"A lot of it is comfortability," Powell said at this summer's All-Star series. "I had to take all the things I learned about baseball in America and forget about them.
"You come to realize how much respect they have for the game and how much it means to them."
But training techniques can become so well established that function no longer dictates their form and activities that were once goal-oriented tasks become rituals.
Sometimes breaking a routine can be more beneficial than struggling to maintain continuity, argued former Fighters slugger Matt Winters on a recent scouting trip to Japan.
Winters, a coach in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, said, "There are times in the States where the manager will just cancel batting practice.
"You stretch, run and go out and play the game. A lot of times, you'll see a team do that and just start hitting."
But not something any team is likely to try in Japan.
"You'd have to be a strong team to do that," said Yutaka Wada, one of the Hanshin Tigers battalion of batting coaches. "A weak team could never do that."
Following that of logic, any team skipping batting practice would be asserting it was so strong that the normal rules didn't apply to it--and inviting criticism.
Wada said there are times when a slumping hitter can benefit from skipping pre-game batting practice.
"It's a difficult decision and it depends on what the problem is," said Wada. "If someone is tired, than rest is important. Then you might have a player sit out a game or skip practice for a day.
"If someone is mentally tired, than running and stretching instead of hitting may be best. If it's a matter of technique, than maybe a different kind of batting practice is called for."
When asked about manager Senate Hoshino's policy of letting players opt out of batting practice, the genial coach said that practice time wasn't being reduced just redistributed.
"Our hitters still practice as much," he insisted. "We started that as a countermeasure to the hot summer months. That's all."
The issue according to Hiroshima Narahara, the veteran infielder of the Nippon Ham Fighters, is the relationship between practice and games.
"In Japan, we are very concerned with process," said Narahara on Tuesday at Seibu Dome. "It's not that the process is more important than the final result, because you can't ignore what finally happens--either winning or losing.
"But it might be that we see the process and results not as separate things but as two sides of the same coin. We can't separate them as easily as they might do in the majors."
So can the manager tell the whole team to give the pre-game batting ritual a rest?
"I don't think you'll see that," said Narahara.
Preparation is essential for success in baseball, but so is alertness, something that an occasional change in routine can provide.
A week ago, nobody was more alert than Yataro Sakamoto, who was pressed into service as the Yakult Swallows starting pitcher after the intended starter was accidentally left off the list of 25 players available for the game.
Trailing the Giants in the pennant race and running out of chances, the Swallows needed something from Sakamoto. He responded with one of his best performances of the year.
The Tigers faced a right-hander instead of lefty Futoshi Yamabe, who had been warming up in the bull pen, but that wasn't the biggest element of the story.
Yanked out of his routine, Sakamoto was very effective. "I just tried to throw the ball where (catcher Atsuya) Furuta put his mitt," Sakamoto said. "I didn't have time to be nervous or have any margin for error."
What Sakamoto did have was the element of surprise, because he was the one who was surprised.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .