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Card bored
I can't wait for real baseball to start again so I can stop being a ridiculous card geek.
Okay, so this morning I met up with Carl and Oren for about two hours before they had to go get on a plane to go back to America and all. We ended up going back to Namjatown for lunch, getting some crazy-ass gyoza at the Osaka gyoza stand, then wandering around for a while and finding some ice cream. Despite the obvious temptation, we didn't eat any of the crazy flavors we found in the Cup Ice Cream Museum, like the miso ramen flavor, and instead got "normal" flavors like "black sesame gelato". Yeah. Anyway, they had to go catch the Narita Express after that, so I accompanied Carl back to the lockers and then walked with him to the train and said goodbye. Oh, we passed an "American Pharmacy" on the way which I will go back to someday for soap, I think. Anyway.
Since I had to pay to get into the train station in the first place, I figured I might as well actually GO somewhere, so I went one stop to Mejiro and went to the Book-Off there, which I hadn't been to since 2001 I think. I found a lot of interesting stuff but didn't buy any of it except for finding the Gwashi album with the song c-r-a-c-k-ER on it for 250 yen, which uh, I used to be totally sick of, but that was like 5 years ago when some Seattle Bemani people sang it ALL THE TIME ahem. I haven't listened to the CD yet but I'm sure it'll be all full of laughs. Nunununununununnunu.
Then I... went back to east Ikebukuro and found the Mint card/memorabilia branch that I'd spotted when we were walking to/from Sunshine. And I went in. The first floor wasn't so much baseball, was more soccer and whatnot, but the second floor had a bazillion boxes of old cards and new cards and whatnot so I pretty much just dove in. I realized that I was the only female in the store for the entire time, and the only foreigner, but nobody said anything about it. I listened to the store proprietor talking to a guy about how much various signed cards were worth, and when he said "Well, Ogasawara cards went up a lot in value when he signed with the Giants" I almost was going to be like "WTF" out loud, but caught myself.
My new project is to find an actual real "Tadanori Ishii" baseball card from the 1989-1992 time period before he changed names/positions. Alas, this place had some cards going back to 1990, but no Ishii. I DID, however, get a Shigetoshi Hasegawa rookie card from 1992, for 50 yen. It was amazing how they'd have Takashi Saito cards for 50 yen right next to Kazuhiro Sasaki cards for 700 yen, same year/set, too. The other cards I got at this store were from the Rookie Edition set. I had decided I would buy one Rakuten card since that's the only team I didn't have yet -- BUT, if I was gonna spend 50 yen on like, Naoto Watanabe, why not just splurge the 300 yen for Masahiro Tanaka? So I did that. And then I made the mistake of looking through the Rookie Edition insert cards and I found a Masahiko Morino card in with the "1997 Rookie Special" reflectors and it's SO CUTE and so uh... yeah. I actually looked for early Morino cards and would you know, he isn't IN the first few years' worth of Chunichi cards for his career? SHEESH. Anyway, I got two packs of 1st Edition 2007 BBM and the three cards and that's it for the first shop.
Then I went and looked around Bic Camera for a while for fun. I found some camera bags I might be interested in, but I'm still thinking about it. And I drooled over the 18-200 VR lens again (but still can't bring myself to drop the 80,000 yen on it).
Stopped by Akabane and my key was in the GEOS mailbox so I am happy and less worried now.
I went to Urawa after that. Keep in mind that it was around 4:30pm by this point, and starting to get dark. But I found the Urawa branch of Mint as well. This one was a LOT quieter than the Ikebukuro ones, also a lot smaller. There was one table and a teenager was there rooting through boxes of Urawa Reds and assorted soccer cards. The proprietor of this one was a guy in his late 30's, but he seemed pretty nice and didn't object when I pretty much stood there for a good hour and a half going through ALL of his cards from before 2000. Yeah, I got pretty carried away, and to my credit there were a lot of cards I saw and said "OOOOH" and then didn't buy. To some extent it's really just neat to SEE the cards rather than to own them, to be honest, and just getting to look at the Ochiai retirement reflector set from BBM 1999 is just fine, I didn't need to buy them for 500 yen each. Same for the imprint autograph cards I looked through... "no, Deanna, you really DON'T need a Hichori signature card." Sadly, I still couldn't find an early Ishii card, although I did find some other really interesting early cards, and a LOT of Motonobu Tanishige cards from his Baystars days, also Denney Tomori when he was called Yui and had a ridiculous amount of facial hair.
