Masahiro Tanaka finally made his ichi-gun debut yesterday against Orix. He went five innings, giving up six hits, two walks and four runs while striking out one. He took the loss in the Buffaloes' 5-1 victory. The Eagles still have seven games left to play this season so it's possible he'll get another start - especially since it's likely the Eagles will be eliminated from the postseason in the next few days. I'm hoping he'll be healthy next season and get those last three wins he needs to reach 200 for his career between MLB and NPB. Here's his "Japonism" insert card (#J04) from the 2021 BBM 1st Version set:
I was a little surprised to discover that it's been over two months since my last roundup of recently announced sets. To be fair, there hadn't really been much in the way of new set annoucements until the last couple weeks or so. This post is going to cover six sets, five of which will be released in November with the other one being out in October.
- The October release (on the 26th to be exact) is for the Epoch NPB Luxury Collection. This is the third year that Epoch has issued this set and this year's edition appears to be following the pattern of last year's set rather than the 2022 edition which was essentially a Chrome-ish parallel version of a quarter of that year's NPB set. This year's set features 108 cards (18 more than last years set) but I don't know if they will be evenly split up between the 12 teams (last year's set was unusual in that it wasn't). It appears from the sample images on the web page that the set will use the same design as this year's NPB set but the photos will be different. The 108 cards are split between 72 rookies (which I think is the entire 2023 draft class), 33 current players and 3 OB players. Each card has six parallels (including ones that are /10, /5 and 1-of-1). There's also a number of insert cards and a bunch of autographed cards. The autographed cards include at least five OB players (Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Kenji Johjima, Hiroki Kuroda and Kazuhiro Sasaki so there's obviously autographs for players who don't appear in the base set. I don't know if that's the case for active players as well.
- Epoch is releasing their annual Pacific League Premier Edition set on November 9th. This is one of their ultra high-end sets - boxes for the set will retail for 16,000 yen (about $112) and contain six cards. I'm not positive but I assume at least two of those six cards are guaranteed to be "special cards" which may include autographed and/or memorabilia cards. The base set has 54 cards - nine cards for each of the six Pacific League teams. Again there are a number of insert cards and autographed, memorabilia and autographed memorabilia cards available.
- The latest of Epoch's ultra high-end active/OB player "Stars & Legends" team sets will be for the Marines and has the somewhat unwieldy title of "Chiba Lotte Marines Stars & Legends with Memorabilia". Boxes of this product retail for 20,000 yen (about $140) and I think contain just four cards - although two of them are likely "special insert cards". The base set has 55 cards - 31 active and 24 OB players - and there's a serially numbered parallel version of each base set card. There's Epoch's usual collection of insert cards, five different types of autographed cards and seven different types of memorabilia cards. All the memorabilia cards appear to be fragments of bats. The set will be released on November 23th.
- BBM's annual Rookie Edition Premium box set will be out on November 2nd. As is standard, each box will contain 38 cards - the 36 card base set plus two "premium insert cards". The 36 cards in the base set are split evenly among the 12 teams and feature the top three "rookies" for each team - with "rookie" in this case meaning "2023 draftee". The "premium insert cards" are autographed and memorabilia cards which explains why unopened boxes retail for 15,000 yen (around $105). Or you can buy just the base set in an opened box for less than 1000 yen.
-The Hawks clinched their first Pacific League pennant since 2020 this past week and BBM is commemorating the event with a special box set called "Hawks - Fly Again". This is the first time that BBM has issued a box set commemorating a pennant winner since 2018 although it used to be pretty standard for them. Each box will contain the 45 card base set plus one "premium insert card" which could be an autographed card as well as a "foil sign" card. The base set has 27 "regular" player cards, nine cards with highlights from the season (I'll be curious if their 21-0 shellacking of the Eagles that I witnessed will make this subset) and nine "update" cards (my term, not BBM's). The "update" cards are listed as "registered players under control after March" which I think are development players (ikusei) who the Hawks brought onto their 70 man roster in March or later. According to the roster, though, there's only eight of them which may mean that the ninth player is Jeter Downs, who signed with the team at the end of July (and made his ichi-gun debut this past week). The "update" cards will use the format of the 2024 BBM Hawks set. The box set retails for 4400 yen ($31) will be released in mid-November.
- The annual set that's recently become the final BBM baseball set each year - Fusion - will be released at the end of November. As always, this is a multi-headed Frankenstein of a set with five distinct parts of its base set. There's a 20 card "1st Version Update" subset which will feature players who did not appear in either the 1st Version set or the similarly named subset in the 2nd Version set - the website says this will include Haruto Takahashi and Ayumu Ishikawa but I'm guessing it'll also have Dallas Keuchel. There's a single card "Rookie Edition Update" which I'm guessing will be for Shosei Takahashi, the Swallows first pick in last year's ikusei draft who didn't graduate high school until June and, as such, did not appear in this year's Rookie Edition set. There's the standard 99 card "Hall Of Records" subset which basically functions as a season review although it contains cards for both active and OB players - the active players are included for doing something this season and the OB players are included for doing something related to what the active players did. If this sounds confusing, it's because it kind of is. There's a 24 card "Title Holders" subset with the league leaders in a bunch of different categories. There's also a short-printed "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset that BBM has not announced the size of yet which means I can't tell you how many cards the base set has in it. All I can say is it's at least 144. There's also the usual insert sets - the 24 "Great Records" cards which highlight milestones reached by players, the 12 "Legendary Player" cards which feature one OB player from each team and the serially numbered premium inserts of "Treasure" (12 cards) and "Esperanza" (24 cards). There are also autographed cards available for both the active and OB players.
