Awesome day of baseball geekery
Dude what an awesome day.
A few days ago![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fuj asked if I could go hunt down some special card cases for him at a card trading shop in Ryogoku. Well, I had never been to Ryogoku and I love baseball cards, and Pau and I had been talking about trading cards again sometime, so... I suggested we should go to this R&B21 place.
I met up with Pau at Ryogoku station and we found the shop a block away. It was crazy -- this place has tons of MLB cards, tons of Hockey cards, Basketball cards, FOOTBALL cards, etc, etc -- but no Japanese baseball cards! Seriously! Anyway, we saw some card holders and weren't sure if they were the right ones, so with Pau's help I managed to express that I had a friend in Canada who wanted these big holders for his hockey cards, and they sold me the Phoenix cardholder, and gave me an English paper with it, and said that they actually invented the cardholder and have the patent and are happy to ship worldwide, so... cool.
We wandered around Ryogoku a little bit (glanced at the Sumo stadium and the Edo museum) and then went to our real destination, Jimbocho.
On the way to Jimbocho itself, we got sidetracked by stopping at Kua'Aina for lunch (the Hawaiian burger joint that I go up to Saitama-Shintoshin when I need my burger fix). I had a tuna-avocado sandwich, Pau had a huge burger, and we split a salad... and somehow ended up hanging out there for like 2 hours, going through our whole NPB card collections team by team and giving each other our extra doubles. Wheeeeeeee card trading is so awesome!
Our first stop in Jimbocho was the Mint baseball card shop and we ended up there for a bloody long time of course, looking through old sets of cards from the 1990's and whatnot. I ended up buying a cardboard box to keep cards in, and some single cards that I really wanted from this year's set, and then both of us bought "Fukubukuro" bags. These are basically "lucky bags" where they say something like "This costs 1000 yen but has 3000 yen worth of cards in it!" In department stores or elsewhere it's like, you buy these bags and have no idea what's in it, and could end up with complete crap or end up with complete awesome stuff.
Well, after a stop at Shosen and Sanseido and Wonder to look at baseball magazines -- and to fruitlessly look for a Japan Series program, sigh -- we went to a Doutor coffee shop and just hung out there for a few hours.
First, we opened card sets. Goddamn that was awesome! We had bought out the last 6 packs of Nostalgic Baseball cards at Sanseido, each of us buying 3. Pau has a lot more of the set than I do, so I told him he could have any cards from my sets that he didn't get. I think he got 1 new card in his 3 packs but he got 4 or 5 from my packs, so yay. He gave me ALL of his doubles, so now I've got around half the set too! Yay! What beautiful cards!
Then we opened our Fukubukuro bags. Turns out that mine had 3 Fukuoka Softbank Hawks packs in it, 3 Chunichi Dragons packs, two Draft Story packs, and an autograph card from Rakuten outfielder Takahiro Yamazaki. I ended up trading Pau my two BBM 1st Series packs that I'd bought at Sanseido for his Chunichi Dragons packs, and then we went on another mad plastic-ripping rampage, pausing occasionally to exclaim things like "dude! Mahara!" and whatnot.
I think this was my first time opening cards with someone else since, actually, whenfuj and I had been ripping open some rack packs of 1988 Donruss or something like that a few years ago. I really don't get to geek out about baseball cards very much WITH other people anymore. Have I mentioned how damn cool Pau is?
Anyway, my first Draft Story pack had, I kid you not, an Ichiro card, a Nishioka, a Kazu Wada, a Hamanaka, and a Naoki Takahashi (older player). Both of Pau's packs mostly had old old players so I wasn't too excited.
I open my second DS pack and I swear the first card is Ibata, so I'm like IBATA! OMG! The second card is Uehara. OMG UEHARA! The third is Furuki, so whatever. Then the fourth is MICHIHIRO OGASAWARA and I nearly completely flip out, it's this cute young smiling catcher Ogasawara on the Fighters. Before Ogasawara went to the Dark Side I was totally obsessing over finding one of his rookie cards. SO CUTE! At that point I notice the fifth card in the pack...
...it's Daisuke fucking Matsuzaka.
We're both stunned.
Pau's just like "Wow, you pulled the best pack EVER."
Anyway, I also literally have a card for every Dragons coach ever in existence now, thanks to those team sets. Team sets suck because it's just all of these random guys you've never ever heard of and don't care about, and you just hope to get a cool Kenshin card or something, I swear.
After that, we played a baseball dice game called Replay Baseball for a while. We played a game of the 2005 Mariners vs. the 2005 Athletics. That was so funny! King Felix started against Danny Haren and the A's won 2-1. The funniest thing is that while rolling dice and seeing the results I kept feeling like I totally remembered all of these things happening in real life in 2005, heh.
Anyway, by then it was 9pm and we got kicked out of the coffeeshop, so we went home. Something awesome is also that we had looked at the German board games in Shosen and it turns out Pau likes board games too, so when he gets back from winter break, we totally have to have a board games night! I'm really excited about that. I miss playing board games a lot. Now I just need a volleyball group and a ballroom social dance and my life will be back to normal! Well, er, as normal as possible while living across the ocean and all.