What I got, anyway (these are all 50 yen except the Ochiai player cards at 200/100)
BBM 1993: Rick Schu! (NHF), Yukio Tanaka (NHF), Takashi Saitoh (YBS, this is his rookie card)
BBM 1997: Atsunori Inaba (YS), Hiromitsu Ochiai (NHF)
BBM 1998: Dave Hansen (HT), Hiromitsu Ochiai (NHF), Kazuo Fukumori (YBS, not rookie but damn young)
BBM 2007 Team: Hiroki Kuroda "Carp Spirit" 3-Set, Tomonori Maeda "Carp Spirit" 3-set, Nagisa Arakaki "Violent" 3-set
It all came in for just over 1000 yen so I don't feel too bad. See, a Fukubukuro costs 1000 yen, so as long as I don't go over 1000 yen I'm somehow okay with it.
(Cards I didn't get but am now like "Next time I'm there.." about: a Chunichi middle infield card with Tatsunami and Taneda from 1993 or so. A Takahiro Saeki signed card circa 1996 or so for 100 yen. Norihiro Komada. "FUTURE STARS" cards from 1998 of Ibata, Hanshin's Sekimoto, and... yakult's Ryuuji Miyade! Also maybe the Akinori Iwamura rookie card I saw for 100 yen.)
When I went to pay for my cards, the proprietor was going through and pricing a bunch of cards including the Atsuya Furuta retirement card set that was recently released. It costs like 4000 yen and I'm kind of skeptical about it. So I asked him, "are those the new Furuta set?" and he said "yeah, these are the special retirement cards, they're pretty nice," and I said "I haven't seen them yet!" and he said "Here, take a look!" and handed me the entire pile. I did an appropriate amount of exclaiming "sugoi!" and babbling about "ookina megane" and he laughed.
Anyway, by the time I got out of the Urawa store, it was like 6:30pm. Which meant not only that it was dark, but that it was REALLY FUCKING COLD. So rather than do anything else at ALL, I decided to just head home. It was so so so so so cold. SO COLD. I came home and turned on my heat and just sort of huddled in front of my space heater for like 30 minutes, no joke.
I realized I should probably do laundry if I was going to just be hanging around home catatonic-like, except that since the temperature was below freezing I couldn't use my own laundry machine (it's outdoors on the balcony and only uses cold water so I worried it might actually freeze). I did laundry at the laundromat and did grocery shopping in the meantime as well, and also got dinner at Katsuya, and it was super-hot and warmed me up wonderfully but by the time I rode my bike the 3-4 blocks back from there I was already freezing again. Argh. Fortunately, laundrying went pretty smoothly overall, just took longer than usual because I was splitting things into "dryer" and "non-dryer" and that required more trips back and forth.
OH, I finally kind of met my next-door neighbor for the first time! I was going back to the laundromat to put things in the dryer, so as I'm locking my door I hear someone coming up the steps. So I said "Konbanwa," and he answered "Konbanwa," and I started down the steps, and then I turned and asked in Japanese, "Errr, are you my neighbor?" and he said "Yeah, I am," so I said "Oh! Nice to meet you!" And he answered "Nice to meet you too," yoroshiku, etc, and then I smiled and went down the stairs and all, because it was COLD out. Anyway, he seems to be in his mid-to-late 30's. I wonder what his story is. Wonder if I'll ever find out.
