a game the baseball-crazy Japanese call yakyu. From the first pitch through the final out, the intensity of the fans was unlike anything I've ever experienced at an American baseball game. I wasn't sure if it felt more like being in the stands at an SEC football game or a zealot-packed political rally.

"It's much noisier than Major League Baseball games," said Wayne Graczyk, the dean of American baseball writers in Japan, who I met after the game for pizza and beer at a sports bar near the Dome. Graczyk first began writing about Japanese baseball in 1975 and is now a baseball columnist for the English-language Japan Times. He also is the longtime editor of the Japan Baseball Media Guide.

"Whatever the reason, since the early 1900s when collegeshere first started playing baseball, it hooked on, and it's been a passion of the Japanese people ever since," he said.

This day at the Dome proved to be my most memorable experience during a weeklong trip to Tokyo. With its labyrinth of trains and subways and dearth of English street signs, the world's largest metropolitan area -- home to more than 30 million people -- can be bewildering and even downright intimidating to foreigners. Going to a ballgame brought a much-needed sense of familiarity, and at the same time, offered a fascinating glimpse into Japanese culture.

Before the game, I spent a couple of hours touring the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. I learned that baseball started here in 1872 when Horace Wilson, an American teacher living