Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame

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). &n…

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Rakuten Global Market has got a free shipping deal going on with some of the stores that sell through it.  They’ll pay up to 5000 yen of your shipping costs if you spend 10000 yen at one of the stores.  The deal is good through 10 AM Jap…

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Hitoshi Tamura of the Baystars hit two home runs Friday night against Yomiuri, including a three run sayonora shot in the bottom of the ninth, turning a 10-9 Giant lead into a 12-10 Baystar victory.Tamura is back in Yokohama (the team he was originally…

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A couple months back Ryan posted what I thought was a very interesting card that he’d found in a shop in Nagoya – a card of 2000 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team member Yoshikazu Doi.  This card was apparently from a larger set that Upper Deck did f…

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Ho-hum, another day, another 2000 hit milestone reached.  Today it was Motonobu Tanishige of the Dragons getting hits 1999 and 2000.  If it seems like there’s a lot of guys reaching 2000 hits lately, you’re right.  This is the third one …

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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 Sig…

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It’s probably not getting the press it deserves today given the Matsui/Nagashima event but another piece of baseball history occurred today – Norihiro Nakamura of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars notched his 2000th hit.  Nakamura became the 43rd player …

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The big event in Japanese baseball today was the pre-game ceremony at the Tokyo Dome honoring Hideki Matsui and Shigeo Nagashima.  It was both a retirement ceremony for Matsui and also an awards ceremony as the two men were given the People’s Hono…

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Brad “Animal” Lesley passed away last Saturday from kidney failure at age 54.  Lesley spent two years playing in Japan (1986-87 for the Hankyu Braves) and then spent a number of years as a character in a Japanese game show called Takeshi’s Castle….

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Tomonori Maeda of the Carp was hit by a pitch last week from Masaya Emura and broke his wrist.  He had surgery on Thursday and will likely be out for three months.  Maeda is 41 and there may be some question about whether or not he simply ret…

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Deanna Rubin had a post up the other day talking about a perfect game thrown last Sunday (the 21st) in the Tokyo Big Six collegiate baseball league by Yuhei Takanashi of Waseda against perennially hapless Tokyo. 2011 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #2…

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The latest Prestige Collectibles Auction is running from now until May 7.  As always, lots of cool vintage stuff available.

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On Thursday Dragons closer Hitoki Iwase notched his 350th career save.  When asked by a reporter what was next, he said “number 351″.Here’s a card celebrating his 250th save, slightly less than three years ago (2010 BBM 20th Anniversary “Grea…

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The Gary SouthShore RailCats of the independent American Association announced that they signed former Baystar and Fighter pitcher Takahiro Matsuka.  Matsuka was taken in the ninth(!) round of the 2005 draft* by Yokohama from Tokyo University. &nb…

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Some new items of interest:BBM has released information on a boatload of sets in the last couple weeks.  They’ve announced this year’s team sets for the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Giants and Marines.  They are all pack based sets with base se…

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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 th…

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This week I thought I’d show off some more cards I picked up in Japan.  There’s a couple years that I don’t have many Calbee cards from, so I wanted to add some cards from those years.  Luckily, several of the stores I went to had ample colle…

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Former Yomiuri Giants and Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher Takumi Ohtomo has passed away at age 88.  Ohtomo played for the Giants from 1950 until 1959, then spent 1960 with the Buffaloes.I’ve got a couple of bromide cards of him from the 1950′s:I think …

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Mint Yokohama, YokohamaThe final store I went to in Japan was Mint’s store in Yokohama.   This store is located on the second floor of a building about four or five blocks north of Yokohama station.  I was pretty happy that I was able to walk…

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Well, it’s taken me nine years, but I have finally completed the 2004 BBM 1st Version set.  When I arrived in Tokyo a month ago, I needed 110 cards of the 440 card set.  (I actually considered looking for a complete set rather than buying sin…

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      Awhile ago I signed up for an account on eCRATER.com. eCRATER offers free online storefronts, complete with shopping cart capability.  Customization options are very limited, so all the stores look very similar, but hey…it’s free and I’m…

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Biblio, JinbochoJinbocho is neighborhood in Tokyo’s Chiyoda ward that is world renown for it’s bookstores.  On the corner of a couple unnamed streets here is a small bookstore called Biblio that’s packed to the gills with baseball books and memora…

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Alex Ramirez homered for the Baystars at Jingu Stadium today for his 2000th career hit in Japan.  Ramirez is the first foreign player to reach this milestone exclusively in Japan.  It’s kind of neat that he got the hit against the Swallows, t…

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There was a big announcement released from Calbee today.  I’ll quote from Calbee spokeswoman Eipuriru Furu’s statement:For the last several years, Calbee has been making their subsets more and more mirror subsets and sets from BBM.  For examp…

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The Giants beat the Carp today in extra innings with a Sayonara single by Shinnosuke Abe scoring Hisayoshi Chono in the bottom of the eleventh.   Helping to set up the winning run was a double by Ryota Wakiya that scored Kenji Yano with the tying …

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I’m going to interrupt the posts on my trip again and talk about the 2013 BBM Rookie Edition set.  With it being Opening Weekend and all, a lot of the big rookies have been making their debuts.  Shohei Ohtani was the Opening Day right fielder…

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      We interrupt the regularly scheduled mail day series with breaking news…

OBSCURE JAPANESE HENSLEY MEULENS WHITE WHALE LANDED!

       My weekly searches on Yahoo! Auctions Japan finally paid off and, with the services of Kuboten.co…

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Niki, UenoLike Coletre, Discount Niki is an on-line store that has a brick-and-mortar store.  While I’ve known about the on-line store for years, it wasn’t until a couple months ago that I realized they had an actual store front – I finally took a…

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This week I’d thought I’d show off two more cards that I picked up in Japan.  These are both from the huge 1975/76 Calbee set (1472 cards in all).  The first card is Sachio Kingusa (#972).  The second is Hiroaki Inoue (#397).I know I got…

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Sorry to interrupt the stream of posts about my trip (now that I’ve finally started doing them) but BBM waits for no man.  There’s four sets that have been announced in the last few weeks that I haven’t gotten around to mentioning.  They are …

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        Thanks to the greatness that is the Internet, NPB Card Guy went on vacation to Japan and I got souvenirs!  He’d asked me before he left if there was any thing special (aside from the elusive 1994 Chiba Lotte Marines menko set) he c…

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I ended up going to nine cards shops in Tokyo over a three day period, plus another card shop in Yokohama a couple days later.  I’m going to do a series of posts summarizing them over the next few days.Quad Sports, TakadanobabaQuad Sports is a lit…

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I apologize for the lack of posts this week.  My sleep patterns are still a mess (staying up late to watch the final round of the WBC didn’t help) and I’ve been busy in-processing the roughly 700 cards (seen above) I picked up on the trip.  I…

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      A couple of big thanks (of appropriately varying size) to NPB Card Guy of the Japanese Baseball Card Blog and Ryan G of This Card is Cool (among others) for all of the cards you are about to see here (some cards not for use with some se…

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Kenta Maeda goes tonight for Japan against Puerto Rico.  Maeda’s got an odd little warmup routine called the MaeKen Taiso (H/T Yakyu Baka) that I got to see last Sunday at Tokyo Dome.  Hopefully it’ll make the broadcast tonight.Here’s Ma…

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