The Tokyo Traveler

As seen on CNN!  Check out this weeks Offbeat iReport images to see one of my shots from the Tokyo Cow Parade 2008.
What worries the Japanese?  Earthquakes and global warming top the list of worries.
Your favorite English language magazine in Tokyo may be hard to find due to the bankruptcy of a major distributor.
Baseball legend Sadaharu Oh has announced that her will retire at the end of the season.  Did you take advantage of the opportunity to see him manage a baseball game in Tokyo this summer?
Maison de la Bourgogne offers French food and fine wine in Kagurazaka.
A kamikaze …read more

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Manma, or food, is the first words spoken by many Japanese babies according to The Mainichi Daily News.  Mama came in a distant 4th on the list of 50 words!
How Japan’s antiquated baseball system is being challenged, again…this time by a semi-pro player.
Have you heard of Metabolic Syndrome?  It’s commonly spoken about in Japan and the government has mandated employers to counsel workers suffering from the syndrome.  Metabolic Syndrome is a cluster of the most dangerous risk factors for a heart attack and one of the tell-tale signs is a bulging waistline.
Shochu, a Japanese alcoholic beverage, has made its …read more

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The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is located in Tokyo Dome City and is a great place to visit for  baseball fans and historians alike.  The museum documents the history of the game in Japan from the late 1800’s, when Horace Wilson, an American Teacher at Ichiban Chugaku (now Tokyo University) first introduced baseball to his students, through to the present day.
Exhibits include over 100 artifacts from professional baseball in Japan that include a well designed locker room setting where you can get a close-up look at the uniforms for each of the twelve professional teams playing in …read more

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Tokyo Underground, written by a foreign university student, is an interesting read about what you can learn from taking Tokyo Metro, the city’s vast and often intimidating subway network.
Townsend Harris was one of the key figures that helped open Japan to the west, was first American consul-general in Japan and negotiated a treaty that established trade between the two countries.  A group from Shimoda, Japan makes an annual pilgrimage to his graveside in Brooklyn, New York to honor his memory.
Jim Allen writes that “Hideo Nomo changed Japanese baseball more than any player of his generation” in his weekly column for …read more

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The best baseball players in Japan will compete in the 2008 Mazda All-Star Game at Yokohama Stadium on Friday, August 1st at 6:10 PM. The Central League will play the Pacific League and will each have a 28 man roster that includes the best players as voted on by the fans, fellow players and coaches.  The August 1st game is the second of two All-Star Game scheduled for 2008, the first will be held the day before at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka.
Mazda will provide green electricity indirectly for this years games under the “Green Power Certification System” by …read more

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Sadaharu Oh is a baseball legend in Japan, he signed with the Yomiuri Giants in 1959 and played for 22 seasons, slugging 868 home runs (Barry Bonds has 762), winning 14 league pennants and 11 Japan Series. In 1962 he was the Central league home run leader, a title that he held for 13 straight seasons, and he won the batting triple crown twice for leading the league in batting average, runs batted in and home runs.
He retired after the 1980 season and became a coach and then the manager of the Yomiuri Giants. In 1988 he ended …read more

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Don’t forget to participate in the poll in the sidebar and leave me a comment at “What do you want to know about Tokyo?“. I’ll be featuring some of the questions and providing answers throughout the month of June.
Anime and Manga are hot in Hollywood – but other American cities are getting in on this popular trend as well.
The Mob in Japan – a true tale of a foreign crime writer who now fears his safety and that of his family because of his reporting on the Yakuza.
The New Age Of Japanese Baseball Player Media Coverage is interesting reading. …read more

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Baseball is Japan’s favorite sport and if you love baseball then no trip to Japan would be complete without a trip to the ballpark. Nippon Professional Baseball has exported the likes of Ichiro, Daisuke Matsuzaka (Dice-K) and Fukudome to MLB and if you are lucky you might get to see the next Japanese slugger or hurler on his home turf before he makes it big in America.
Even if you don’t get to see the next Fukudome you will have a great time at a Japanese baseball game. The fans here form complete cheering sections in the outfield that …read more

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Japanese Royal Tombs opened to Scholars for the first time.
It will cost Japan approximately $100,000 dollars to redesign a commemorative coin because of a copyright dispute with a Brazilian artist.
A new high speed train service connecting Tokyo to Kanagawa Prefecture utilizes a “secret” train track under Tokyo.
Bobby Valentine, a baseball manager for the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan, thinks that Major League teams in the US should send players to the Olympics.
Photo Credit: Flickr, Birra Coin, Like

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