It's been almost three months since I got back from my trip to Japan so I think I should finally wrap up anything that I've got left to say about the trip.  I was going to do a post about each of the four ballparks I went to but after I started the one about Tokyo Dome, I realized that I didn't have enough to say to fill four posts.  So I'm going to throw it all in this one.

This may be more stream-of-consciousness than normal for me...

Dragons Oendan at Yokohama Stadium

- I did not realize how much I was going to enjoy the cheering sections at the ballgames.  I honestly thought I would find them annoying but instead I found them entertaining and amusing and I missed them at the games at the Tokyo Dome that didn't feature Japan.  It was amazing being surrounded by what felt like the entire Dome doing the "Inaba Jump".  I was astonished by the size of the oendan that showed up at the two open-sen games I went to - especially the size of the group of Marines fans who trekked out to Tokorozawa for the Lions game.  I liked the fact that the Baystars group gave a little cheer for Motonobu Tanishige to commemorate (I assume) the fact that he played 10+ years in Yokohama.  The Dragons fans at the game did not reciprocate with Tony Blanco or Norihiro Nakamura.

- I feel I missed out on a couple traditions as neither open-sen game featured jet balloons or cheerleader squads.  I did get to see the beer girls though and the mascots for the Lions and Baystars.

- The biggest thing that I didn't like at the games was the foul ball screens at the Tokyo Dome, Seibu Dome and Jingu Stadium that were in front of the stands all the way out to the outfield.  It really messed up my field of view and prevented me from getting decent pictures.  And the whistles that they blow every time a foul ball goes into the stands is annoying also.

Yokohama Stadium postcard

- I liked Yokohama Stadium the most of the four ballparks I went to, although I might rate Jingu more highly if I'd seen a Swallows game rather than an industrial league game.  I just really liked the sight lines at the park (It helped that they were the one park that had a foul ball screen  that was only behind home plate).

1992 BBM #102

1999 BBM Lions 20th Anniversary #SL30

Inao's retired number and 1956 Championship marker

- Seibu Dome is strange.  The ballpark was literally built into the side of a hill so there's no real stadium structure.  There's a building behind home plate that's the press box.  Most of the concession stands are literally small stands along the top of the hill (which is where the main concourse is).  The roof was put over the ballpark in 1999 but there's no walls so you still feel the outside weather.  (I keep referring to it as the world's largest car port.)  It's out in the middle of nowhere so almost everyone at the game is trying to get on the same train after the game.  I did like the fact that all the Lions championships (including the ones in Fukuoka) are commemorated on the inside roof of the Dome along with their one retired number (Kazuhisa Inao's #24).

1988 Calbee #19

Left field stands with retired numbers

View from upper deck during Cuba-Netherlands game

- The Tokyo Dome was really nothing special.  I liked the fact that the main concourse was open so that you could see the game going on as you walked along and I thought the sight lines from the upper deck were really good.  They have the retired numbers for the Giants displayed in the outfield.  I didn't like the fact that the area with the most food and memorabilia stands was kind of buried deep in the stadium.

My first view of Jingu Stadium

Pregame ceremony

- There were probably more people on the field than in the stands when I was at Jingu Stadium.  I was there at 9 AM for a game between TDK and Kazusa Magic in an industrial league tournament.  There was no national anthem played at the game, but the two teams lined up and bowed to each other before the game.

- The souvenir stands at Tokyo Dome had the latest BBM issues available.  Yokohama had the Calbee potato chip bags but I didn't see anything else.  I saw no cards at Seibu Dome and there were no stands open when I was at Jingu.

I decided to take in the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame when it opened at 10 on the morning of my first full day in Tokyo.  I was a little concerned that I wouldn't have enough time to go through it before the first WBC game that day (at noon).  It turned out that I was needlessly worried.

The Hall Of Fame is located on the outside of the Tokyo Dome, between Gate 21 and the To-Do Baseball Shop (where I bought a Chunichi Dragons hat).

Hall Of Fame Entrance

Admission is extremely cheap - only 500 yen.  And you can actually save 100 yen by using a coupon from the museum's web site.

