The So Taguchi Philadelphia Phillies of New Jersey

Shukan Baseball magazine had a big theme of "Japanese players in the MLB" this week, including back-to-back Matsui interviews (with Hideki and Kazuo). One of the other features in the magazine was a "Map of MLB Teams with Japanese Players", which is, in other words, "a map of the cities in America that will actually get mentioned regularly on the news here in Japan".

I have frequently told people here that I became really good at Japanese geography a couple of years ago during Koshien, the national baseball tournament. Having teams from every prefecture was a great excuse to actually learn where all of them were. However, I don't think it's quite as easy for Japanese people to learn American geography quite the same way. I mean, for one, not all 50 states in America have major league teams. But also, apparently Philadelphia has moved to New Jersey this year. And Kansas City moved to Kansas. And Pittsburgh moved to Erie. And so on:


All I Needed to Know about America I learned from Ichiro


At least they know where Cleveland is.

Thanks to Pau for pointing this out to me (He wrote me, "Dude, where are your Phillies?"). I don't have a scanner, though, so the best I could do was taking a photo of the magazine with my D200.

Baseball Card Shopping in Tokyo - Part 1

Before I actually moved to Japan, the only places I ever knew of to buy baseball cards was at the baseball stadiums themselves, at the team goods stores. Now, living here and being an explorer in general, I've found lots of other places to buy cards, which is great. (My wallet disagrees with me, but whatever.) A few of these places in the Tokyo/Kanto area are:

The Sports Authority. The ones near me generally stock a lot more soccer goods than baseball goods, being as I'm in the same prefecture as the the Urawa Reds, but they'll have some baseball card packs lying around as well, usually just the current BBM set and maybe a few assorted team packs, plus some MLB Upper Deck packs and the like. They also usually have a whole bunch of Japanese player MLB goods (think Matsuzaka jerseys and jackets, or Yankees hats or Ichiro shirts) and not much in the way of NPB.

Yamashita Shoten by the Tokyo Dome.
Tokyo-to, Bunkyo-ku, Koraku 1-3-61 Kiiroi Building 2F
This bookstore is between the Tokyo Dome and Suidobashi JR station; from the Dome go down the walkway and stairs opposite Gate 23 and it's on your right before you hit the videogame arcade. They stock a ton of sports magazines and books in general and about 10 different types of baseball card packs (some team packs, some things like the Nostalgic set, then Rookie Edition and Back to the 70's, plus random things like Giants 2005, and they'll usually get in the boxes like the All-Star set, the Nippon Series set, the Furuta retirement set). This is also a pretty decent place to pick up monthly baseball magazines for various teams and leagues. I have an almost-weekly routine of going to the Tokyo Dome shop to look at team goods, then stopping by nearby Yamashita to actually get magazines or cards.

Shosen Book Mart in Jimbocho.
Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Kanda Jimbocho 1-21-6
From Ochanomizu JR station, take the "Ochanomizu Bridge exit" and walk down the hill away from the river. You'll go through a whole ton of guitar shops, and then Meiji University will be on your right, and eventually you get to Yasukuni street; Shosen Bookmart is across the big intersection from you at that point. Go into the basement; near the entrance to your left you'll find various card packs (mostly team packs, plus last time they had some 2006 BBM 4-card sets for 100 yen each). In the back right corner there's also a ton of baseball books and magazines, including many "new" copies of "old" issues of stuff. Fantastic if you want things like a 2006 Japan Series program.

(As an aside, there is a used book store in Jimbocho called @wonder that has an AMAZING wall of old NPB books and magazines, including Shukan Baseball going back over 30 years, other old magazines and team books and whatnot. It is practically next door to the Jimbocho subway station exit A1, on Yasukuni Street. Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Kanda Jimbocho 2-5-4)

Most other major book stores actually will have baseball card packs somewhere, if you just know where to look. This includes Kinokuniya (the large 8-floor Shinjuku branch has them on the 6th floor to the left of the cash registers; baseball books in general can be found in the front left corner of that floor) or Sanseido (the big store right across from Shosen has some packs by the escalators on the third floor)

R&B21 in both Ryogoku and Shinjuku (and Osaka!)
Ryogoku store Map: Tokyo-to, Sumida-ku, Ryogoku 4-37-2
Shinjuku store Map: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Nishi-Shinjuku 7-1-7
This is a really interesting store. They don't really have much in the way of Japanese baseball cards or packs or anything, which is kind of funny, but they're your place to go to if you're living in Japan and looking to buy or trade MLB cards, or football/hockey/basketball/etc. They make their very own patented thick card holders among other things. The people there are really nice, but they don't always have someone around who can speak English, which is odd considering their stock. However, if you're interested in their card holders, they can do English over email, and they're happy to ship them to other countries, and you can pay via Paypal and such. The above links are English directions to their stores, and I can at least vouch that the Ryogoku ones are valid.

