TAMPA, Fla. -- The biggest adjustment for Kei Igawa has been tipping.
Not his pitches. At restaurants.
"They don't have tipping in Japan," said Igawa, the Yankees' latest acquisition from the Far East.
But like everything Igawa has encountered in America in his first week -- on the field and off -- it didn't take long for him to adapt. Culture shock seems to be a foreign concept to the left-hander.
Take getting an American driver's license. Igawa passed the test with no problem, despite the fact that in Japan they drive on the left side of the road. The only tricky part was the turn signal.
"It was a little difficult at first," Igawa said through his interpreter, Yumi Watanabe. "I put the wipers on when I tried to put on the blinker."
Igawa is reading a book to learn baseball English, and he's picking up other words and phrases. His vocabulary includes, "thank you for breakfast," "what's up?" and his favorite American food, "hot dog."
He has also broken out the game "shogi" in the clubhouse. Shogi is like Japanese chess, and Igawa has the level of master, the equivalent of a black belt in karate. The game helps with his concentration on the mound -- reading an opponent in shogi is like reading an opposing batter.
While cultural transitions are one thing, the big question is how Igawa will deal with facing major-league hitters. Jorge Posada, who caught Igawa on Thursday, said there's a lot he'll have to adjust to.
"Everything," Posada said with a laugh. "It's not going to be easy. Everything is completely different."
And Igawa's first pitches of spring training gave pitching coach Ron Guidry some cause for alarm. The first pitch sailed six feet above the plate. The next one flew wide. Guidry, a little rattled, went to ask Watanabe why the new guy was as wild as a rookie.
"Well, he hasn't pitched off the mound since November," Watanabe translated.
Given that information, and Igawa's much cleaner bullpen session yesterday, Guidry isn't concerned.
"Now you're not worried about him being precise," Guidry said. "That's going to come. The thing I noticed today was how much better he threw around the plate."
Reliever Mike Myers, who saw Igawa pitch in Japan during the off-season while playing in an all-star tour, said that getting over the language barrier with American catchers will be a hurdle. But basically, it's the same game.
"He had guys on base, he kept his composure real well," Myers says. "He worked in and out of the zone and up and down. So it's just a matter of adapting to hitters, and their strike zone is different."
Igawa describes himself as a calm pitcher, and says the biggest challenge has been getting used to American baseballs, which are smoother than what he's accustomed to. Still, he had no trouble tossing his first few curveballs yesterday.
And it only took him a day to switch over to the standard American bullpen session.
American pitchers are taught to start off by throwing fastballs to their glove side (for the left-handed Igawa, inside to a right-handed batter) as a way to establish good mechanics for the rest of the session, before working their pitches outward.
When Igawa threw on Thursday, he did the opposite, starting off throwing to his pitching hand side. It caught Posada off guard, but since that's the way they do it in Japan and the most important thing is to keep Igawa comfortable, he didn't tell the pitcher to change anything.
Igawa took care of that on his own. In his side session yesterday with catcher Wil Nieves, he started off throwing to his glove side.
Just another easy transition to his new life.
"From now on," Igawa said with a shrug, "I do it that way."
