Many of you know that I have been writing a column for Daily Sports for the past year or so. It’s been a really good experience for me, and has helped me improve my Japanese writing skills immensely. I owe much of the credit to my editor, who also happens to be the author of this book:
One evening early on in my time writing for the newspaper, Mr. Sato invited me out for dinner. As we talked about various things, he mentioned that he was once a beat writer for the team, and that he even had a book published. I had to get my hands on it, if for nothing else than to show him gratitude for his polishing (and sometimes completely revamping) my articles every month.
At long last, I read through it, and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The writing style is extremely smooth, as you would expect from someone who writes and edits for a living. The content was also rather interesting. As a fan of just five years but holder of Top Level Tigers Proficiency, I know the team reasonably well… but this 180-page look at the 2003 pennant-winning team goes into depth that I couldn’t have imagined I would ever reach when I first started following the club.
Mr. Sato talks about pretty much every player on that team, plus managers and coaches. Most of it was written with the expectation that the team would have continued success in 2004, but as we know, that did not happen. In any case, the book has just the right amount of information and anecdotes about the team to keep the reader interested and emotionally buzzed from the pennant. Not too much, not too little.
After I emailed Mr. Sato to let him know that I finished reading the book at long last, he said, “It’s all old stories by now, so it was probably pretty boring.” Not so, sir. I’ve grown quite used to, and quite fond of, your writing style. Well written!