I've bought things from all of the aforementioned places, but the real inspiration for writing about this is a store called Mint, which I have spent way too much time and money at in the last few weeks. See, most of the places I've listed here that sell NPB cards basically have them in packs. Mint is awesome because you can just go in and look through individual cards for hours and hours. Not that I've done that, of course... anyway, next post is going to be just about the different branches I've visited of the Mint store chain.

Let me know if this information is actually useful to anyone. I'll try to organize it better later.

NPB Roundup: Open letters

Dear Ichiro,

First, I was really happy to see you on the news the other night, back here in Japan, doing personal training. You have a lot of knowledge to share with other players here. Also, about your upcoming milestone of 3000 hits in both the MLB and NPB, I think that's really amazing, I hadn't even realized you were up to 2870 hits now. Given that we all know you are incapable of getting less than 200 hits per year, you are likely to beat Isao Harimoto's all-time record career 3085 hits either at the end of the 2008 season or early in 2009. I have no doubt that you could have surpassed his number had you stayed in Japan, of course. At first I thought that it was a little unfair that you get 30-40 games per year more, but I guess that means that you're really only getting maybe 2-3 "seasons" worth more of games, so that's not that big a deal.

Second, I went to the post office today and I saw you on the front of the "Entertain-post" magazine. The Ichiro ASG MVP postage stamps are REALLY sweet. I totally should buy some and send postcards to people in Seattle. That'd be awesome.

Sincerely,
Deanna the Marinerd


Dear Kazuhito Tadano,

You should know by now that I really don't judge you for things you did while you were in college. I was really happy when the Fighters drafted you, and I was really looking forward to seeing you in our rotation this year.

However, a month ago I noted that you were probably going to get struck by some sort of curse when they assigned you Kanemura's old uniform number #16. So it completely shouldn't surprise me that you had to go and break your wrist while going for a run the other day. Now, at least you broke your LEFT wrist instead of your RIGHT wrist, but still.

I'll come see you pitch in Kamagaya in a few months!

xoxoxo,
Deanna the Hokkaidork


Dear Keizo Kawashima,

I will miss you. A LOT. I was really expecting to see you in a platoon with Kudoh this year in left field, and then this trade came out of nowhere. I'll totally come see you play at Jingu sometime this year (maybe I'll get to see a Kawashima-Aoki-Miyade outfield someday! That'd be all cute and happy).

Love,
Deanna (and the rest of the female Fighters fans)


(The Fighters and Swallows just did a 6-man trade: Fighters gave up 24-year-old outfielder Keizo Kawashima, 25-year-old RHP Takehiko Oshimoto, and 28-year-old RHP Yoshitaka Hashimoto, for Yakult's 30-year-old LHP Shuugo Fujii, 30-year-old switch-hitting utility guy Hajime Miki, and 25-year-old RHP Yataro Sakamoto. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the deal here is, but offhand it seems like this deal favors Yakult a LOT more than it favors the Fighters. Maybe it's just that I like Kawashima. Feels like Yakult may have filled in the Ramirez hole in their outfield and the Fighters got another left-handed starter, but I kind of feel like Fujii's really not that good.)

Friday Foto: Dragonstone

"Hey," I said while we were wandering through Kenrokuen, "Look at that board next to that tree and lantern."

"What about it?" my friend asked. "Tatsuishi?"

"Maybe," I replied. "竜石 would mean Dragonstone, wouldn't it?"

"I guess. Shame you're not wearing your Chunichi Dragons shirt today, we could take a picture next to it."

"Oops. I guess Doala will have to do."


Dragonstone!

In other words, I am going through my Hokuriku trip pictures, but not particularly quickly. I took about 300 pictures at the Hideki Matsui museum. Maybe that was a mistake.