Please check my "Card Shops in Japan" page before planning a trip to this store to verify that it's still where it was when I visited.
One of the shops that I was eager to revisit on this latest trip to Japan was Mint Odawara (I think the "official" name of the store is "Mint JAC Odawara"). To repeat what I said in my post about my first visit here on my 2019 trip, Odawara is a city in Kanto located southwest of Tokyo, nestled between the Hakone Mountains on the one side and Sagami Bay on the other and is one of the major gateways for heading to Mount Fuji. It takes about a half hour to get there from Tokyo Station on the Shinkansen but more like an hour and a half to two hours by conventional trains.
This is yet another Mint store that moved in the past five years. It used to be in the EPO shopping mall a couple of blocks from the train station but it's now in the Odawara Station Square (Ekimae) Building which, as the name implies, is located almost right next to the station. I took this photo of the building from the walkway outside the station:
The store is located on the second floor of the building. To get to it, you need to go into the building next to the Matsumoto Kiyoshi drug store on the left side of the ground floor. If you look closely at the above photo, the entrance is just to the left of the man walking on the sidewalk just above the blue car. Towards the back of the store is an escalator (or at least I THINK it's an escalator - it might be stairs) as well as an elevator. The store is pretty obvious when you reach the second floor - at least when I was there, there weren't any other shops around.
Here are photos of both the outside and inside of the store:
This is a pretty good store for set building. The shelves on the left side of the above photo have a lot of boxes of singles and I spend a half hour or so going through them, looking for cards from my want list. I didn't find many but that had more to do with what was left on my want list after cleaning up at Quad Sports, Coletre, BITS and Mint Hakata than what was in stock here. There were a lot of singles from BBM sets - flagship, Rookie Edition, Historic Collection and Diamond Heroes/Touch The Game/Genesis although not much from the team sets - and Calbee. I was surprised to see a box of singles from Upper Deck's NPB issues from 2000 and 2001. Ryan's comment about this store from 2019 was that "they have a slightly different selection of cards from other shops, so I've found things as I've shown up. They won't have much newer product, as far as I can tell, and it seems that gaming cards and US products are their biggest sellers now." I can't speak to the gaming cards and US products but I think that's still a pretty apt description of their inventory.
The store's owner was pretty friendly and spoke some English - as always, his English was better than my Japanese. He asked me some questions about what I was doing in Japan and we compared ages - if I remember correctly, he's 75. I think his son helps him with the store - I was asking him about the Calbee Hawks cards and I think he was trying to tell me that his son would be along soon and spoke better English. Unfortunately I couldn't wait around as I was heading to Shizuoka for a baseball game that afternoon.
To summarize, I think this is a good little store but I'm not sure it's worth going out of your way for it. But if you have a few minutes to spare while traveling from Tokyo to or from points west, it's an easy side trip.
I only had two things on my agenda for Wednesday, May 22nd - traveling back to Tokyo and going to a Yomiuri Giants game. The train I had a reserved seat on left Fukuoka at 9:23 but that was not the train I had originally wanted. The one I really wanted left an hour earlier but was sold out when I had tried to get a reservation the previous week. However, I decided to once again try my new trick of grabbing an unreserved seat on the earlier train so I headed over to Hakata Station a little after 8 AM. There were some other folks hoping to do the same thing so there were short lines by where each door on the unreserved cars would be when the train arrived. Luckily there were plenty of available seats so we were all able to get on.
The trains from Fukuoka don’t go all the way to Tokyo - at least not the trains you can use the JR Pass for. They only take you as far as the Shin-Osaka station and then you need to switch to a Tokyo-bound train there. We arrived at Shin-Osaka around 11 AM and the train I hoped to be on for Tokyo was leaving about 20 minutes later. Of course, since I was originally scheduled to arrive in Osaka at noon, I didn’t have a reserved seat for this train which forced me to again go the unreserved route. This time there were hardly any other passengers with the same intent so there ended up only being maybe four other people in the car with me. I kind of expected that we’d pick up more folks in Kyoto but the car remained relatively empty all the way to Tokyo.
We got into Tokyo around 1415, roughly three hours after leaving Osaka and just under six after leaving Fukuoka. I had positioned myself on the train again to see Mount Fuji but the weather was hazy enough that it wasn’t visible (or I wasn’t paying attention when it was).
The hotel I would be staying at the last few days of my trip was the Toyoko Inn Kayabacho Eki. As you can probably guess from the name, it’s located near the Kayabacho subway stop which was just two stops away from Tokyo Station on the Tozai line. It sounds convenient but it’s a little less than you’d think as the Tokyo Station stop in the Tozai line is a bit of a hike from the main part of the station. On the way to the subway, I grabbed a bowl of katsu-don as a late lunch at a small restaurant in the bowels of Tokyo Station.
