Trip Overview Part 3 - Days 3 & 4 - Tokyo And Sendai

The forecast for Monday, May 13th in Tokyo was not good.  It called for heavy rains and there was actually a flood watch in effect.  Luckily my plans for the day didn't involve going to any baseball games - as usual, NPB had no games scheduled for that Monday.  What my plans DID involve, though, was going to a bunch of baseball card shops, some of which were some distance from the nearest train station, so I was going to get wet.  Especially since I had forgotten to pack my raincoat!

My first stop for the day was not a card shop but rather Shinjuku Station.  One of the ways I had cut back on the amount of time I had to spend at Haneda when I arrived the previous Friday was I didn't activate my JR Pass there.  I had discovered that I could activate it at most of the major JR stations (and Shinjuku's pretty major) so I decided to wait a couple days.

I'm not sure it really bought me much time, though, as there was a long line at the Exchange Office and it took about a 40 minutes before I was able to get my pass activated.  The first thing I did with it was use a nearby machine to make Shinkansen reservations to and from Sendai for the following day and heading west to Nagoya the day after that.  So after about an hour at the station I was finally ready to my first card shop.

My goal was to hit at least four stores that day - Mints Akihabara, Ikebukuro and Urawa along with Coletre.  I had the lowest expectations for Mint Akihabara but since they opened at 10 while the other three didn't open until noon, it was off to Akihabara first.  I'll eventually write more about the stores in separate posts but suffice it to say that the store was about what I expected and I was relatively quickly on a train heading to Ikebukuro.  I made a side trip at the station to check out the Lions team store in Seibu's department store there before heading towards the card shop.

Sugamo Prison used to stand not far from where Mint Ikebukuro is located and since it wasn't raining very hard, I decided to walk over and see the monument for it.  It's kind of hidden away in a corner of East Ikebukuro Central Park:

One of the Google reviews of the monument claims that it marks the spot where the Allies hung the Japanese war criminals (like Hideki Tojo).

The prison was torn down in the early 1970's and the Sunshine 90 building was erected on the site.  It was the tallest building in Japan (and all of Asia) when it opened in 1978:

I headed over to Mint Ikebukuro and had a bit of a frustrating time there.  Despite them still having a very good selection of old singles and still being a great shop to do set building at, they didn't happen to have cards from any of the mid 00's team sets that I was looking for.  The store's personnel gave it there best shot though.  

One of the workers in the store was an American named Nick who actually recognized me!  He followed me on Twitter and knew I was in Japan so when I started asking about the sets I was looking for, he asked me if I wrote a blog.

After leaving the shop with mostly empty hands, I made my way north a few blocks towards Coletre.  I decided to grab some lunch before going up to the store and decided to finally try Mos Burger, a Japanese fast food chain.  It wasn't anything to write home about but I've had worse hamburgers so I'm not complaining.

Ryan had warned me on my last trip that Urawa could be a pain to get to in rush hour and as I ate I started considering heading to Urawa now and coming back to Coletre later.  I was texting Ryan at the time and he said that I'd still be ok if I did Coletre first and then went to Urawa.  I took his advice and headed to Coletre when I finished eating, only to discover that the owner had temporarily left the shop.  Since I didn't know how long he was going to be away, I decided I'd head to Urawa after all.

Mint Urawa is about a 10 minute walk from Urawa Station and it was raining pretty hard as I walked.  I had a disposable poncho* on but it was still not a pleasant walk.  Making it worse was the fact that the store seemed to be smaller and much less useful than when I went there in 2019.  I bought only a few random cards there, having no luck with anything on my want list.  It seemed like they no longer had the collection of old singles that they had previously although Deanna told me later that they might have those cards in cabinets and that I probably should have asked the store for help.  Be that as it may, I was still pretty disappointed that I was basically empty handed after hitting three stores.  I walked back to Urawa station and drowned my sorrows in a coffee before heading back to Ikebukuro.

*My company ordered way too many ponchos for a golf event some eight or nine years ago and I always pack a couple in case of emergency.  I've used them all over the US as well as Japan, the UK and Iceland

I want to quickly mention something I saw at Urawa Station though.  Fukui prefecture is known for their dinosaur fossils and I think this is part of a push to get tourists to visit by taking the train:

I'd seen a similar ad in a couple other train stations (like the one below in Noborito on Saturday) but nothing as elaborate as this.

Coletre was open when I returned and made up for all the earlier disappointments.  Not only did they have cards that I was looking for from my want list but they also had all four of the 2024 BBM team sets that had been released up to then - the Hawks, the Tigers, the Lions and the Baystars - for only 1000 yen each.  I had been expecting to find them cheap at Mint Urawa but they only had the Tigers set at the outrageous price of 2500 yen.  The best part of the trip to Coletre is that I was able to trade the autographed "1990 Donruss" Tomoyuki Sugano card from Panini I had picked up for 7000 yen in store credit.  I had correctly guessed there'd be some demand for the card since Yomiuri doesn't allow their players to sign autographs for BBM or Epoch.  I had only spent about $20 on the original redemption card so getting roughly $50 for it was a nice payoff.  With that store credit, I only ended up spending around 1200 yen for everything I picked up here.

