With the Japan series set to kick off this evening there are several previews by the major newspapers cropping up. The Daily Yomiuri, perhaps still in agony over last week’s wonderful Giants collapse, checks in with a positional breakdown and an overview that fleshes out some of the variances in the two home ballparks the Fighters and Dragons play in.

Although the Dragons appear to be a much better power-hitting team because the CL is full of home run parks and the PL is not, their real edge in the series is in drawing walks. To win, they will need to milk every base runner they can against a tough pitching staff with a world-class defense.

The Japan Times has a feature on Ham Fighters outfielder Atsunori Inaba, an interview with Dragon’s skipper Hiromitsu Ochiai, and a preview of the seriesthat speculates on the prospect of Yu Darvish throwing two games:

“If I’m expected to get two wins, I’d like to do it,” Darvish said. “I’d like to hold them (scoreless) and continue to contribute to the team as usual.”

While you aren’t likely to find a feed of the Japan Series on the Internet you can keep tabs on the game by heading to japanesebaseball.com where your host, and Japanese baseball expert, Westbay-san will be doing a live pitch-by-pitch update from his home in Japan.

But if you check in please don’t bother him with questions about who’s going to be posted.