I made it to my hotel shortly afterwards and got checked in. I had a little bit of time to relax before heading to Tokyo Dome for the Giants game. I had been to the Dome before - I had seen the 2013 World Baseball Classic Pool 2 games there on my first trip to Japan - but I’d never seen the Giants play there. Their opponent that evening was the Chunichi Dragons.
There are several subway stops right by Tokyo Dome but I was a little surprised that Google Maps didn’t route me to any of them. Instead, it sent me to Iidabashi station in the Tozai line which was a few blocks away. There were two advantages to this - the first being I wouldn’t have to switch trains coming or going and the second being that it’d be a little less crowded. The walk from the subway stop took me along the Kanda river and I soon joined into the press of folks getting off at the Suidobashi Station on the Chuo line.
The plaza outside the Dome had a big Giants souvenir store set up and I went through it looking to see if they had any baseball cards. I came up empty. There was a smaller stand for the Dragons which I also went through although I didn’t expect to find any cards there (and I didn’t).
My tickets for the game were in the upper deck and I had to climb the stairs outside the park to get to my gate. There’s two staircases on either side of the home plate entrance to the Dome and they’re named for Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh. The two sides reflect the positions the two played with Nagashima being the third base side and Oh being the first base side. There’s a relief of each player next to the staircase and a picture of them printed on the staircase itself. The gate I needed to go to was on the first base side so I needed to go up the Oh stairs.
Once inside the Dome, I did my usual check to see if the player bento boxes had baseball cards - they did not. I picked up a “power steak bowl” meal that came with a Hayato Sakamoto sticker. It was pretty tasty.
I had sat in Tokyo Dome’s upper deck for the Cuba-Netherlands game in the 2013 WBC and thought the view was pretty good so I had opted to sit up there again. The view was still good but as it was a little more crowded for this game, I felt pretty cramped. Not as bad as at Jingu but it was still a little uncomfortable.
I’m still amused by the Shigeo Nagashima ad just above his retired number. It used to be a physical ad but now it’s on the new enormous video board so it’s not there all the time. That photo is probably from the 1990s though.
The pitching matchup for tonight's game was Shinnosuke Ogasawara for the Dragons and Kenshin Hotta for the Giants. I had seen Ogasawara pitch a week earlier in Nagoya where he had thrown eight scoreless innings against the Tigers, only to come away with a no decision in a game Chunichi ultimately lost in extra innings as the Dragons had been unable to score any runs for him. Incredibly the Dragons had gone almost 40 straight innings without scoring any runs for him.
This game didn't start out looking like it was going to be any better for him. Yoshihiro Maru led off the bottom of the first with a home run and, just like that, the Dragons were down 1-0. The Giants tacked on a second run in the bottom of the third in a rally that saw Hayato Sakamoto become just the second player in NPB history to reach 450 doubles. The other player was watching from the Dragons dugout - Chunichi manager Kazuyoshi Tatsunami.
The tide turned in the game in the top of the sixth inning when the Dragons exploded for three runs with the big hit of the rally being a two run double from Orlando Calixte which knockeed Hotta out of the game. The Dragons added another run in the top of the seventh to make the score 4-2. A trio of Dragons relievers kept it that way with Raidel Martinez ending the game by striking out pinch hitter Louis Okoye and notching his 13th save. Here are the game highlights:
I was pretty happy with the outcome of the game for two reasons. The first is that the Dragons are my favorite team and this was the first time in four tries that I had seen them win. The second was that it kept my streak of never seeing the Giants win intact. I've seen Yomiuri four times now (once in 2019 and three times on this trip) and they've lost every game.
I headed out with the rest of the announced crowd of 41,080. I had forgotten one of the annoying things about the Dome - since the roof is held up by air pressure, you have to enter and leave the ballpark via revolving doors so that there’s no drop in air pressure. Coming in isn’t so bad but when everyone is trying to leave at once, it creates a bit of a traffic jam since really only one or two people can go through at a time. Just to say I’d done both sides, I went out through the Nagashima gate:
As I had hoped, catching the train at Iidabashi was much less crowded than it would have been at any of the other stations and I was back at my hotel not long after the game ended. I'd be back on the Shinkansen the following day but for nowhere near as long of a trip.
I've been recovering today from a busy week or so - I was in New Mexico for work from last Sunday until very late Thursday night (or really very early Friday morning) and then spent the weekend at a music festival up near Philadelphia. I've spent most of today dealing with my database server that died last week while I was away - trying to migrate from the raw files of an old postgresql instance is proving more difficult than I would have suspected.
In the midst of all this, I received my latest package from COMC and I thought I'd do a quick post to show off the cards in chronological order. First up is a card from the 1974/75 Calbee set showing Shigeo Nagashima alongside Tadashi Sugiura when the two of them were teammates at Rikkio University in the 1950's:
1974/75 Calbee #499
It's always kind of amused me that the two ex-teammates and future Hall Of Famers were their respective league Rookies Of The Year in 1958.
Next up is an "MVP" insert card from the 1994 BBM All Star box set. There were six of these cards in all and two of them were included in every box set. The cards depicted the MVPs of the All Star games from 1991 to 1993 (the first three years BBM did All Star box sets). I had gotten two of these with the set I bought years ago (although I honestly couldn't tell you off hand which two) and I've been kind of low-key picking up the other four as opportunities have presented themselves. This Tom O'Malley card goes with the Atsuya Furata, Hiroo Ishii, Norihiro Komada and Kazuhiro Kiyohara cards I already have, leaving just the Katsumi Hirosawa card left for me to find.