A few days ago
fuj asked if I could go hunt down some special card cases for him at a card trading shop in Ryogoku. Well, I had never been to Ryogoku and I love baseball cards, and Pau and I had been talking about trading cards again sometime, so... I suggested we should go to this R&B21 place.I met up with Pau at Ryogoku station and we found the shop a block away. It was crazy -- this place has tons of MLB cards, tons of Hockey cards, Basketball cards, FOOTBALL cards, etc, etc -- but no Japanese baseball cards! Seriously! Anyway, we saw some card holders and weren't sure if they were the right ones, so with Pau's help I managed to express that I had a friend in Canada who wanted these big holders for his hockey cards, and they sold me the Phoenix cardholder, and gave me an English paper with it, and said that they actually invented the cardholder and have the patent and are happy to ship worldwide, so... cool.
We wandered around Ryogoku a little bit (glanced at the Sumo stadium and the Edo museum) and then went to our real destination, Jimbocho.
On the way to Jimbocho itself, we got sidetracked by stopping at Kua'Aina for lunch (the Hawaiian burger joint that I go up to Saitama-Shintoshin when I need my burger fix). I had a tuna-avocado sandwich, Pau had a huge burger, and we split a salad... and somehow ended up hanging out there for like 2 hours, going through our whole NPB card collections team by team and giving each other our extra doubles. Wheeeeeeee card trading is so awesome!
Our first stop in Jimbocho was the Mint baseball card shop and we ended up there for a bloody long time of course, looking through old sets of cards from the 1990's and whatnot. I ended up buying a cardboard box to keep cards in, and some single cards that I really wanted from this year's set, and then both of us bought "Fukubukuro" bags. These are basically "lucky bags" where they say something like "This costs 1000 yen but has 3000 yen worth of cards in it!" In department stores or elsewhere it's like, you buy these bags and have no idea what's in it, and could end up with complete crap or end up with complete awesome stuff.
Well, after a stop at Shosen and Sanseido and Wonder to look at baseball magazines -- and to fruitlessly look for a Japan Series program, sigh -- we went to a Doutor coffee shop and just hung out there for a few hours.
First, we opened card sets. Goddamn that was awesome! We had bought out the last 6 packs of Nostalgic Baseball cards at Sanseido, each of us buying 3. Pau has a lot more of the set than I do, so I told him he could have any cards from my sets that he didn't get. I think he got 1 new card in his 3 packs but he got 4 or 5 from my packs, so yay. He gave me ALL of his doubles, so now I've got around half the set too! Yay! What beautiful cards!
Then we opened our Fukubukuro bags. Turns out that mine had 3 Fukuoka Softbank Hawks packs in it, 3 Chunichi Dragons packs, two Draft Story packs, and an autograph card from Rakuten outfielder Takahiro Yamazaki. I ended up trading Pau my two BBM 1st Series packs that I'd bought at Sanseido for his Chunichi Dragons packs, and then we went on another mad plastic-ripping rampage, pausing occasionally to exclaim things like "dude! Mahara!" and whatnot.
I think this was my first time opening cards with someone else since, actually, when
fuj and I had been ripping open some rack packs of 1988 Donruss or something like that a few years ago. I really don't get to geek out about baseball cards very much WITH other people anymore. Have I mentioned how damn cool Pau is?Anyway, my first Draft Story pack had, I kid you not, an Ichiro card, a Nishioka, a Kazu Wada, a Hamanaka, and a Naoki Takahashi (older player). Both of Pau's packs mostly had old old players so I wasn't too excited.
I open my second DS pack and I swear the first card is Ibata, so I'm like IBATA! OMG! The second card is Uehara. OMG UEHARA! The third is Furuki, so whatever. Then the fourth is MICHIHIRO OGASAWARA and I nearly completely flip out, it's this cute young smiling catcher Ogasawara on the Fighters. Before Ogasawara went to the Dark Side I was totally obsessing over finding one of his rookie cards. SO CUTE! At that point I notice the fifth card in the pack...
...it's Daisuke fucking Matsuzaka.
We're both stunned.
Pau's just like "Wow, you pulled the best pack EVER."
Anyway, I also literally have a card for every Dragons coach ever in existence now, thanks to those team sets. Team sets suck because it's just all of these random guys you've never ever heard of and don't care about, and you just hope to get a cool Kenshin card or something, I swear.
After that, we played a baseball dice game called Replay Baseball for a while. We played a game of the 2005 Mariners vs. the 2005 Athletics. That was so funny! King Felix started against Danny Haren and the A's won 2-1. The funniest thing is that while rolling dice and seeing the results I kept feeling like I totally remembered all of these things happening in real life in 2005, heh.
Anyway, by then it was 9pm and we got kicked out of the coffeeshop, so we went home. Something awesome is also that we had looked at the German board games in Shosen and it turns out Pau likes board games too, so when he gets back from winter break, we totally have to have a board games night! I'm really excited about that. I miss playing board games a lot. Now I just need a volleyball group and a ballroom social dance and my life will be back to normal! Well, er, as normal as possible while living across the ocean and all.
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In an alternative universe there's a version of that post which concludes
In department stores or elsewhere it's like, you buy these bags and have no idea what's in it, and could end up with complete crap or end up with complete awesome stuff.
Well, after a stop at Shosen and Sanseido and Wonder to look at baseball magazines -- and to fruitlessly look for a Japan Series program, sigh -- we went to a Doutor coffee shop and just hung out there for a few hours.
First, we opened card sets. Goddamn that sucked. At least it went quickly, so we played Replay Baseball twice.
...but I'm glad it's not yours.