I walked in and paid my fee and was rewarded with a small guide for the museum and a postcard featuring the latest inductees to the Hall Of Fame:


The Hall Of Fame is actually located beneath the entrance area, so I went downstairs and saw at the foot of the stairs a small display on the 2013 WBC:


I went to the left into the exhibition area for professional baseball.  This area is split into two rooms.  The first room has "lockers" made up for each of the 12 teams in NBP.  Each locker contains a uniform and hat along with bats, gloves, shoes and other items for players for those teams:

Central League lockers

Pacific League lockers

More Pacific League lockers

Dragons locker

Lions locker - I think it's Hiroyuki Nakajima's uniform

The second room had more historical stuff.  There were displays in the center of the room dedicated to specific players:

Sadaharu Oh's display

Yutaka Fukumoto's display

Sachio Kinugasa's display

Masaichi Kaneda's display

I want to stress that these were the only four players who had displays in this section.  I don't know if they rotate memorabilia from different players through these or if they always just have these four players (a book I have from 1999 that shows pictures from the Hall Of Fame shows these four players' displays as well so maybe they always have them out).  Perhaps it's because they are the all time home run leader (Oh), stolen base leader (Fukumoto), consecutive games played leader (Kinugasa) and victory leader (Kaneda).

The rest of the room had other displays on the wall.  Not being able to read Japanese was a major drawback here.  I'm not quite sure what this display was for:


On the other hand, I didn't need to understand Japanese to know what this was:

Sadaharu Oh's sword

Or this:

Commemorative "slab" for Oh passing Aaron

The next section in the museum was dedicated to the "history of baseball".  Honestly, I don't really remember much from this room.  I don't think I took any pictures.  Again, there were a lot of displays in Japanese that I couldn't read.  But it was in either the previous room or this one that I found a display of baseball cards:

I think these are 1958 Fujiya Carmel cards

1949 Karuta "Dreaming Of Baseball" cards

There was also a display case showing American cards of Japanese players.  I was very disappointed to not see any Calbee or BBM cards displayed anywhere.

The next section was dedicated to amateur baseball.  Lots of high school and college stuff.  I was surprised to see this there:

Cal Ripken World Series trophies

I go all the way to Tokyo and see trophies that were originally awarded about five miles from my house.

There was also a display on the Olympic teams (including the teams made of professionals):


The final room of the "permanent exhibits" was the actual Hall Of Fame - the room containing all the plaques of players.  For some reason, I didn't take a picture of the entire room (probably because of my jet lag), but I took lots of pictures of individual plaques.  Here's a couple:

Sadaharu Oh

Katsuya Nomura

When I came out of the room with the plaques, I was back where I started at the foot of the stairs.  When I had come down the stairs originally I had gone to my left.  I now went to the right.  There was a small area with a wall frieze and a video display (don't remember what it was showing) and several sections of seats.  I assume that these are seats from different ballparks but I don't know which ones:


A little further along was an area where you could swing a bat against an NBP pitcher.  There was a group of high school kids in the museum and they pretty much were monopolizing it:


I think the machine was throwing wiffle balls.  I don't think they'd have displays set up on either side otherwise.  I think the displays had something to do with stadiums but I didn't get a good look.

The final room in the museum was a special exhibit dedicated to the World Baseball Classic.  It had a lot of memorabilia from the 2006 and 2009 tournaments, including the trophies:


There was also a small display of autographed baseball cards (all US cards of non-Japanese players):


There's also a small library at the Hall Of Fame.  Ralph Pearce had suggested that I ask for a particular person that he knew who worked there, but the museum was busy enough that I didn't really want to try.  I was thinking that I might make it back there later in the trip but it didn't happen.

I was kind of surprised at how small the museum was.  I probably didn't spend any more than about 20 minutes there.  I was severely jet lagged so I had limited patience to try to figure anything out much.  I'd hoped to come back again later in the trip and give it another try but time ran out.

I was also surprised that there really wasn't a museum shop.  There were a couple items in display cases upstairs in the entrance hall that you could buy if the person running admissions wasn't busy.  I think everything they had to offer is on this web page.

To summarize - I think the Hall Of Fame is worth taking a look at if you're going to Tokyo anyway, but unlike Cooperstown it's not a place that's worth going way out of your way for.    It's a great way to kill an hour before a game at the Tokyo Dome.

I wanted to talk briefly about a couple other sets I picked up in Japan.  There were three older sets that I bought, so they didn't really fit in with the post I did a few weeks back about the opened box sets I got.