I forget where the rest of the evening went; I've been so lethargic due to cold. I cleaned up stuff here a bit, while watching Pop'n'Music concert DVDs. Also I was looking through maps and whatnot. I'm going to try to go down to Enoshima/Fujisawa tomorrow maybe, unless I get apathetic due to the cold. I'll ride the monorail and visit some more baseball card stores most likely :)
Okay, so this morning I met up with Carl and Oren for about two hours before they had to go get on a plane to go back to America and all. We ended up going back to Namjatown for lunch, getting some crazy-ass gyoza at the Osaka gyoza stand, then wandering around for a while and finding some ice cream. Despite the obvious temptation, we didn't eat any of the crazy flavors we found in the Cup Ice Cream Museum, like the miso ramen flavor, and instead got "normal" flavors like "black sesame gelato". Yeah. Anyway, they had to go catch the Narita Express after that, so I accompanied Carl back to the lockers and then walked with him to the train and said goodbye. Oh, we passed an "American Pharmacy" on the way which I will go back to someday for soap, I think. Anyway.
Since I had to pay to get into the train station in the first place, I figured I might as well actually GO somewhere, so I went one stop to Mejiro and went to the Book-Off there, which I hadn't been to since 2001 I think. I found a lot of interesting stuff but didn't buy any of it except for finding the Gwashi album with the song c-r-a-c-k-ER on it for 250 yen, which uh, I used to be totally sick of, but that was like 5 years ago when some Seattle Bemani people sang it ALL THE TIME ahem. I haven't listened to the CD yet but I'm sure it'll be all full of laughs. Nunununununununnunu.
Then I... went back to east Ikebukuro and found the Mint card/memorabilia branch that I'd spotted when we were walking to/from Sunshine. And I went in. The first floor wasn't so much baseball, was more soccer and whatnot, but the second floor had a bazillion boxes of old cards and new cards and whatnot so I pretty much just dove in. I realized that I was the only female in the store for the entire time, and the only foreigner, but nobody said anything about it. I listened to the store proprietor talking to a guy about how much various signed cards were worth, and when he said "Well, Ogasawara cards went up a lot in value when he signed with the Giants" I almost was going to be like "WTF" out loud, but caught myself.
My new project is to find an actual real "Tadanori Ishii" baseball card from the 1989-1992 time period before he changed names/positions. Alas, this place had some cards going back to 1990, but no Ishii. I DID, however, get a Shigetoshi Hasegawa rookie card from 1992, for 50 yen. It was amazing how they'd have Takashi Saito cards for 50 yen right next to Kazuhiro Sasaki cards for 700 yen, same year/set, too. The other cards I got at this store were from the Rookie Edition set. I had decided I would buy one Rakuten card since that's the only team I didn't have yet -- BUT, if I was gonna spend 50 yen on like, Naoto Watanabe, why not just splurge the 300 yen for Masahiro Tanaka? So I did that. And then I made the mistake of looking through the Rookie Edition insert cards and I found a Masahiko Morino card in with the "1997 Rookie Special" reflectors and it's SO CUTE and so uh... yeah. I actually looked for early Morino cards and would you know, he isn't IN the first few years' worth of Chunichi cards for his career? SHEESH. Anyway, I got two packs of 1st Edition 2007 BBM and the three cards and that's it for the first shop.
Then I went and looked around Bic Camera for a while for fun. I found some camera bags I might be interested in, but I'm still thinking about it. And I drooled over the 18-200 VR lens again (but still can't bring myself to drop the 80,000 yen on it).
Stopped by Akabane and my key was in the GEOS mailbox so I am happy and less worried now.
I went to Urawa after that. Keep in mind that it was around 4:30pm by this point, and starting to get dark. But I found the Urawa branch of Mint as well. This one was a LOT quieter than the Ikebukuro ones, also a lot smaller. There was one table and a teenager was there rooting through boxes of Urawa Reds and assorted soccer cards. The proprietor of this one was a guy in his late 30's, but he seemed pretty nice and didn't object when I pretty much stood there for a good hour and a half going through ALL of his cards from before 2000. Yeah, I got pretty carried away, and to my credit there were a lot of cards I saw and said "OOOOH" and then didn't buy. To some extent it's really just neat to SEE the cards rather than to own them, to be honest, and just getting to look at the Ochiai retirement reflector set from BBM 1999 is just fine, I didn't need to buy them for 500 yen each. Same for the imprint autograph cards I looked through... "no, Deanna, you really DON'T need a Hichori signature card." Sadly, I still couldn't find an early Ishii card, although I did find some other really interesting early cards, and a LOT of Motonobu Tanishige cards from his Baystars days, also Denney Tomori when he was called Yui and had a ridiculous amount of facial hair.