I'd been messaging back and forth with Deanna all day about possibly meeting up with her and Noel for dinner but by the time I left Coletre I was pretty fried (as well as pretty wet from the rain) and just wanted to head back to my hotel and crash.  I grabbed dinner at the CoCo Ichibanya restaurant a few blocks from my hotel (and just up the street from the World Meatball Classic).  CoCo Ichibanya is a chain of curry restaurants that Ryan had previously recommended to me and I've had good experiences with them.  My only complaint was that they were sold out of beer that evening:

I was back at my hotel shortly afterward and asleep pretty quickly after that.

The rainy weather moved out overnight and by Tuesday morning it was a beautiful day.  Good thing too as I was going to be traveling up to Sendai for an afternoon Eagles game.  I made my way over to Tokyo Station to catch the Shinkansen - getting there early enough to take photos of the Victorian facade on the west side of the station:

It was dark when I went up to Sendai back in 2019 so I wasn't able to see much scenery.  I was pleasantly surprised as the train headed north and crossed the Arakawa river that I could see Mount Fuji in the distance.

I had seen it on my first trip in 2013 but never saw it on the 2019 trip.  It was visible from the air as we flew over Tokyo on our approach to Haneda the previous Friday and I had glimpsed it a couple of times on Saturday but this was the first time I'd been able to take a long look at it.  It was visible for at least ten minutes before it was lost due to distance and haze.

Fuji was not the only stratovolcano visible on the trip however.  We passed just east of the Zao Mountains - I took this photo as we were passing through Shiroishi:

At least I'm pretty sure the photo shows the Zao Mountains but I could be wrong.  And it's possible there are other stratovolcanoes visible on the route that I didn't notice.

We arrived in Sendai just a little before noon and I had to head directly to the ballpark as the game started at one o'clock.  Luckily it's just a short (but very crowded) subway ride to Miyaginohara Station, the closest stop to the ballpark.  I'm always amused at the design of the entrance nearest the park:

It's just a couple minutes walk to the ballpark from the subway stop.

I feel like Miyagi Baseball Stadium, the home of the Eagles, is a very underrated ballpark.  It opened in 1950, making it the third oldest ballpark in regular use in NPB.  Rakuten has made a lot of renovations and improvements to it in the 20 years that the Eagles have played there so it's kind of a maze under the stands but it's still quite nice. The view from the seats is pretty good or at least it was for the game I went to there in 2019.

It was "Dream Order" day at the ballpark that day and I was handed a Takahiro Norimoto Dream Order game card as I entered the park.  I stopped off to pick up a Hideto Asamura bento box for lunch before making my way to my seat.  I got there about a half hour before game time, just in time to catch most of the pregame activities.  This was the fifth game I'd been to on this trip and the third NPB game but it was the first one that Kimigayo, the Japanese National Anthem, was played at - it was performed by a choral group.  This was followed by a Ceremonial First Pitch by Nobuto Kobayashi, the "Dream Order Producer".

I felt like my seats for this game were even better than I had had the last time I was there:

The Eagles were playing the Hawks this afternoon and the pitching matchup featured two former Fighters - Kohei Arihara for Softbank and Cody Ponce for Rakuten.  I was most excited about seeing another player on the field that day though.  Yuki Yanagita had been injured when I was in Japan in 2019 so I didn't get a chance to see him.  He was batting third in the lineup for this game so I got to see him in the top of the first:

He struck out to end the inning but at least I got to see him play.

The Eagles took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the second and when the top of the third rolled around, I decided to take a walk.  My destination was beyond the left field stands:

Yes, that's a Ferris Wheel.  It's part of the ballpark and you can ride it for free during the game.  Of course, I wasn't the only person wanting to do this so I had to wait in line for about 20 minutes before it was my turn.

Each car is done up with stuff for an Eagles player and the one I got was for Asamura:

Here's some photos from the ride.  I think the whole thing took less than ten minutes.

It was the bottom of the fourth when I got off the Ferris Wheel and started to head back to my seat.  I was still behind the stands when I heard the crowd cheer loudly.  I checked a nearby monitor and saw that Tsuyoshi Ishihara of the Eagles had hit a two run home run, making the score now 4-0 Eagles.

I stopped off at a stand to try Zunda, a green mochi...uh...thing that Ryan had recommended.  I got basically a slice of a cake roll with the Zunda filling.  It wasn't bad.

The Hawks scored a run in the top of the fifth to cut the Eagles lead to three runs but that was the end of the scoring for the day.  Ponce had a pretty good day on the mound, going six innings while striking out nine.  The Eagles bullpen was almost perfect, only giving up a walk in the final three innings of the game.  The final score was 4-1 (which coincidentally was the score of the game I went to there in 2019).  Here's the highlights of the game from Pacific League TV (including the hero interviews):

On my way out of the ballpark, I caught sight of something framed over one of the staircases:

I took the subway back to Sendai Station and made a stop at Mint Sendai, a card shop in the Parco Shopping Mall next to the station.  My expectations for the store were that I would be able to find Eagles team issued cards but not anything off my want list and that's pretty much what happened.  Afterwards I looked around for some place to get some dinner.  I had originally been planning on trying to find gyutan (beef tongue) which is a regional delicacy in Sendai but I had sent Deanna a photo of the bento box I had had for lunch and she pointed out that I had already had it.  After not being excited about any place I saw and having issues pulling up an English menu on my phone at a Yoshinoya, I gave up and got some chicken from a Family Mart convenience store.  

My train that evening left Sendai around 7:30 and got me back to Tokyo a little after nine.  I got back to my hotel about a half hour later and spent some time getting packed up.  I'd be checking out of my hotel the next morning and heading west.  I would not return to Tokyo for another week.