift.

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