What I got, anyway (these are all 50 yen except the Ochiai player cards at 200/100)
BBM 1993: Rick Schu! (NHF), Yukio Tanaka (NHF), Takashi Saitoh (YBS, this is his rookie card)
BBM 1997: Atsunori Inaba (YS), Hiromitsu Ochiai (NHF)
BBM 1998: Dave Hansen (HT), Hiromitsu Ochiai (NHF), Kazuo Fukumori (YBS, not rookie but damn young)
BBM 2007 Team: Hiroki Kuroda "Carp Spirit" 3-Set, Tomonori Maeda "Carp Spirit" 3-set, Nagisa Arakaki "Violent" 3-set
It all came in for just over 1000 yen so I don't feel too bad. See, a Fukubukuro costs 1000 yen, so as long as I don't go over 1000 yen I'm somehow okay with it.
(Cards I didn't get but am now like "Next time I'm there.." about: a Chunichi middle infield card with Tatsunami and Taneda from 1993 or so. A Takahiro Saeki signed card circa 1996 or so for 100 yen. Norihiro Komada. "FUTURE STARS" cards from 1998 of Ibata, Hanshin's Sekimoto, and... yakult's Ryuuji Miyade! Also maybe the Akinori Iwamura rookie card I saw for 100 yen.)
When I went to pay for my cards, the proprietor was going through and pricing a bunch of cards including the Atsuya Furuta retirement card set that was recently released. It costs like 4000 yen and I'm kind of skeptical about it. So I asked him, "are those the new Furuta set?" and he said "yeah, these are the special retirement cards, they're pretty nice," and I said "I haven't seen them yet!" and he said "Here, take a look!" and handed me the entire pile. I did an appropriate amount of exclaiming "sugoi!" and babbling about "ookina megane" and he laughed.
Anyway, by the time I got out of the Urawa store, it was like 6:30pm. Which meant not only that it was dark, but that it was REALLY FUCKING COLD. So rather than do anything else at ALL, I decided to just head home. It was so so so so so cold. SO COLD. I came home and turned on my heat and just sort of huddled in front of my space heater for like 30 minutes, no joke.
I realized I should probably do laundry if I was going to just be hanging around home catatonic-like, except that since the temperature was below freezing I couldn't use my own laundry machine (it's outdoors on the balcony and only uses cold water so I worried it might actually freeze). I did laundry at the laundromat and did grocery shopping in the meantime as well, and also got dinner at Katsuya, and it was super-hot and warmed me up wonderfully but by the time I rode my bike the 3-4 blocks back from there I was already freezing again. Argh. Fortunately, laundrying went pretty smoothly overall, just took longer than usual because I was splitting things into "dryer" and "non-dryer" and that required more trips back and forth.
OH, I finally kind of met my next-door neighbor for the first time! I was going back to the laundromat to put things in the dryer, so as I'm locking my door I hear someone coming up the steps. So I said "Konbanwa," and he answered "Konbanwa," and I started down the steps, and then I turned and asked in Japanese, "Errr, are you my neighbor?" and he said "Yeah, I am," so I said "Oh! Nice to meet you!" And he answered "Nice to meet you too," yoroshiku, etc, and then I smiled and went down the stairs and all, because it was COLD out. Anyway, he seems to be in his mid-to-late 30's. I wonder what his story is. Wonder if I'll ever find out.
I forget where the rest of the evening went; I've been so lethargic due to cold. I cleaned up stuff here a bit, while watching Pop'n'Music concert DVDs. Also I was looking through maps and whatnot. I'm going to try to go down to Enoshima/Fujisawa tomorrow maybe, unless I get apathetic due to the cold. I'll ride the monorail and visit some more baseball card stores most likely :)