Baseball Card Post - Good Things Always Come In Threes

I went to the Mint sports card store in Jimbocho the other day to complete my "Consecutive" sets of three cards in the Chunichi team sets; I wrote down which Masa and Kosuke cards I had and intended just to get those, but after I talked to the guy who runs the shop and he told me they were having a 20% off sale on individual non-priced cards (40 yen each instead of 50 yen), I couldn't resist looking through some of the other team sets to see if they also had similar cards, and thus ended up getting a whole bunch of sets of three.

(Also, wow, looking at that website I just realized there are a whole bunch of other Mint stores in the Tokyo area that I totally have to go visit. I need to find out if any of them either will take extra cards off my hands and/or if they have trading times.)

Anyway, these are the sets I was originally aiming for. The Chunichi Dragons 2007 set has 9 cards labelled "consecutive", three for Kenshin Kawakami, three for Kosuke Fukudome, and three for Masa Yamamoto. The idea with these cards is that if you have all three for one player and put them together, it makes a 9-frame picture of their throwing or batting motion. They look really cool together, though when you only have one or two of them separately, they look sort of stupid. Even cooler is how they're reversed on the back, so the middle picture is the same, but if you have the beginning or ending of the motion, you'll have the opposite card on the back. Okay, maybe that's not that cool, but I noticed it and thought so.

Forgive the angles on these shots; I was trying not to get the flash in the way.


"Consecutive" Kosuke Fukudome - Front

"Consecutive" Kosuke Fukudome - Back


"Consecutive" Kenshin Kawakami - Front

"Consecutive" Kenshin Kawakami - Back


"Consecutive" Masa Yamamoto - Front

"Consecutive" Masa Yamamoto - Back

Something kind of cool is how since Kosuke bats left-handed and Masa throws left-handed, their cards start from the right and go to the left, but since Kenshin throws right-handed, his card starts from the left.

So, I looked through the Fighters set to see if they had anything similar, since I only bought one team pack this year and hadn't seen all that many cards in the set. Sure enough, they had a Darvish set! Only it was labelled "Clever" instead of "Consecutive". That's appropriate, I suppose:



"Clever" Yu Darvish - Front

"Clever" Yu Darvish - Back

The Fighters set also had a three-card series set for Yukio Tanaka's 2000 hits, so I just HAD to get that one. It's only 6 pictures instead of the full 9, but that's okay:


"2000 Hits" Yukio Tanaka - Front

"2000 Hits" Yukio Tanaka - Back

Another major difference with the Yukio Tanaka set is that the backs of the cards are actually completely different. In the other sets it's the same text although the layout might be slightly different. In this set, each card has something else -- one card has Yukio's career stats, one has a picture of him holding up the "2000 Hits" plaque during the game, and the other has a bunch of text about his career as "Mr. Fighters" and all. It's pretty cool.

Last, I picked out one more set, from one of my absolute favorite pitchers on the planet. These cards were 100 yen each, but I couldn't resist.


"Gorgeous" Shunsuke Watanabe - Front

"Gorgeous" Shunsuke Watanabe - Back

Yeah, they call Shunsuke's card set "Gorgeous", and it is a really nice set of cards, but I think it would have made more sense to just call it "Submarine", heh. I think it looks really neat to have his motion taken frame-by-frame like this on the cards.

Of course, I also kind of want Hisashi Yamada's reflector card from the Back to the 70's set, but that was going for like 400 yen. His normal card in that set doesn't have him in full submarine mode, so it's not as cool.

I don't think there are any more of these three-card sets that I'm interested in (looking at the set list I can't really tell what other threes there are besides the Violent Arakaki one offhand, which I didn't like) though I didn't really have time to look through all of the sets while I was there. Next time, maybe.

Anyway, to lead into a future post I want to show the last two cards I bought:


Draft Story, Yukihiro Nishizaki and Tadanori Ishii - front


Draft Story, Nishizaki and Ishii - back

The "Draft Story" cards are last year's "historic" set, much like this year's "Back to the 70's" set. They show what a player looked like and what his number was when he was drafted -- as seen in my earlier card post, they showed things like Osamu Hamanaka wearing #66, Hirokazu Ibata wearing #48, and so on.

