Can these people be Japanese?

"Until then, most victory celebrations in Japan were relatively sedate affairs in which the participants would douse each other with beer for a while and then go home. The young lions [Seibu Lions] had a style all their own, however. They swilled beer and spit it out, à la Sid Vicious, all over each other as well as the raincoat-clad members of the press covering the scene. Kudo kissed the third baseman and team captain, Hiromichi Ishige, flush on the lips, and cried "I rabu you" (I love you) in accented English. "I needo you" replied Ishige and kissed Kudo back, as teammates emptied bottles of beer into their trousers.

Kiyohara, who had donned a rubber Ronald Reagan mask, and Akiyama picked up the second baseman and dumped him headfirst into a large wooden barrel filled with sake. Then they picked up a second barrel of sake and poured its contents over a TV cameraman. Next, Kiyohara pushed Akiyama's face into a chocolate cake. The anchorwoman for one of the evening news shows was clearly shocked. She looked up from her script, mouth agape, and gasped, "can these people really be Japanese?"

Robert Whiting, You gotta have wa.