1999 Calbee Series Four Gold Signature Parallel

I picked this up at G-Freak as part of the trade I made with the store owner.  In 1999 and 2000, Calbee produced a gold signature parallel version.  The complete parallel version of each Calbee series was available in a box that could be obtained through some sort of mail order premium (I think there was some sort of "winner" card randomly inserted in the packs).  The box I got was for the fourth series of the 1999 Calbee set (#217 to #270), which included the All Star subset (#252 to #270).  I actually didn't end up with a complete series - the box I got was missing four cards - all members of the Chiba Lotte Marines.  Given that the set included cards of Ichiro and Hideki Matsui, I didn't think it was that big of deal that it was missing Tomohiro Kuroki.  Here's the box and some sample cards:

#244

#230

#265

#256

Box

2005 BBM Tigers 70th Anniversary

#02

#53

#49

#73

#89

2011 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 1987 parallel set

#34

#RP34

#48

I wanted to briefly talk about the eight opened box sets that I bought while in Japan.  The original, unopened sets have the possibility of containing some form of memorabilia or autograph card.  So these were sets that were opened and had those special cards removed and were therefore a fraction of the cost of the unopened versions.  Since I'm really not all that interested in insert or memorabilia cards (at least not enough to pay for them), these were perfect for me.

Since all of these sets are fairly recent, I've included a link to Jambalaya's web page for each set so you can see what all the cards in the set look like (although I'm also showing a sample card from each set).

2011 BBM Farewell set

For each year from 2002 to 2010, BBM would include a subset for players who retired the previous season in either the 1st or 2nd Version sets (or both).  The subset was usually fairly small (less than 10 cards) and frequently had some somewhat noticeable absences (no Tsuyoshi Shinjyo in 2007 or Kazuyoshi Tatsunami in 2010 for example).  Starting in 2011, BBM moved this subset into its own, somewhat larger and more complete box set.  I'm not entirely sure what the name of the set is - I've been calling it the "Farewell" set but it's probably more like "Farewell Heroes".  Certain players in the sets might end up with multiple cards - usually depicting the player with different teams.  I think the most I've seen any player end up with is 3 cards in the set.

The 2011 edition of the set featured 14 players on 27 cards.  There were multiple cards for Kazuo Fukumori (Baystars, Buffaloes and Eagles), Koichi Hori (Orions and Marines), Makoto Kosaka (Marines, Giants and Eagles), Arihito Muramatsu (Daiei Hawks, Blue Wave, Softbank Hawks), Noriyoshi Ohmichi (Nankai Hawks, Daiei Hawks and Giants), Ken Takahashi (playing and do-age), "Yuki" Tanaka (Buffaloes and Swallows) and Akihiro Yano (Dragons, Tigers and do-age) as well as single cards for Atsushi Kizuka, Shigeru Morikasa, Masanobu Ohkubo, Akira Ohtsuka, Makoto Shiozaki and Shinji Taninaka.

#05

2012 BBM Farewell set

The 2012 version of the set also featured 27 cards, but this time featuring 18 players.  There were multiple cards for Osamu Hamanaka (Tigers and Buffaloes), Daisuke Hayakawa (Buffaloes and Marines), Hirotoshi Ishii (playing and retirement ceremony), Satoru Kanemura (Fighters and Tigers), Hidetaka Kawagoe (Buffaloes and Marines), Masahide Kobayashi (Marines and Giants), Shinya Okamoto (Dragons and Lions), Hiroshi Shibahara (Daiei and Softbank Hawks) and Kiyoshi Toyoda (Lions and Giants).  Oddly, there was only a single card devoted to the 29 year career of Kimiyasu Kudoh (shown with the Lions in the 1980's).  The other players included on only one card were Yosuke Hiraishi, Takeharu Katoh, Daisuke Maeda, Satoru Morimoto, Kosuke Noda, Hiroaki Ohnishi, Masaumi Shimizu and Shinji Shimoyama.

#20

2013 BBM Farewell set

There were some fairly significant players to retire at the end of the 2012 season and the 2013 version of the Farewell set expanded to 41 cards to accomodate this.  There are 37 players represented in the set and only the four really big names ended up with multiple cards (2 each):  Takuro Ishii, Kenji Johjima, Tomoaki Kanemoto and Hiroki Kokubo.  I won't list all the other players included this time, but some of the more prominent names are So Taguchi, Shingo Takatsu, Michael Nakamura, Ryuji Miyade and Makoto Imaoka.

#08

2012 BBM Tomoaki Kanemoto Memorial set

In addition to the latest farewell set, BBM put out several box sets last fall to commemorate the careers of Takuro Ishii, Tomoaki Kanemoto and Hiroki Kokubo.  I picked up the Kanemoto box set at Coletre by accident - I had meant to grab the 2011 BBM Farewell set but I wasn't paying close attention to what I was doing and I took this instead.  (I didn't get the 2011 Farewell set until I got to Wrappers two days later.)

