LAST EDITED ON Aug-13-14 AT 01:42 PM (EDT)
 
>>I have to be honest, this seemed a little bit off to me. Korra's
>>familiarity with the sport is, as the text itself notes, based
>>entirely on cultural contact with Zipang, and given Zipang's own
>>cultural context probably all their stadiums are going to be even more
>>old-fashioned than Puckett's Field is.
>
>Mmm, yes and no. For one, she's been walking around in what's
>obviously a very technically advanced city, and so if the ticket
>takers rip the ticket in half, as opposed to doing the little scanning
>thing they do now, or have an actual dude walking around selling
>hotdogs instead of filling out a card and giving it to the user and
>having it delivered, those would be obvious anachronisms. Two, I
>always pictured Zipang as a fully modern colony with spaceport and
>everything. So their baseball stadium (if they have one) is probably
>on the smaller side with as many labor saving (if soul killing) labor
>saving tricks as they can get away with.

Zipang, in a way, could be considered an "SCA" version of Edo/Meiji Japan seen from the late 22nd century. All of the style, none of the suck, as you said for your own/Gryph's comparison for New Avalon being "The Future as viewed from 1980's, interpreted by the people of the 24th century". So while the economy is a lot more balanced, the technology level is reasonably on par with the late 23rd century (mostly due to their own implementation of Sakoku when Sonset happened in 2288), and they have much less social stratification, the architecture is 'modern-period', most ground transportation is -not- repulsor-based (but they still have nice cars and trains), there's still a shogun (and emperor), multiple regional daimyo's, and the samurai are pretty much the entire professional class (so you've got samurai doctors, lawyers, programmers, coaches, physicists, etc).

So its baseball style is some mutant amalgamation of early 1900's Japanese baseball but with such nice advances as, oh, gloves for the fielders and and better scoring techniques. The overall field size and game size is smaller than MLB's, too.

Zipang itself made official contact with Diqiu in the early 2320's, in the middle of its period of isolation (and right on the heels of the Phoenix Flight and Korra's 50th birthday, which was their equivalent of the 1960's). So things only get muddled further from that point on, as cross-cultural influences carefully spread. The only major cross-advances have been in medical technology from the Zipang side and waterbending healing in the other direction from Diqiu; so while intrusive cyberware hasn't really made any progress (and really, there isn't a network in the lightningweb for it to take advantage of anyway), cyber -prosthetics- for limb-replacement have been making inroads (and there's been some promising inroads on chi management via the same), as well as better gene-based treatments for common genetic issues.

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions