I had a relatively early start to my day on Wednesday, May 15th. I was leaving from Tokyo Station on the Hikari 635 Shinkansen at 8:33 that morning, the first leg on a week long trip to western Japan, and I was a little concerned about navigating the morning rush hour while rolling a large suitcase with me. I was out of my hotel and on a very crowded subway car by 7:30 or so, giving me plenty of time to make the train.
My ultimate destination that day would be Nagoya but I was only taking the Shinkansen as far as Toyohashi. I planned to stop by the Mint Hinasyo shop but the Shinkansen does not stop in Gamagori, the city where the shop is located, so I would need to switch there for a local train.
I had not planned to be on the correct side of the train to see Mount Fuji on
the trip up to Sendai the day before - it was just a happy coincidence. On this train, however, I had specifically chosen a window seat on the right side of the train so that I'd be able to see Fuji if it was a clear day. And, luckily for me, it was. I had a pretty good view of it for at least 20 minutes and I took lots of photos - 31 in all! I'll only share a couple here.
I took this first one as we passed through the town of Yoda just west of Yokohama in Kanagawa prefecture (and I can't think of any Star Wars jokes right now):
This was taken from Higashitoyoda, also in Kanagaya:
I took this as we passed through Honjuku in Shizuoka prefecture:
This last one was while we were passing through Yodabashi in Shizuoka prefecture:
After this the train was pretty much past the mountain so I didn't take any more photos.
I got off the train as planned in Toyohashi and pretty quickly found the train to Gamagori. I was a bit put off at first as the train I got on was just sitting at the station, completely empty. It was a little creepy for a bit until eventually some other people got on board. Still, the train was fairly empty when we finally headed off to Gamagori.
Gamagori is located on Mikawa Bay. I took a photo from the train platform looking out towards the Bay - that's the hills of Atsumi peninsula in the distance across the water:
The card shop is about a half mile north of the train station. Since I'd prefer not to haul my suitcase with me, I started looking around for the storage lockers that are pretty standard at any train station. For whatever reason, it took me longer than I expected to finally find them and I was a bit dismayed that I couldn't use my phone to pay for it. It wanted 600 yen in coins - specifically six 100 yen coins. I didn't have any coins but I had a 1000 yen bill. I didn't see a change machine though so I went to the convenience store in the station, bought a bottle of water with the bill and requested the necessary coins in change. With my luggage finally secured, I headed out of the station.
One of the first things I saw as I made my way north was a billboard proclaiming that Gamagori was the hometown of Kodai Senga:
"From Gamagori To The World!!"
It took me ten minutes or so to get up to the shop. It was a relatively pleasant walk - Japanese towns seem to be pretty walkable and I didn't run into any issues. At least not until I arrived at the shop:
What the hell? It's closed?
The website for the shop says it's open everyday except Tuesday from 0930 to 1930. I have no idea why it was closed at 11:15 on a Wednesday morning. I also had no idea if it was just going to be closed for a short time (like Coletre on Monday) or if it would be closed all day. I decided not to stick around to find out and I made my way back to the station, retrieved my suitcase and caught the next train to Nagoya.
Once I got to Nagoya, I walked the couple blocks to my hotel to drop off my luggage. I was staying at a Toyoko Inn not far from the station. It's kind of funny - I was staying at the same location that I did in 2019 but in the five years since I had been there, the old hotel had been completely torn down and a brand new hotel was built to replace it! I'm not sure how recently they opened but the hallways still kind of smelled of fresh paint.
Since I was an hour or so earlier getting to Nagoya than I had originally planned, I had to take a few minutes to figure out what I wanted to do. Unfortunately the three card shops in the city - BITS, Mint Ponyland and Match Up - are all closed on Wednesdays so card shopping was not an option (
the new Mint Nagoya store IS open on Wednesdays but unfortunately it didn't open for business until after I got home from my trip). I ultimately decided to head over to Chubu Electric Power Mirai Tower - aka Nagoya Tower. It had been closed for refurbishing when I had been to the city in 2019 so I hadn't had the opportunity to go up in it then. I took the subway over to the tower and grabbed some lunch at a Sukiya restaurant in the subterranean Central Park Mall before going up.
Admission was 1300 yen and after paying it, I took an elevator up to the second level, which isn't all that high up:
From there, you take another elevator up to the third floor "Sky Deck" which is a bit higher - 90 meters up. From there you can take stairs up another 10 meters to the "Sky Balcony" which is outside.
I'm not positive but I think I took all of the following aerial photos from inside. You can see Nagoya Castle in this shot:
Here's Nagoya Dome in the distance:
While the weather had been clear that morning, clouds had moved in that afternoon and we'd get rain that evening and overnight. As a result, the mountains to the north of Nagoya weren't visible from the Tower:
Similarly there wasn't much visible to the south either:
After leaving the tower, I headed back to my hotel to check in and relax before the Dragons game that evening. On the way I made a stop the Don Quijote store a couple of blocks away from the tower. I had been lugging around a large backpack everywhere which was very cumbersome. Ryan had suggested I try to find a smaller shoulder bag and Don Q had them reasonably cheap (which is no surprise since Don Q seems to have EVERYTHING). My new bag was a lot more comfortable to carry with me.
I got settled into my hotel room and then it was time to head off to the ballpark. I took the subway to the Nagoya-Dome-Mae-Yada stop, the name of which would imply that it's close to the ballpark but that's a relative thing. It might be the closest stop to Nagoya Dome but it's still about a half mile away. The station and the walkway to the ballpark are decorated with photos and banners for the Dragons. It's impossible to get lost - all you need to do is follow all the folks in Dragons gear:
The Dragons were taking on the Tigers that evening with Shinnosuke Ogasawara on the mound for Chunichi and Kotaro Ohtake pitching for Hanshin. Once again, I had pretty good seats for the game:
If you've been paying any attention to the Dragons this season, it will come as no surprise to you that the Dragons didn't score any runs this evening. Of course, the Tigers didn't score any either for a while. The game was a scoreless tie going into extra innings before the Tigers finally scored a run on an RBI single from Koji Chikamoto in the top of the eleventh. The Dragons went meekly in the bottom of the eleventh to make the final
1-0 Tigers*. I've been to two Dragons games at Nagoya Dome now and both games were eleven inning Dragon losses. Disappointed, I followed the crowd back to the subway station and made my way back to my hotel.
*I could not find a highlights video for the game that wasn't region-locked
My disappointments continued the next day. I started the day by walking over to Nagoya Station to make my Shinkansen reservations for the next couple days. I needed tickets for Nagoya to Osaka on Friday morning, Osaka to Hiroshima on Sunday morning and Hiroshima to Fukuoka Sunday evening. I had specific trains in mind for all three trips and when I got to the reservation desk, I had no problems with the trains for Friday morning and Sunday evening. But the train I wanted for Sunday morning was sold out, as was the one a half hour later. Dismayed, I left the station and headed to my next planned destination of the day - the remains of Narumi Stadium.
I had some back and forth with
Deanna about the reservation situation as I rode the train down towards Narumi Station. There really wasn't any decent way to get from Osaka to Hiroshima without taking the Shinkansen and I briefly explored the possibility of spending Saturday night in Hiroshima instead of Osaka. Riding the Shinkansen using an unreserved seat was another possibility but I was uncomfortable doing that without a backup plan. By the time I got to Narumi Station, I decided it would be best to turn around and go back to Nagoya Station and make sure I could get some reservation for Sunday morning. As the ruins of the stadium are over a half mile from the station, I didn't feel I could take the time to walk over, especially since I was planning on going to the Dragons farm team game that afternoon.