1994 BBM All Stars #E6
I really like the back of the card as well:
Next up is a bit of a departure for me as it's not really a baseball card - it's a pro wrestling card! Of course, it commemorates a pro wrestler's brief baseball career. Shohei Baba - aka "Giant Baba" was a pro wrestler in the 1960's but he spent 1955-59 in the Yomiuri Giants organization. He spent most of his time on the farm team, only getting in three games with the top team in 1957, going 0-1 with a 1.29 ERA in seven innings, striking out three while only giving up five hits and one run along with no walks. His one loss was Shigeru Sugishita's 200th career win. After being let go by the Giants, he was picked up by the Taiyo Whales but he suffered an arm injury when he stumbled in the shower and shattered a glass door. He needed 17 stitches and had issues with numbness in his fingers which ultimately resulted in his retirement from baseball.
Giant Baba passed away at age 61 in 1999 from colon cancer. The 2000 BBM All Japan Pro-Wrestling set has a relatively large subset of its base set dedicated to him - it looks to me that 34 of the 99 cards in the set are a retrospective on his career. The only card of this group that I had an interest in was the "Baseball Days" card:
2000 BBM All Japan Pro-Wrestling #64
The back of the card shows him pitching:
The last card I picked up was this jersey card for Tsuyoshi Wada from the 2011 BBM 1st Version set:
BBM celebrated Hideki Matsui's departure for MLB after the 2002 season by publishing a 55 card boxed set called "The Legend Of Hideki Matsui". There's a card in the set (#31) showing Matsui in action during the 1996 MLB All Star series and both sides of the card show an MLB player along with him. Here's both sides of the card:
The player on the back of the card is obviously Alex Rodriguez, then still a Seattle Mariner but I wasn't sure who the player on the front was. But a few months back I picked up "Nichibei Yakyu: US Tours of Japan, Volume II: 1960-2019" which covered the 1996 tour and included a roster for the MLB team. It should have been obvious but that's Ivan Rodriguez of the Rangers. The only other catchers on the team were Mike Piazza of the Dodgers and Tom Pagnozzi of the Cardinals and I'm pretty confident it's not either of them. It's kind of funny that not only do the two MLB players share the same surname but they would both be future teammates of Matsui with the Yankees - although he and Pudge would only share a dugout for 33 games in 2008. The card itself doesn't mention either Rodriguez - instead it talks about Cal Ripken, Barry Bonds and Piazza.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately - I've been away from home for most of the past week.
About a week and a half ago, I saw someone selling a Bobby Valentine autographed card from the 2011 BBM Marines 20th Anniversary set for only $10. I jumped on it and received the card in the mail this past week. As soon as I took it out of the package, I noticed two things odd about it - one of which I should have noticed from the listing. Let me show you the front and back of the card and see if you can spot what's missing:
Two trademarks of BBM's authentic autographed cards is that they are serially numbered and they have a "BBM" logo embossed into the card. It's hard to tell from the scans but the card does not have the embossing on it. It's a little easier to tell that the card is not serially numbered - it should be /100 - and that's what I should have noticed before I bought the card.
This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. What's the story on this? I can't imagine that it's fake as that's a lot of effort to fake something for only $10. One thought I had was that it was some sort of promo but BBM is almost always really good about clearly labeling their promos as "Promo" or "Sample" so it seemed unlikely.
I did a search on "2011 BBM Bobby Valentine" and was kind of surprised when an answer presented itself to me rather quickly. To confirm it, I reached out to the seller and asked where they had gotten the card from (after reassuring them that I was not upset about it or accusing them of selling me a fraudulent item). They responded with what I had suspected - they bought the card from JapanBall!
JapanBall is still selling autographed Bobby Valentine cards but they're sold out of this particular one (although it still appears on the web page). I did find an archived web page for cards like this though. JapanBall claims (and I have no reason to doubt them) that "the card came from Bobby’s personal collection". My best guess at what happened is that BBM gave Valentine a handful of unsigned cards or perhaps signed cards that were extra and that he sold them to (or through) JapanBall. He also signed some other cards from both BBM and Topps and sold them the same way.
I reached out to JapanBall to ask them about it but I haven't gotten a response. They're running their tour of Japan right now so it's probably not a surprise that I haven't heard back from them. I'll update this post if they get back to me. But at least I think I know why the card is unusual and that it most likely is authentic.
I was looking around on Ebay the other day and I came across a listing for what looked like a reprint of an old Calbee card, specifically a Sadaharu Oh card, #1005 from the 1975/76/77 "monster" set:
The front and the back of the card indicated it was a 2024 release but I didn't know what it was. The wrapper implied that was some sort of tie-in with the Giants and the writing on the packs translated to "Old Summer Series" and "Calbee Professional Baseball Chips Special Reprint Card".
My first thought was that Calbee was doing some sort of Giants OB team set along the lines of the Hawks set they had done last winter (although the Hawks set had active, not OB players in it). But there was no listing for this set on Calbee's website. My next thought was that maybe this was something the Giants were selling in the team shop but I couldn't find anything in their on-line store. I reached out to Sean, who I consider the most knowledgable blogger about all things Calbee, but he didn't know anything about them either.
