Baseball Batting Ranges

Can anyone give me a quick guide to using these?

I really fancy having a swing in one of these when I�fm in Japan in March but I�fve never wielded a baseball bat in my life.

With my limited Japanese skills I�fd appreciate having a rough knowledge of how the whole thing works before getting there. Like do they hire out bats? How do you start the pitching and can you pause the delivery of the balls?

thanks

you just go to a batting center (they usually have them in large game centers in the big cities, in tokyo there's one in ikebukuro on the roof of the game center beside the huge ikebukuro humax center, also close to tokyu hands)

anyway, you just put money into a kiosk for the batting center, select how many games you want to play and then wait until one of the cages is empty. once a cage is empty you walk into it, pick up the bat, insert your ticket into the machine behind the "home plate" and then swing away. you can control the speed and the height of the pitches but you cannot pause them.

most batting centers have a maximum speed of 140kph but some go up to 160kph which is pretty fast. most batting centers give you 20 pitches per ticket, which is around 400yen, or 60 pitches for 1000yen.

have fun.

Sounds pretty straight forward then. If only hitting the ball is too!