Once back at Nagoya Station, I got back in line for reservations. This time instead of requesting a specific train, I just said I needed to get from Osaka to Hiroshima on Sunday morning. The clerk was very helpful and got me a seat on a train that left a little earlier than the one I had originally wanted but got in a little later. I was extremely relieved that I had a ticket. I decided to go ahead and get my tickets for traveling from Fukuoka back to Tokyo the following Wednesday and was again surprised that the train I wanted was already sold out. I was able to get a ticket on the next train - it left Fukuoka and arrived in Tokyo an hour later than the one I had wanted though.
I grabbed a cup of coffee at the station and sat and relaxed for a few minutes. I felt much better having all that resolved. My happy mood didn't dissipate even when I clumsily got on a northbound train instead of the southbound train I needed for the afternoon's farm team game. I texted something to Deanna about getting a chance to see what Nagoya looked like north of the station and how it looked a lot like Nagoya south of the station did. I got off at the first stop and caught the next train going in the correct direction.
I was very excited about getting to see the Dragons farm team play at home. The team plays in Nagoya Stadium, the home of the ichi-gun Dragons until they moved into Nagoya Dome in 1997. The team has dismantled a lot of the old park but I still thought it'd be interesting to check it out. I had kind of planned this part of the trip around going to this game.
The closest train station to Nagoya Stadium is Otobashi. I got off there, got a soda and a bottle of water out of the vending machines and started walking towards the ballpark. There were a few other people obviously heading there as well although there were signs in English too:
I should have realized something was up when I saw people with Dragons gear walking the other way but it wasn't until I got to the front gate that I discovered why:
Well, crap. The game was cancelled. It was a pretty nice day out but it had rained overnight and apparently (according to a
tweet Deanna sent me) the field conditions were unplayable. Since farm team games for most teams in Japan are not a money-making endeavor, there was no incentive to make sure they could get the game in. In fact, I'm pretty sure the game was outright cancelled, not postponed.
Disappointed yet again, I walked across the street to Tsuyuhashi Park and plopped down on a bench. I drank my soda and water as I thought about what I wanted to do next. To be completely honest, I was feeling very down at this point. I felt like a lot of the trip had been a waste. I had been unable to knock much off my want list after going to seven card shops (although only three that I had expected to do set building at), wasted time with a side trip to Gamagori only to find the card shop there closed, not been able to get the trains I wanted for the rest of my trip, having to skip going to Narumi Stadium to deal with the Shinkansen reservations and now having the farm team game cancelled on me for what seemed like a silly reason.
I didn't sit and feel sorry for myself for very long though. I decided to try to make the most of having three or four bonus hours in Nagoya. And the first thing that occurred to me was that I now had time to go down to Narumi Stadium.
I should take a minute to explain about
Narumi Stadium. It was a baseball stadium that was built in the late 1920's and was open for about 30 years. It hosted games in both the 1931 and 1934 MLB All Star tours (Babe Ruth managed one of the games there on the 1934 tour) and it was home to Nagoya Kinko (who were also called either the Golden Eagles or Golden Dolphins) from 1936 to 1940 after which the team merged with Tsubasa to become the Taiyo baseball club (which dissolved in 1943 and did NOT eventually become the Baystars). After the war, the ballpark was one of the stadiums used by the Chunichi Dragons for a while but they eventually settled on playing most of their games at Nagoya Stadium in 1952. Part of the reason was that the town the stadium was in - Narumi - wasn't part of Nagoya until 1963. Another was that the terrain around Narumi Stadium was hilly while the area around Nagoya Stadium was relatively flat which was viewed as more conducive to attendance. The stadium was closed in October, 1958 and Meitetstu, the owners of the stadium as well as a transportation company, partially demolished it to open a driving school in 1959. Parts of the grandstand are still standing while a driving course has been built on what was the playing field.
So I was heading back to Narumi Station. I needed a different train line than the one that took to Nagoya Stadium so I had to walk a couple blocks to Sanno Station. Just before I got to the station I had to use a pair of very low pedestrian tunnels to pass under four train lines. This first tunnel goes under the Shinkansen and JR Chuo lines (and I'm pretty sure that's the same Chuo line from Tokyo):
The second tunnel goes under the Tokaido Main Line and the Meitetsu-Nagoya Line:
There's a gap of 25 feet or so between the two tunnels and both photos were taken there - the first one was looking back at the tunnel I had just passed through. It's hard to get a sense from the photos of just how low these tunnels were - they were barely six feet high. I had to stoop to get through them.