Finally it occurred to me that I should look to see if these were involved with some sort of giveaway at Tokyo Dome and, after going through the Giants' News section on their web page, I found the answer - this was one of 12 cards that were given away during a three game series against the Carp from August 6th to the 8th. The series was dubbed the "Old Summer Series" and the intent was to highlight players who had played for the Giants at Korakuen Stadium, the team's home until Tokyo Dome opened in 1988. The other cards in the set were for Shigeo Nagashima, Suguru Egawa, Takashi Nishimoto, Masumi Kuwata, Tadashi Matsumoto, Kazumasa Kohno, Tatsunori Hara, Kiyoshi Nakahata, Kazunori Shinozuka, Sadaaki Yoshimura and Warren Cromartie.
I had remembered having seen some reprints of Calbee Giants cards on Ebay before but I had always kind of assumed that they were some how tied into the 50th Anniversary reprinted cards from 2022. What I discovered when I did a search for "オールドサマーシリーズ" ("Old Summer Series") on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and Mercari is that apparently the Giants and Calbee have been doing this at least since 2022. I'm not entirely sure but there were at least three cards in 2022 and four in 2023. There also appear to be facsimile signature parallels that are fairly rare.
While working my way through the list of new articles about the Giants, I came across another game where cards were given away to attendees. The Wednesday, August 21st game - again against the Carp - was "Professional Baseball Game Dream Order DAY". Fan were given one of twelve different Dream Order collectible card game cards:
The cards were a tie-in with the team celebrating their 90th season and apparently represent the winners of a "Best 9" lineup voted on by the fans (I think). The twelve players are Masaki Saitoh (starting pitcher), Tetsuya Yamaguchi (middle relief), Koji Uehara (closer), Shinnosuke Abe (catcher), Sadaharu Oh (1st base), Kazunori Shinozuka (2nd base), Shigeo Nagashima (3rd base), Hayato Sakamoto (shortstop), Hideki Matsui (outfield), Yoshinobu Takahashi (outfield), Warren Cromartie (outfield) and Tatsunori Hara (manager). (NOTE - you get 12 players for a "Best 9" by adding a middle reliever, a closer and a manager.
I'd be curious to find out how many SGA Dream Order cards there were this year. What I know of is this. the Marines giving away a card of Kazuya Fukuura in July (H/T Deanna) and the Eagles giving away cards of Takahiro Norimoto and Hideto Asamura in May. I should probably do some spelunking through YJA and see what's there but I haven't had a chance to.
Mint Fukuoka used to be located in the Tenjin Vivre shopping mall and was pretty much a run-of-the-mill Mint store in a mall. From what I saw when I visited it in 2019, the store had singles for recent sets along with hits and unopened product. It also had a lot of gaming cards and (I think) some amount of random older cards - if nothing else, they had rookie cards for a lot of Hawks players along with other stars.
The store moved out a few years ago - I'd guess the mall getting torn down played a role in that decision. They're now located in a kind of out-of-the-way location and have apparently ceded the style of store that they used to be to Mint Fukuoka Parco (which is basically a block away from where Tenjin Vivre used to be). They're now pretty much a hits only store which, like Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi, really isn't my cup of tea.
As I mentioned, the shop is in kind of an out-of-the-way location. They're on the sixth floor of the Stage 1 building down Daimyo Central Street about three blocks from the Chuo Ward Office on Meiji dori. The nearest subway stop is Akasaka station. Here's a couple photos of the building and the entrance to the shop:
The one somewhat unique thing about this shop is they have a bar inside so you can get a beer to drink while you break open a box of cards. Mint Shibuya in Tokyo used to have this at their old location but I don't think they do at their new one (which I didn't get to on this past trip).
Like I said with Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi, I may have missed something here as I didn't spend a great deal of time in the shop. And what they have may appeal to other collectors - it just didn't do much for me. The one thing I will say is that at least Mint Daimaru Shinsaibashi is easy to get to. Pretty much the only positive about this store's location is it's not far from a Mandarake store that has some old Calbees.
I'm going to apologize up front for how long this post is. I did a lot in my two days in Fukuoka and I don't want to split it into two posts. I don't think any of the remaining posts for my trip will be as long as this. I was hoping to wrap them up soon as it's already four months since the trip but things take time.
The weather was beautiful in Fukuoka on the morning of Monday, May 20th which was good news for me as I was going to be walking around a lot that day and I didn't really want a repeat of the rainy Monday I'd had the previous week in Tokyo. My first stop of the day was the Mint Fukuoka Parco card shop which - as the name implies - is located in the Fukuoka Parco shopping mall in Tenjin. I got there right as the mall opened and took a quick look at the store (which I've written up in a separate post) before heading off to my second stop - Fukuoka Tower.
Fukuoka Tower is located near the shoreline of Hakata Bay. It's about a mile walk from the nearest subway stop (Nishijin Station) but it's a relatively flat mile. I think there might be a bus you can take from the subway stop as well but I didn't look into it. Admission was 800 yen. You take an elevator up that has transparent sides and roof so you can see that most of the tower is actually empty space:
Once at the top, you can see out in all directions. I mentioned that it was beautiful day so the view was pretty spectacular (as opposed to how Nagoya was the previous week). Here's some views of the bay to the north:
The beach is Momochi Seaside Park and the building sticking out into the water is called Marizon.
