With the traditional Japanese (Chinese) number system, much like Roman numerals, numbers become large quite quickly. Compare 240 to ニ百四十. Already it’s a digit longer. In 1Q84 all years are written like this. 一九八四年, but when I asked my teacher how you should pronounce it, he said you still just say the whole number like: せんきゅうひゃくはちじゅうよねん.
From someone who is British enough to have spent too many sunburnt school days playing it and no idea what baseball really is: Rounders is like baseball but with five bases, and a wooden bat about the length of a forearm.
I don’t think you can play it professionally (although, there’s always someone ), I mostly associate it with sports days as a kid, and minor injuries at workplace bbqs.
The main difference between baseball and rounders is the batting. A rounders bat is much shorter at 18 inches (more like a truncheon) and it is usually swung one-handed. Misses or strikes are not called – the batter gets just one ball thrown to them and must run whether they hit it or not.
It’s the perfect game for kids just before the summer holidays, when half just don’t care any more.
Now I’m imagining the Weasley twins swinging around great heavy baseball bats.
So, I only sort of noticed it before, but it definitely caught my attention here: the forbidden corridor has moved from the third floor in the English version to the fourth floor here. Is that for the four-is-death pun?