The train ride back to Narumi Station didn't take long and headed north across the Ogi River towards the ballpark....uh...driving school.
One thing about planning a walking route on Google Maps is that you don't get a sense of the elevation changes (and I hadn't read the Wikipedia article to learn about the ballpark's surrounding terrain being hilly). I quickly discovered the ballpark site was on the other side of steep ridge so it was a bit of work getting up the hill, at least for someone as out of shape as I am. I got to see someone's cat on the way, although it wanted nothing to do with me:
After cresting the ridge, I walked down hill and crossed a fairly major road before arriving at the stadium/school grounds. The closest part is basically where the center field stands were. This historical marker is there:
Here's a panorama of the grounds - the roads beyond the fence are the driving school course:
Here's a closer look at some of the stands that still exist:
I think there's some sort of marker where home plate had been but I didn't think it wise to go walking onto the field while training was going on. I turned around to head back to the station and caught sight of this building across the street with a familiar looking logo:
I met up with
Sean that night for dinner (more about that in a minute) and showed him this photo. He said that this was a building for the Chunichi newspaper chain, not the Dragons. Apparently Chunichi uses the same logo for both the Dragons and the newspaper.
With Narumi Stadium out of the way, it was time to do some baseball card shopping. I had planned on going to BITS right after the now-cancelled game and possibly trying to get to Match Up before meeting Sean for dinner. Since it was only around 1:30 at this point, going to both seemed like a real possibility. I walked back to the station and took the train back up to Nagoya Station before switching to the subway to get me close to BITS. I hadn't had lunch yet so I stopped at a Yoshinoya a couple blocks away and had a bowl of gyudon before continuing to the card shop.
BITS is one of my favorite stores in Japan, although this was only the second time I had ever been there. I ended up spending about an hour and half here as I was constantly discovering that they had more cards from my want list! My earlier depression about this trip being a waste was completely washed away while I was there. I ended up spending around 10,500 yen there (around $66) which was the second highest total I spent at any card shop (Quad Sports had been something like 18,000 yen the previous Saturday). The couple that own the shop were extremely helpful and helped me find boxes of singles that I was looking for despite the difficulties of me explaining what I wanted since I still can't speak Japanese.
Having spent so much time at BITS and having had such success there, I decided to skip trying to go to Match Up. BITS was just a few blocks walk from my hotel so I headed back there to relax for a little bit for leaving to meet up with Sean.
When Sean and I were discussing meeting up a few months before my trip, he suggested that
Pikaichi, a Chinese restaurant with a bunch of Dragons memorabilia, might be a fun place to go. The Dragons were playing the Tigers again that evening so he made sure we had reservations. We'd be able to eat dinner while watching the game.
It's hard to tell from the outside but the inside is just crammed with Dragons stuff:
The restaurant is only about a mile and a half south of Nagoya Dome and it's pretty much a straight shot down a road Google is labeling as "Inner Ring". By the time we left, the place was starting to fill up with folks who had attended the game and were looking for a beer or two. Sean and I shared a subway ride for part of our respective trips, before going our separate ways. I got back to my hotel and again had to start packing up as I'd again be catching an early train the next morning - this time to head to Osaka.
The top two are Alonzo Powell and Brad "Animal" Lesley while the bottom two are Warren Cromartie and Boomer Wells. I've seen these for years but never gotten any of them (and I find it hilarious that Sean and I left comments on the linked post above about how I wanted some and he was going to send them to me. And four years later he did!).
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It wasn't entirely a one-sided evening though (although Sean was generous enough to pick up the tab for dinner) - I gave him a big box of Dragons cards to share with his kids.
Thanks for dinner and the goodies, Sean!