This shot is looking towards the mouth of Hakata Bay. That's Nokonoshima Island on the left with Genkai Island behind it. On the right is Shika Island. Beyond the islands is the Tsushima Strait, part of the Korea strait that separates Japan from South Korea.
Shika Island with the tip of the Itoshima Peninsula on the right. The island is actually connected to the peninsula via a causeway that's almost visible in this photo.
The Itoshima Peninsula defines the northern side of Hakata Bay. That large white building in the middle of the photo is Marine World, an aquarium with dolphin and sea lion shows. There's a jet boat ferry that runs between there and Marizon.
Here's the view to the east of the tower:
Fukuoka Dome is hiding behind the Hilton Fukuoka Sea Hawk hotel. You can see a cruise ship parked at the city's cruise ship dock in the background - the ferry to Busan, South Korea, leaves Fukuoka from right next to that dock.
You can see where the Muromi River dumps into Hakata Bay when you look to the west:
And, finally, here's the view to the south:
I only spent about a half an hour up at the top of the tower - and that included getting a latte at the cafe below the observation deck. I had a ticket for a tour of Fukuoka Dome for early afternoon so it was time to head to the ballpark.
It's less than a mile from the tower to the dome and the most pleasant way to do it is the walkway by the beach:
Of course, walking at the beach means you have to climb up a bunch of stairs to get back up to the level the ballpark is at:
There's a small Buddhist temple - Taka Kanzeon Dai Bosatsu - at the top of the stairs. I'm not sure of the details but I think it is associated with the Hawks:
For my tour, I needed to get over to the BOSS E-ZO FUKUOKA building which was, of course, on the complete opposite side of the Dome from where I climbed the stairs. As I walked around the ballpark, I saw a bunch of these displays that had hands sticking out of them. Some closer inspection revealed that the hands were actually molded from different celebrities that I assume had performed at the Dome at one time or another. As you'd expect, most of them were Japanese but there were a number of Westerners including Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Natalie Cole and the members of Bon Jovi:
The way they're set up, you can act like you're shaking hands with them. My favorite one was, of course, Sadaharu Oh:
I made it over to the BOSS E-ZO FUKUOKA building and got checked in for my tour with about a half hour to spare. I grabbed a quick bite to eat at the MLB Cafe in the building which probably wasn't my first choice but it worked out OK. I think I was the only customer in the place at the time.
The Hawks have changed the Dome tours they offer in the last few months but when I was there, they offered a "Discovery Course" (which is now called the "Dome-Enjoying Course") that would take you onto the field and into the dugout as well as possibly into the locker room and bullpen; and an "Adventure Course" that took you onto the roof of the Dome. I had planned on doing both tours until I read the fine print that mentioned that "people who have difficulty passing through narrow passages (width 35 cm)" cannot participate in the "Adventure Course". 35 centimeters is roughly 14 inches. Even back when I was a runner and in shape, I'm not a small person so I decided that rather than find out the hard way that I couldn't get through a 35 centimeter gap, I decided to just do the "Discovery Course".
I showed up at Gate 4 for my 1 PM tour and discovered that I was the only person on it! My guide was a young man who introduced himself as "Kondoh" (but not THAT Kondoh) and he led me into the ballpark. We had the usual problem that neither of us spoke the other's language (although as usual his English was better than my Japanese) but we were able to communicate pretty well through the use of the translation apps on each of our phones - at least until the battery died on his. Eventually another guide came by with a portable charger and we were able to talk again.
Kondoh first took me to the stands in the left field corner. I took a billion pictures as he filled me in on the history of the ballpark. Aside from a few people from the grounds crew working on the field, we were the only ones inside the Dome.
Our next stop was down on the field the visitor's dugout on the third base side. Once again, I took a lot of pictures while he talked.
One of the major things Kondoh talked about here was the huge video board that the Dome has - at 1542.83 square meters, it's the largest in the world. They had a camera input for it down on the field so he was able to put me up on the board:
It took me a couple tries to get that shot lined up.
We were going to head into the bowels of the stadium next but first Kondoh had to apologize to me. The Hawks were starting a three game series with the Eagles the next day and Rakuten's equipment had already arrived. Because of that, we weren't going to be able to go into the visiting team's locker room or bullpen. He had some photos on boards that used to show what the rooms looked like (including ones that highlighted the contrast in how the Hawks' clubhouse looked and how the visitor's clubhouse looked - the Hawks' was MUCH nicer). We did then go into the inner part of the stadium to the "press conference room" where he took my photo in front of the background used for hero interviews:
We returned to the field and went back up into the stands, stopping first at the "Excite seats" which are located in front of the foul ball netting.
Several of the NPB ballparks have similar seats. You get issued a batting helmet and are frequently reminded to pay attention to the game while sitting in these locations.
Kondoh then took me to another section of seats in the ballpark which I didn't take any photos of. I think at this point he was trying to pad out the tour to be close to the hour it was supposed to take. Between only having one person to put on the video board and the stage in the "press conference room" and not being able to go to the locker room or bullpen, we were pretty much done with the main parts of the tour. He asked me which ballparks I had visited during my trip and I told him where I had been and where I was going - basically I was going to see all the parks except the Fighters' new park in Hokkaido.