Anyway, as for what the real STORY is here, I'll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with Yukihiro Nishizaki, for once, I just thought the card looked cool. Take a look at the Ishii card? Do you kind of wonder who this "Tadanori Ishii" guy is? Doesn't he look an awful lot like some other guy we know on the Bay Stars now, named "Takuro Ishii"?

Yeah. Somehow, despite actually being a fairly big Takuro fan, I never knew that he changed his name when he changed positions from being a pitcher to an infielder. Go figure. I know he's got a lot of stories in his past, just from his wikipedia page and from japanbaseballdaily, but now I'm really curious and want to find out more. He's already in the Meikyukai and might end up in the Hall of Fame someday too, so it's well worth the research :)

NPB Roundup - It's Always Training Time

This past weekend I went stomping around Hokuriku with my friends. While in Kanazawa I picked up a team yearbook for the champion Ishikawa Million Stars (and made plans to come back and visit people and go to a game this summer!), and then I also went down to Komatsu to see the Hideki Matsui Baseball Museum, where I took about 300 pictures and haven't had time to go through them yet, so I'll hopefully get around to posting them later this week. Hard to believe my winter vacation is over already.

Some stuff has happened in the last week. Notably, I'm really sad that Nick Swisher got traded to the White Sox and thus won't be visiting with the A's when they play in Tokyo in March. I'm also sad that Kazumi Saitoh is having shoulder surgery, and thus won't be playing when the Hawks come to Kanto for some weekends early in the season. I'm happy that Chunichi managed to re-sign Iwase and Tyrone. I'm a bit perplexed that the Royals signed Hideo Nomo to a minor-league contract, but I hope it works out for all involved.

The Carp took Masato Akamatsu from the Tigers as compensation for the Arai signing, which is pretty awesome. Akamatsu wears high socks and steals a bazillion bases, which should go really nicely with Eishin Soyogi, assuming Akamatsu can get on base to begin with.

In the meantime, players have officially started their personal training. Personal training usually starts about a month before Spring Camp starts, which is on February 1st. News Zero showed a bunch of Giants doing various training (including Hisanori Takahashi being incredibly bad at racquetball), but the interesting story to me was how a bunch of the young Osaka Toin hotshots got together at a batting cage and had a bazillion media folks watching every swing. For some reason it just didn't occur to me that Tsuyoshi Nishioka was a sempai to both Chunichi's Ryosuke Hirata and the Fighters' new kid Sho Nakata.

Baseball Card Fukubukuro, Part 2

I have two baseball card posts to make, but this is the one I meant to make several days ago and didn't.

See, I have a new bad habit now. Rather than spending too much on random packs of cards, now I've been spending too much on random BAGS of random packs of cards. These are called "Fukubukuro", which means "lucky bag". At the Mint card shop, they basically say "Pay 1000 yen, get 3000 yen worth of random card packs". Which is true, but since you can't pick them, it can get interesting. So you get TWO levels of "open it and see what you got!!", first for the packs in the fukubukuro and then for the cards in the packs. Fun!

My first time, the bag had some Dragons and Hawks packs and some Draft Story packs. My second time, the bag had three Seibu Lions packs, one Hanshin Tigers, one Hiroshima Carp, and three Touch the Game 2006 packs. My third time... it had the exact same thing as the second time, since I got it a week later and the bag was the same color. I'm holding off for a few weeks before buying another one I think.


Second Fukubukuro, pre-pack opening. Whee.

At least I'm spending less overall -- I only buy cards once per week and if I only buy one fukubukuro, that's 1000 yen. Could be worse.

Anyway, my first Carp pack was vaguely exciting, with a Shinji Sasaoka reflector card and an Eishin Soyogi team card, and a Maeda Spotlight; it might have been one of the best packs in my first Fukubukuro. My second one wasn't quite as exciting but still wasn't too bad -- a Koichi Ogata title holder card, a Shigenobu Shima reflector card, and a card for Jeff Livesey-coach, which isn't quite as cool as a Marty Brown card, but not terrible either. I'm really not that excited about the Carp as a team in general, which is why it's just not all that exciting to open the packs. But, I do think it's a nice set. I did want a Saitoh Yuuki card :)


Hiroshima Carp - two packs

The Tigers packs really annoyed me. You know, I didn't think it was possible to get doubles of a card IN THE SAME PACK, but apparently... no, okay, so what happened is that I got a Naohisa Sugiyama normal card AND a Sugiyama reflector card in the sae pack. It's not a double exactly, but seriously, the most exciting card in that first pack was the "Good luck Kei Igawa!!" card. The second pack was much better, with an Okada-kantoku, and a "Kyuji Special" card of Kyuji Fujikawa, and a Makoto Imaoka reflector car, and normal cards of ex-Fighter Itsuki Shoda, and of ex-Pirate Ryan Vogelsong.


