National baseball captain Eleazar Ng is the first Singaporean to earn a professional contract

Source: The Straits Times
Author: Kimberly Kwek

SINGAPORE - As national baseball captain Eleazar Ng was grocery shopping in his first week in Ureshino, Japan, he was stopped by another shopper who was trying to tell him about an offer in the store.

The shopper took his phone out and began using Google translate to type his message in Bahasa Indonesia after recognising that Ng was a player from Saga Indonesia Dreams, a team competing in the Kyushu Asia League, a third-tier independent league in Japan.

Ng, who is not fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, found this incident bemusing as he makes an interesting start to life in Japan since arriving in the Saga prefecture in March.

"When you go around the city or when you walk around the area, even in other cities, people will know who you are because you appear on the magazine, the newspaper and there are posters of your team everywhere you go," said Ng of the strong baseball culture over there.

"When I came here I was shocked because there were people watching us train, kids were watching us warm up.

"People are very welcoming and they will try to help you as much as possible even though there's a language barrier."