This tour was one of the highlights of my trip. I really felt like I got a personalized tour from Kondoh and learned much more about the ballpark than I would have if he'd had more people on his tour. And it only cost 1600 yen (about $11)!
After leaving the Dome, I headed back to the BOSS E-ZO FUKUOKA building and went up to the fourth floor to go to the Sadaharu Oh Museum:
This museum used to be in the Dome itself - kind of like how the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame is built into the side of Tokyo Dome - but moved a few years ago when this building was added. It was closed when I visited Fukuoka in 2019 so I was happy that I was finally going to visit it. I didn't realize it until later but the day I was there was Oh's 84th birthday!
One of the first exhibits in the museum is one of the most interesting - it's a recreation of Hiroshi Arakawa's dojo where Oh developed his iconic batting stance:
What's cool about this is that they project a film of Oh onto the screen in the dojo so it looks like he's there. Here's some photos from it:
There are displays on his childhood and high school baseball career, his playing career and his managerial stints with both the Giants and the Hawks. There's a whole gallery filled with various awards and trophies he won:
There was also a display dedicated to him managing Japan's first WBC team in 2006:
Towards the end of the exhibits was a section for the current Hawks team, including a display for manager Hiroki Kokubo:
This included a small case dedicated to Kokubo's stint as Samurai Japan manager for the 2017 WBC which didn't go as well as Oh's:
Once I was finished with the museum, it was time to hit some more baseball card shops. It's about a 15 minute walk from the Dome to the Tojinmachi subway stop which is the nearest one. From there I took a short ride to Akasaka station, the closest station to both Mint Fukuoka and the local Mandarake store. After checking out both shops (which I'll write about in future posts), I hopped back on the subway to ride back to Hakata station and then walked over to Mint Hakata.
Mint Hakata is one of my favorite stores in Japan and I spent more time there than I spent at the other three stores combined. I found a lot of cards that I was looking for although I was surprised and disappointed that they didn't have any of the 2023 Calbee Hawks cards - I had convinced myself that they'd have them even if no one else did. Turns out that no one did, at least none of the stores that I went to.
It was about 5:30 when I left the store and I was ready to eat something for dinner. Ryan had told me that I should check out the food stalls down by the river and I decided to head over that way. If I'd gone the most direct route, it would have taken me about 15 minutes to get over to where the stalls are set up but I got a little lost on the way so it took a little longer.
The food stalls that Ryan directed me to are the Nakasu Yatai, which are located on Nakasu Island. The island has the Hakata River on one side and the Naka River on the other. Seiryu Park is the southern tip of the island and there's a big Lantern Marker there:
It was a nice view up and down the river here as well:
The food stalls are set up on the sidewalk next to the Naka River. Most of them open at six although one that I started to wait at wasn't going to open until seven. The stalls get very busy quickly but I was able to get a seat at one relatively quickly.
I've mentioned before that one of my goals for this trip was to try some more interesting food, especially any regional specialties. Ryan's suggestion for me was to try tonkotsu, a ramen dish made with a pork bone broth. He said it would be really good after all the walking I had done that day and he was right - it was delicious:
It helped that I had one of the best beers that I had ever had in Japan with it - a Suginoya Pale Ale from Hamachi Shuzo, a local microbrewery:
Here's a shot of the stand I ate at. The empty seat was where I had been sitting - it didn't stay empty for long:
After eating, I started heading back to my hotel. On my way, I looked back down the walk to where all the stalls were and took this photo:
Given how much walking I had done that day, it's not really a surprise that I was asleep not long after I got back to my hotel.
Tuesday, May 21st, was another beautiful day in Fukuoka. I didn't have quite as full of a day planned as I had had the day before but it was still going to be busy. I was starting the day with a trip to a park on the Itoshima Peninsula and ending it back at Fukuoka Dome to watch the Eagles play the Hawks but I wasn't completely sure what I was going to do for the middle part of the day.
The park in question was Uminonakamichi Seaside National Park which straddles the peninsula touching both Hakata Bay and the ocean. It includes Marine World, the aquarium I had seen the day before from Fukuoka Tower, although I wasn't planning on going there.
It was about a half hour train ride from Hakata Station out to the park. Uminonakamichi Station, which serves both the park and Marine World, is probably the most rinky-dink JR station I saw in Japan:
Admission to the park was 450 yen. I only had a kind of vague plan when I got there that I wanted to see the ocean. As I set out from the entrance, though, one of the first things I saw was the bicycle rental facility. I hadn't ridden a bike in years but the attraction of being able to cover more ground more quickly in an area where I wouldn't need to worry about cars was very appealing. The rental rate was only 600 yen for three hours so I decided to do it.
As I said, I hadn't ridden a bike in years but it all came back to me as I rode away from the rental center. I guess there's a reason why we use "just like riding a bike" as a metaphor for remembering how to do something. My only real complaint is that the bike didn't have a gear shift so I found climbing hills to be hard work. Luckily the park is relatively flat and there were only a couple of times when it was an issue.
