TOKYO (AP) — Ichiro Suzuki has arrived in Tokyo, a sure sign the Major League Baseball season is only days away from starting.

Wearing a gray and black hat pulled down to cover most of his head, the 45-year-old Seattle Mariners star slipped quickly through the arrival gate on Friday at Haneda Airport with hundreds of reporters and fans getting only a quick glimpse.

The Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics arrived within hours of each other on Friday on charter flights from the United States. They play on Wednesday and Thursday at the Tokyo Dome in the first two games of the 2019 season.

Ichiro is likely to play both games. After that it's unclear if he will make the Mariners team, retire, or do something else.

Several of the players from both teams waved as they passed through the airport. A few stopped to greet fans who were packed several deep.

Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez was the most dramatic, pausing in front of cameras and saying: "I'm here, I'm here."

Ichiro is a baseball idol in Japan and, though his star has faded in the last few years, he is still popular and appears frequently on television commercials.

Many Japanese think he should retire in Tokyo in a dramatic goodbye after the two games and wait to be the first Japanese player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Others say Ichiro should do it his way, which is the way he has conducted his entire MLB career since he broke in with the Mariners in 2001 after playing in Japan for the Orix BlueWave.

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TOKYO (AP) — There's an adage in Japanese that translates easily to English.

Deru kugi wa utareru.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Ichiro Suzuki has been the nail in a culture that values formality, caution, and deference to authority. Doing it his way, he's developed into Japan's greatest baseball player and arguably its best athlete.

"At such a young age he already had his own mind," said Keizo Konishi, a reporter with the Japanese news agency Kyodo. "The older generation tells young people what they should do. Particularly in the structured baseball world."

Ichiro has played 2,651 major league games since joining the Seattle Mariners in 2001. Konishi has seen almost every one; from Seattle to New York, then to Miami, and back to Seattle. Add on hundreds before that with the Orix BlueWave.

The odyssey returns him to Japan where Ichiro is expected to play in a two-game series when the Mariners and the Oakland A's open the season March 20-21 at the Tokyo Dome.

Afterward, who knows? Some Japanese want the 45-year-old to finally retire, and the Mariners have said they want to go with youth.

One thing is certain in Tokyo: Ichiromania rules.

He's a source of national pride; the first position player to make it big in the majors, countering the perception that the country produced only pitchers, and players like Ichiro were too small. He's revered for breaking through, for his fashion sense, and his Zen-like training. He'll be the first Japanese player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, almost surely on the first ballot.

He can also be aloof and arrogant, known to disdain interviews, and often evasive with a habit of turning his back on reporters and disparaging questions he doesn't like. Japanese journalists have often been targets, and organizers say...

PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Yusei Kikuchi's journey started in northern Japan, in the prefecture of Iwate, about 300 miles from the Tokyo Dome.

This is where Kikuchi became a star. Where he was a prep phenom. Where his left arm was so good he seriously considered skipping playing professional baseball in his home country to immediately go where he always wanted to be: the major leagues.

"When I was smaller I was watching all the Japanese players play well in the major leagues and that was the time all these Japanese players were coming to the major leagues and I was saying, 'Even if I'm Japanese I will be able to make it to the majors if I work hard,'" Kikuchi said recently through an interpreter. "I was given that dream by all these former players and that is why I wanted to come to the states."

Kikuchi was determined from the time he was 15 years old to be the next great Japanese import to dazzle American fans and befuddle major league hitters. That dream is now the reality for the newest starting pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.

In a twist, his debut will come a few hundred miles from where he first made a name for himself at Hanamaki Higashi High School. He will start the second game of the 2019 season against the Oakland Athletics inside the Tokyo Dome next week.

While his MLB debut is coming in Japan, Kikuchi has been preparing to make America his home for more than a decade. He studied English and answered the majority of questions in English at his introductory news conference . He scouted the best left-handed pitchers in the majors to see what made them successful. He visited the U.S. on numerous occasions to begin learning the culture.

"I went to a couple of ballgames and I looked at the atmosphere and said, 'Hey, this is the place I want to play,' and I set that goal when I came to the states," Kikuchi said....

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