Dawn wasn't even a hint this morning when I found myself up with a bowl of Cocoa Krispies in hand (no reference to Boston's reserve center-fielder intended), watching the Red Sox take on the Oakland Athletics in the season opener at the Tokyo Dome.

Here are a few quick observations, plus a few other ponderous thoughts to tide us over until Sunday:

More than 55,000 fans filled the downtown domed arena, and they went deathly silent when their favorite son, Daisuke Matsuzaka, gave up a home run to the second A's batter, Mark Ellis. Dice-K was all over the place in the first inning and loaded the bases with just one out, but Mullet-san finally got out of trouble with a strikeout after surrendering another run on an infield out.

Second inning, and Dice-K was still way off the plate. Even when he was close, he couldn't get the calls. He got out of a based-loaded jam with a K to end the inning just down 2-0, but with his pitch count already up to 60 after two innings, my guess was that he'd out of there by the fourth inning no matter what.

Well, as it turned out, he made it through the fifth inning and left with the lead, getting his strikeout total up to six before exiting. Unfortunately, Kyle Snyder gave up a single and a homer in the sixth to put Matsuzaka in no-decision territory. What a surprise that, after hitting a three-run homer and a grand slam in his two exhibition games against Japanese teams, J.D. Drew had to be scratched from the starting lineup for the first game that counts because of a sore back.

Interesting it was, as I would learn later, that Brandon Moss hit the first homer of his career to tie things up in the ninth inning. Moss got the start in right field in place of the sore-backed Drew, learning that he would be the starter only a few minutes

before the announcement of the starting lineups.

I'll be very curious to hear what the Nielsen ratings will be for this game, especially those that track how long people stayed with it. After two innings, I decided I had had enough of these early hours and rolled over to go back to dreamland.

One thing I noticed before going back to sleep was that there's a new Dunkin' Donuts commercial with some bald guy singing about power-walking that, given how many times NESN will play it this season, will drive me crazy.

Another thing I noticed were a few little alterations in Major League Baseball's uniform rules for the Japanese market.

Both teams were wearing small ad patches - one decal on the helmet, one small patch on the side of the cap and a larger one on the right sleeve. A sign of things to come, maybe?

One of the things I still cherish about sports in this country, pro and college alike, is that there is still a lot of resistance to selling advertising space on the players' uniforms as a means of creating new revenue streams. You look at pro basketball teams in Europe, or the former NFL Europa teams, and their uniforms looked like NASCAR racing jumpsuits with all the advertising logo patches plastered all over them.

Heaven knows the Red Sox have tried to plaster ads on every available inch of Fenway Park under the new ownership, and I'm just waiting for someone to suggest that the public won't respond negatively to ad patches on the uniforms, too.

As I said, I rolled over and nodded out after the second inning. But at least I had the presence of mind to set the alarm for 9:30, hoping to catch at least some of the post-game report. So the alarm goes off, I turn on the TV again, and there's Manny Ramirez standing at home plate, watching a majestic drive soaring, soaring, soaring ... and bouncing off the right-centerfield fence. Oops,

No problem, though - Manny got to second base, having driven in Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz to give the Sox a 6-4 lead entering the bottom of the 10th. Jonathan Papelbon took the hill and all appeared potentially well with the world some 7,000 miles away.

Well, Papelbon eventually got the job done, but he made it more difficult than it needed to be with a few hits and a run along the way. Final score: Sox 6, A's 5 - and the defense of the World's Championship got off on the right foot.

So much for my experience with baseball from the Land of the Rising Sun, with the sun rising outside my window instead. As this was written, I wasn't sure I was going to repeat the early-rising process this morning.

Understandably, there has been a lot of excitement over this trip. But personally, I'm a little more interested in one of the three exhibition games in Los Angeles that will follow the Tokyo series against the Athletics.

The middle game of the three-game series against the Dodgers, on Saturday night, will be played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers' move from Brooklyn.

Not to steal Steve Buckley's thunder as the region's resident baseball historian, but the Dodgers played for four years at the Coliseum while Dodger Stadium was being built, starting with the 1958 season. To compensate for the stadium's oval shape as a football and track stadium, a 42-foot mesh curtain had to be erected in left field so that normal fly balls wouldn't turn into home runs after traveling just 251 feet from home plate.

In the years following the Dodgers' move to Chavez Ravine, the Coliseum's interior dimensions became even tighter, partially because of the needs of the Raiders for more premium field-level seating when the team played there from 1982-94. So, to make this exhibition game work, the Dodgers will foot the bill for an even larger curtain to shield the left-field power alley, reportedly 62 feet. Right-handed pull hitters will have to hit fly balls into the stratosphere to clear it, despite a distance of merely 200 feet down the line.

Amazingly, more than 90,000 tickets for the event sold out in just an hour after they were put on sale. So, Dodgers' owner Frank McCourt (who has Boston roots) put standing-room tickets on sale, and it's expected the total attendance will exceed 100,000. This exhibition game has the potential of having the highest single-game attendance of any game in Major League Baseball history, although it won't count in the standings.

I've been to the LA Coliseum once in my life, for the 1985-season AFC Divisional Round playoff game between the Patriots and the Raiders, the second playoff game in the Patriots' three-game run to Super Bowl XX. The game was made even more memorable when Raiders' linebacker Matt Millen clobbered Patriots' general manager Patrick Sullivan, the son of owner Billy Sullivan, with a swing of his helmet after Sullivan spent the entire game on the sidelines heckling both Millen and Howie Long.

The place reeks of history - the Olympics, the Rams and Raiders, the Dodgers, USC and any number of Hollywood sports movies and TV shows that needed a stadium backdrop. It's a shame the NFL doesn't have a team playing there right now.

In any event, the game against the Dodgers should be fun to watch - if for no other reason than to see how Manny Ramirez plays balls off a 62-foot chain-link fence.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com