Hanshin Tigers - two packs

The next big set of crap I had to look at was the Seibu Lions team sets. Nevermind that I don't particularly like the Lions to begin with, this set kind of made me sad. I think the "Shining" cards are nice, and the Lion Heart ones are kind of cool, but I got a bazillion doubles in just 6 packs, which is not reassuring. Also, I did not get a normal Hideaki Wakui card, which also made me sad.

First pack, best cards: Kataoka reflector, normal Hiroyuki Nakajima
Second pack, best cards: Toru Hosokawa, Kazuhiro Wada, team check list
Third pack, best cards: Lion Hearts for Fukuchi and Liefer, mascot card
Fourth pack, best cards: normal Kataoka card
Fifth pack, best cards: normal Gissel, Onodera; Lion Hearts of Wakui
Sixth pack, best card: Nakajima Lion Heart card -- already a double. Oi.

Just really not that exciting. I did get a Ginjiro Sumitani card in there somewhere too, and doubles of the team checklist and several of the Lion Hearts, but eh.


Seibu Lions - six packs

Last to open from the Fukubukuro packs was the "Touch the Game" cards. These are super-expensive and I don't entirely understand why they're supposed to be so good. They're really thick cards and they have pretty pictures, I guess, and most of the players on them are superstars, basically. I'm not angry that I have them but I doubt I would ever buy these packs on my own, which is part of what makes the Fukubukuro so cool -- getting to experience these other cards. And every pack DID have plenty of exciting players in it, so that was nice at least.

First pack: Darvish portrait, Masahide Kobayashi card
Second pack: Dragonbutts. Nakata portrait, cards of Asakura and Kawakami
Third pack: Pitcherlicious. Iwase, Wakui, Uehara
Fourth pack: Fun. Hichori, Fukumori, Kroon, Ramirez
Fifth pack: Yagi, Shinjo, and Yoshinobu Takahashi
Sixth pack: Hair. Daisuke Miura, and a Kenta Kurihara portrait


Touch the Game - six packs

I'm including these here because I also bought three packs of the Rookie Edition lately. I really just want to collect one from each team since they have the "new player picture" on the back. Though the cards are really cute too, so it's not all bad. They have the incoming players, and then some 2006 rookies as well, in action. Plus I got another Naomichi Donoue card, which is always exciting. I'm only missing one team now, and that's Rakuten. I wonder if the entire set is rarer because of Masahiro Tanaka?


Rookie edition - some loose cards, some booked cards

My next card post is going to talk about the neat series of cards I got yesterday at Mint, as well as a rant about the Back to the 70's card set, perhaps.

PSA: Matsuzaka vs. Kin-chan

Seen on a poster in Yokohama yesterday:

Charity Dream Match! Kin-chan vs. Daisuke Matsuzaka!

Yeah, so Kinichi Hagimoto's Ibaraki Golden Golds will be playing an exhibition game against Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Yokohama Samurai baseball club. I assume Matsuzaka will be at least throwing out a ceremonial first pitch, though I'm not sure whether he'll actually pitch in the game itself. It seems to imply he's leading the team, not playing on it (much like Kin-chan, who is like 66 years old and a baseball-team-owning comedian, not a baseball player).

It's at Yokohama Stadium on January 19th at 1:30pm (doors are at noon). Tickets are 3500 yen for reserved infield, 2500 yen for unreserved seats for adults, 1500 yen for unreserved seats for children, and take 500 off the price of each if you buy it before the day of the game.

Honestly, if it wasn't on a SATURDAY afternoon when I have work, I'd totally be there. I even saw the poster and was like "WHOA! GOLDEN GOLDS! MATSUZAKA! I'M SO THERE! WAIT! NO I'M NOT!" So apparently my quest to actually go to a Golden Golds game and cheer for Ayumi is put on hold for a bit longer... if any of you can actually go to this game, I'd love to hear about it afterwards, seriously!