I wandered around a little at first, taking a ride about halfway around the main part of the park before deciding to get serious about getting to the seaside. The one thing I discovered when I got over to the beach is that you couldn't go down to the water - they've got the beaches blocked off to protect the vegetation. The park's website points out that there's a couple other parks nearby that have beaches that you can swim at. There were three or four places along the shoreline where I was able to park the bike and walk out to an observation point so I was finally able to see the ocean - I was thinking it was the Sea of Japan but I guess its really the Tsushima Strait at this point:
A map at one of the observation points showed that South Korea was only about 200 kilometers across the water:
The peninsula was narrow enough at the last place I stopped so that I could look across it and Hakata Bay to see both the Dome and the Tower - that's the "Light and Wind" part of the park in the foreground. The white spheres are actually tents that you can spend the night in:
After about an hour tooling around the park on the bike, I decided I wanted to head back to Fukuoka. But I had a more interesting route in mind than taking the train back the way I came. Instead - after returning the bike, of course - I got back on the train and went one stop further along the penisula to Saitozaki, the final stop on the line. I had just a few minutes to get from the train station to the ferry terminal - I was hoping to catch the 12:35 ferry across the harbor.
The good news is that I made it to the terminal in time to catch the ferry. The bad news is that I couldn't get the ticket machine to work in time to actually get on it! There was only one person working at the terminal and he was busy with the ferry when it arrived. When he came back into the terminal after it had left, he was very helpful and I was able to get my ticket for the next ferry which wouldn't be arriving until 1:30.
I was a little hungry at this point but unfortunately there really wasn't any place nearby where I could get a quick bite to eat. There weren't any conbinis around and there nearest restaurants that were open were probably too far away to get to and get back before the next ferry arrived. So I basically just sat and waited in the terminal. I did walk along the water a little bit although I stopped to talked to an Australian bicyclist for a bit instead of walking as far as I had intended.
Eventually the ferry arrived and I got on board:
It's about a 15 minute ride across the harbor and I spent the time moving around the boat, taking a ton of photos. Mercifully I'll only share a couple here:
I got off the ferry and headed back to Fukuoka Parco. I had forgotten to check the Mint store there for the 2023 Calbee Hawks cards the day before. It was about a mile and a quarter walk to get there but I broke it up a little by stopping at a MOS Burger for lunch.
The Mint store did not have the cards I was looking for. Originally I had planned on going back to my hotel to rest before the Hawks game but I realized that I wasn't going to have enough time. Instead I went to a coffee place in the basement of the mall to hang out for a little bit before heading back to the Dome.
I had what was perhaps the best meal I got at any ballpark that night - it was a Yugo Bandoh endorsed bibimbap that unfortunately didn't come with a Bandoh baseball card:
I once again had a good seat for the game and I settled in to watch it.
The game was scoreless until the bottom of the second - that's when it started to go down hill for the Eagles. You can watch the video of the highlights of the game below but the Hawks scored seven runs on eight hits in that inning. It seemed like they were hitting the ball to the exact same spot in deep center field - there must have been four batters who hit it there. What was especially crazy to me is that the Eagles left Ponce in the game to absorb this punishment.
In fact, Ponce remained in the game despite giving up a lead off home run to Ryoya Kurihara in the third inning and then giving up back-to-back triples to lead off the fourth. After then walking Yuki Yanagita and hitting Hotoka Yamakawa to load the bases with nobody out, the Eagles finally went to the bullpen, bringing in Shuto Sakurai. He didn't do any better, allowing all three inherited runners to score and then giving up another six runs of his own. The Hawks batted around for the second time in three innings, scoring another ten runs to make the score 18-0.
Kazuki Yoshikawa came into to pitch in the fifth inning and stayed on the mound for three innings. He actually pitched pretty well, relatively speaking, despite giving up Kurihara's second home run of the evening - a two run shot in the fifth to make it 20-0. Masaya Nishigaki was Rakuten's final pitcher and he gave up a solo home run to Takashi Umino, making the final score 21-0.
Here's the highlights I promised:
Ponce gave up twelve earned runs in three-plus innings. His ERA jumped from 4.50 to 7.05. It's still somewhat unbelievable to me that the Hawks used the same number of pitchers in this game that the Eagles did. I was kind of hoping to see a position player pitch in this game but that's pretty rare in Japan and it didn't happen in either this game or the next day's game where the Hawks routed the Eagles 12-0.
I stuck around for a while after the game because Kondoh had told me the day before that there are three criteria that need to happen for the Hawks to open the roof of the Dome after a game. First of all, there has to be less than a 30% change of rain. Secondly, the wind has to less than 10 kilometers per hour. Lastly, the Hawks have to have won. Obviously the Hawks had won and I was pretty sure there wasn't any rain in the forecast so the only real question was how windy it was. But after the hero interviews and another round of the Hawks cheer song, the roof began to open while the PA played "Shōri no Sora e" ("To Sky of Victory") by Fumiya Fujii, which is the Hawks "official ceremonial song".
It only opened up about half way, taking about 12 minutes or so to do it. That building peering in is the Hilton Fukuoka Sea Hawk hotel.
I didn't stick around to watch the Dome close. I was going to be taking the Shinkansen all the way back to Tokyo the next day so I needed to get back to my hotel and get some rest.
I had left Fukuoka after my previous trip feeling like there were several things that I had wanted to do that I hadn't done. As I headed back to my hotel, I realized I had pretty much done everything I had wanted to do - at least in Fukuoka-city itself. Time will tell if I ever return here but at least I don't feel like I missed out on anything anymore.
