Finding your roots is not just the name of PBS television program.

Tracing a family’s ancestry has become the norm or many families nationwide.

Some go to great lengths to determine where their family roots began and how it led to their current location.

Lexington baseball coach Brian Hucks, recently took part in such an ancestral journey with his wife Stephanie.

Seeking to learn all about her family heritage, the Hucks family flew all the way to Japan last summer.

During the week-long trip to visit the Sugizaki family, Hucks not only got to learn about Stephanie’s culture, but also watch another version of the game he loves being played before enthusiastic, sold-out stadium crowds.

The experience proved as eye-opening to him as it did for his wife and kids.

Here is the 1st of a 2-part look back on the Hucks’ family experience.

Q. What prompted your wife to seek out her family heritage?

HUCKS - My wife’s grandmother is from Japan and she’s lived here most of her life and she still has a brother that lives in Japan.

Since her grandmother is 91 years old, last Christmas... she asked Stephanie if she would take her back to Japan so she could visit her brother. So that’s what kind of prompted ‘let’s go visit and see all that.’

So we turned that into a family trip. It was Stephanie’s grandmother and her mother, me and my wife and our 2 kids. So we went on a really cool trip.

Q. What did you find out about her heritage?

HUCKS - We knew about all the brothers and sisters and all that. So it was cool for us to be able to go over there and actually put faces with names and to be able to visit.

It was a very cool cultural experience for not only the adults, but especially for my 2 kids Jackson and Caroline, to be able to see what life is like in a different place.

But I think the coolest thing was...we did downtown Tokyo...we had a dinner at one of her relative’s houses, and we took some pictures which had all the family members down, the aunts and uncles and cousins. It was really cool for me to see my 2 kids interact with all the other kids that were over there.

Most of them did not speak English and Jackson and Caroline didn’t speak Japanese. But that really wasn’t a barrier.

They were able to communicate through different ways and just kind of figure things out. They played soccer in the yard together, so that was a really cool thing.

Q. What did your kids learn about their heritage?

HUCKS - They were able to see that even though we live in different worlds and we have different cultures customs, that kids are kids.

They like to play and they like to have a good time. I think there’s a lot that we can all learn from people that grow up in different backgrounds and different races, religions and all that.

At the end of the day, we’re all the same and it’s just about how we relate to each other and talk to each other. So that was the biggest thing I took away.

Q. What was the 1 thing which was most similar culturally to American traditions?

HUCKS - There wasn’t much. Over there is very fast paced. We were in the middle of downtown Tokyo where there’s so many people.

The 1 thing I thought was interesting was that everybody was all dressed in very neutral colors. So everybody was in grays or black and whites. There were so few loud colors.

I saw very few people wearing shorts and this was in the summer. So we’re in shorts and T-shirts and we’re in different colors, so we really stuck out like a sore thumb because everything else was just busy and just moving.

Some take-ways were that it’s a very clean city. There are no trash cans anywhere. There’s no trash on the ground. If you eat something, you just have to hold onto your stuff until you get where ever you’re going.

There were these smoking areas in the city and that’s the only place where you’re allowed to smoke. Smoking, vaping or whatever it is, you pull up on these mass transit buses and you get out and there’s like a 100 people sitting in this small area because that’s the only place that they’re allowed to do that. Everywhere else, it’s none of it.

The transit system is pretty interesting because there’s very few people driving. Everybody gets around either walking, on a bike or on these trains to get where they need to go. On the trains you’ve really got to be very careful about where you’re going and knowing how to get to the next train.

All of their malls are built around those train stops and so, you get off and it’s like an underground mall with restaurants and all kinds of stuff. It’s very different from what we see. We’re not driving to Harbison (Boulevard) and then going to the mall. It’s you get on the train and you end up somewhere.

Q. A sport people in Japan can relate to in America is baseball. How would you rate baseball over there?

HUCKS - That’s their major sport. We were able to go to a game which was a very neat experience. Baseball over here as far as how it’s done, as far as the atmosphere around it, is completely different than how it is in Japan.

There were just as many visiting fans as they were home fans and they were all dressed out in their team colors. A matter of fact, the place we went the opposing team was selling their apparel at the stadium. That I thought was very odd.

From centerfield to left-field was all of their fans and then from centerfield to rightfield and all around 1st base were all the home team fans. There was a distinct red line and a distinct blue line that went all the way around.

There’s chants, there’s drums and it’s a crazy atmosphere all the way through.

But the thing that’s similar is baseball is baseball. It was 3 outs. It was 3 strikes. It was 4 balls and it was a high level baseball.

Just from a baseball guy, I thought it was interesting that over here, once a pitcher throws his inning, he’s going to sit down and then he’s going to rest until it’s time for him to go back out. He’s going to throw his warm up pitches and begin the inning.

Over there, the pitcher comes off the mound, he may get a cup of water or whatever, but then he’s up throwing in front of the dugout during the entire inning while his team is hitting. Then he goes back out there. I thought that was pretty unique.