FUKUOKA, Japan -- Baseball is a little different in Japan. For one thing, the balls themselves are slightly smaller. For another, the games can end in a tie (well, that's usually different than it is in America). And for another, this whole Rally Monkey thing completely mystifies them. Every time the video people cue up Ray-Mo on the scoreboard, fans greet his appearance with utter silence.

"That's the biggest difference between baseball in America and Japan," Twins center fielder Torii Hunter said. "They don't have a monkey that jumps up and down."

	After another record-setting season, Bonds is likely to his name in lights as the MVP winner.

Well, that and the fact that the teams actually pitch to Barry Bonds.

That's right. The Japanese are so technologically advanced that their cell phones have cameras inside, but they still haven't discovered the intentional walk.

Or at least they haven't as far as it applies to Bonds (the Japanese are noted practitioners of the walk when anyone is within reach of breaking Sadaharu Oh's single season home run record). Three games into the major league All-Star tour of Japan, Bonds has yet to walk. He's been to the plate 11 times and the pitchers still somehow haven't been able to throw him four balls in one at-bat. "It's a little more fun," Bonds said.

Even in his first at-bat of the series, when Bonds came up to the plate with a runner on second base and first base open, the Yomiuri Giants pitched to him.

Naturally, he hit the ball out of the ballpark.

Two at-bats later, Bonds homered again.

He homered again in Monday's 8-2 loss to the Japan All-Stars, slamming the first pitch he swung halfway up the Fukuoka Dome bleachers in dead center.

Hey, high-definition camcorders small enough to misplace in your navel are nice but you can't beat four old-fashioned pitches out of the strike zone.

Unless, that is, you can mix some fastballs on the corner with some embarrassing changeups and nasty splitters as Giants starter Koji Uehara did Sunday when he struck out Bonds three times in as many at-bats. It was the first time Bonds has struck out three times in game since August of 2001 and Uehara is the first pitcher to do so since Anaheim's Scott Schoeneweis in June of 2000.

"You have good days and you have bad days," Bonds said. "That's life."

	Mr. MVP
	Barry Bonds is the only player to win four MVP awards and is likely to win his fifth today. Here is how he's fared in MVP voting (top 10 finishes): 1990: 1st 1991: 2nd (to Terry Pendleton) 1992: 1st 1993: 1st 1994: 4th 1996: 5th 1997: 5th 1998: 8th 2000: 2nd (to Jeff Kent) 2001: 1st 2002: 1st

Mostly, these are good days in Japan for Bonds, who has been smiling so much that authorities keep asking for his passport to make sure he's who he says he is. This is the fifth time for Bonds on the major league Japan tour -- he calls it his "semi-Olympic time" -- and he clearly enjoys the experience, from playing in front of fans who never boo him to personally restoring the U.S.-Japan trade imbalance at the many electronic stores in Tokyo's Electric City neighborhood.

"This is fun," he says. "It's a whole lot different than in the States. You get to play on a team like this with players like these? It's everyone's dream. It's exciting as an American to be on a team like this.

"I brought my trainer along on the trip for the first time and he keeps saying, 'Japan is so different. Everyone is so nice. They all say, 'Hi, Hi, Hi.' It's easy to become a nice person when you're treated like that."

"I think he gets out of the U.S. and he doesn't have to deal with the U.S. media around all the time," Arizona reliever Mike Fetters said. "And people here for the most part respect him."

Which is not to say that Bonds has suddenly turned into Robin Williams. Although he appeared at a crowded pre-series press conference and has answered a couple questions at postgame news conferences, he -- like Ichiro -- is traveling with his own p.r. person who handles all interview requests and generally has not made himself available for individual interviews. He also barreled past reporters after the three-strikeout game, forcing them to race down the hallways behind him begging for a comment.

(At least he avoided warning writers to back off "or I'll snap" in a concession to international relations.)

Bonds has had a sour relationship with the media throughout his career but the baseball writers honored him with his unprecedented fifth National League MVP (he should have won a sixth in 1991 but lost out to Atlanta's Terry Pendleton).

Coming off his record-setting 73-homer season, Bonds hit his 600th career home run, led the league in batting with a career-high .370 average, set major league records for on-base percentage (.582), walks (198) and intentional walks (68) while leading the Giants to just their third World Series since moving to San Francisco.

How good was Bonds this season? Consider it this way. New York's Alfonso Soriano is considered a leading MVP candidate in the American League but if you turned all Bonds' hits into strikeouts, his on-base percentage still would be higher than Soriano's.

"It's exciting to get a chance to bat behind the greatest player there has ever been," said New York first baseman Jason Giambi, one of several on the tour to bestow that distinction upon Bonds.

Well, the title of The Greatest Player Ever is open to debate but Bonds certainly has made a decent case for himself while earning the respect of his peers. And the respect of his counterparts in Japan as well. When he takes batting practice here, the opposing players come out to watch him.

More interesting is the way the fans respond to his home runs. The fans here have generally been very quiet, cheering only after a player does something on the field, not beforehand in anticipation as they do in the U.S. They ooh-and-ahh when Bonds hits his home runs but what really gets them roaring is when he does his patented double-point to the sky after he crosses home plate. It's as if they are responding more to that -- an image they've obviously seen on highlights far more often than the Rally Monkey -- than the actual home run.

"I believe they appreciate him more here and what he does," Fetters said. "I don't think it's that they don't like Barry in the U.S., it's that they're made about the fact that he's beating up on his team. But for them to take it out on Barry because he's good, a lot of it is just jealousy. Here, they're not jealous of Barry, they just want to see him do his thing."

So, the fans get to see him bat, the pitchers let him swing and everyone is happy, including Bonds.

"He's enjoying himself," Giambi said. "This is probably the last time he'll play in Japan so he's out here to enjoy himself and have a good time and make it the last hurrah."

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at cuffscaple@hotmail.com.