This past Sunday's Boston Globe had an
intriguing article about the efforts of Major League Baseball to expand the market for American baseball in Japan. (Warning: This article may vanish in the near future as the Globe rotates stories.) The linked photo gallery is especially amusing. My favorite is the
photograph of the Hanshin Tigers fan in her Tigers "cosplay" outfit. I can almost imagine "Osaka" from AzuDaioh in this outfit.
MLB's Japanese revenues are now reported to exceed $100 million annually from a combination of rights fees and paraphenalia sales. The Red Sox/Yankees push is especially targeted at fans of Tokyo's Yomiuri Giants and Osaka's Hanshin Tigers, whose relative success over the years parallels that of the teams from New York and Boston respectively.
We've already witnessed the effects of the signing of Daisuke ("Dice-K") Matsuzaka here in Boston. There's now a center-field billboard for Dunkin' Donuts in Japanese. It includes a picture of a coffee cup with a "DD" on the side of it so the rest of us know what the product is.