Here we are, exactly one year after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011. Japanese baseball has been greatly affected by the quake, the tsunami triggered by it and the subsequent radiation threats from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The earthquake is one of those events where everyone who experienced it will forever remember where they were when it hit or when they heard it had occurred. Like what happened in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, or if you are old enough, the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

The circumstances which dictated where I was at that time on that fateful Friday are baseball-related. A few days earlier, NTV had sent me a train ticket by registered mail for travel to Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, to cover a Yomiuri Giants-Chiba Lotte Marines exhibition game on March 19.