Despite the accidental purchase, it's not a bad little set (as the single player sets go).  It contains 27 cards.  The first 18 cards show highlights of his career (5 with the Carp and 13 with the Tigers) and the last nine are entitled "9 Episodes of Kanemoto" - not really sure what that means.  The photography is the typical high quality photography that BBM features in their sets.

#16

2012 BBM Greatest Games - 10-8-1994 Dragons vs Giants set

Unfortunately, the next couple sets I'm going to discuss feature unusually poor photography for BBM sets.  Last fall, BBM started a new series of box sets dedicated to "Greatest Games".  The first set celebrated the final game of the 1994 season (played on October 8) between the Giants and the Dragons in Nagoya.  The two teams were tied for first going into the game, so the winner was going to the Nippon Series and the loser was going home (this being in the pre-Climax Series days).  Spoiler alert - the Giants won.

The set features 36 cards - there are 17 cards for Dragons players (including manager Morimichi Takagi), 14 cards for Giants players (including manager Shigeo Nagashima) and five game highlight cards.  I think all the pictures on the cards were taken at the game itself and that's one of the problems with the set - the photos are terrible.  They are very dark and a lot of the player's faces are in shadow.  I assume the game was a night game and it was not played indoors (the Dragons didn't move into Nagoya Dome until the late 1990's) so this probably accounts for the poor photography.  In addition, the player cards have a couple ugly borders - a white frame onto of a "brick wall" background.  It's just not an attractive set.

#03

2013 BBM Greatest Games 10-22-1973 Tigers vs Giants

The second "Greatest Games" entry suffers from much the same issues as the first set.  This one commemorates the final game of the 1973 season between the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants.  The Giants victory clinched their ninth straight Central League pennant by putting them a half game ahead of the Tigers .  This would be the final Central League pennant for the V9 Giants and for manager Tetsuharu Kawakami.

At 32 cards, the set is slightly smaller than the first one.  There are 18 cards for the Tigers players (and manager Masayusa Kaneda), 10 cards for the Giants players (including Kawakami) and four "Game Highlight" cards.  The photos are all black and white and it's not clear if they were actually taken during the game or not.  Several of the photos are blurry.  The "Game Highlight" cards don't actually show any action from the game - one card shows the starting lineups on the scoreboard at Koshien stadium, one shows Shigeo Nagashima with a cast on his finger - he was injured and did not play in the game or the Nippon Series, one shows two Giants coming off the field with photographers behind them and one shows Kawakami's do-age (which looks like it's being done in a locker room so they couldn't have thrown him very high).  The cards also have an ugly frame on them.  So like the first set, this is not an attractive set.  The set itself had been released just a week or two before I got to Tokyo, so finding an opened set was a little trickier than the others - it wasn't until I got to Wrappers that I found one.  Despite the 1000 yen price tag on the box, I think I only paid 500 yen for it.

One interesting piece of trivia - October 22, 1973 was also the day Ichiro Suzuki was born.

#10

2012 BBM Suntory Dream Match

Last August, Suntory Brwery sponsored another old timer game, this time played up in Sendai as a benefit for earthquake relief.  The set contains 49 cards for the players who actually appeared in the game between the Premium Malts and the Tohoku Japan Heroes.  Some of the bigger names in the set include Randy Bass, Isao Harimoto, Osamu Higashio, Masayuki Kakefu, Shinji Sasaoka, Koji Yamamoto, Norihiro Komada, Masumi Kuwata and Yasushi Tao.  It's not a bad little set - I don't like the borders on the cards but the photography is nice.  This is the third Premium Malts set and I'm actually not sure there's anyone who shows up in this set that hasn't shown up in the previous ones.  If you already have one of the others, there's really no compelling reason to pick this one up.

#32

2012 Hiroshima Athlete Magazine Starting Lineup set

To end this on a higher note, the final opened set I picked up was the first set from Hiroshima Athlete Magazine.  It's called "Starting Lineup" and it exclusively features the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.  The set contains 27 cards - 14 player cards, four cards for 2012 Carp rookies (including Yusuke Nomura), six cards for Carp prospects and three cards for the three guys on the 2012 Carp roster with 2000 hits - Takuro Ishii, Tomonori Maeda and manager Kenjiro Nomura.  It's an attractive set - the design of the player cards resemble a magazine cover.  I've seen previews that Hiroshima Athlete Magazine is going to put out another set featuring OB Carp players.  I'll be looking forward to seeing what they do.

#07