As if professional baseball isn't hard enough on rookies, try tackling what Hokkaido Nippon Ham newcomer Sho Nakata is probably about to go through.
Nakata has been labeled a "kaibutsu" (which translates into monster), a term fans and media have come to use to identify a "monster" talent making the jump from high school to professional baseball, and there is an enormous amount of hype building around an 18-year-old that has yet to play a regular-season game.
Less than a month into spring training, the media frenzy is already reaching a fevered pitch with Nakata doing TV appearances, seemingly daily gracing the front, back and inside pages of sports dailies and having details of his life off the diamond, such as a recent shopping trip and his mother advising him to steer clear of the Susukino nightlife district in Sapporo, finding their way into the news.