I used to collect baseball cards in the 1990s in the USA and on a whim bought a Japanese pack in a konbini for 500 yen… What I found inside was not the cardboard nostalgia I expected. It was something far more interesting. The pack was from Bandai’s Pro Baseball Fan Stars League (プロ野球 ファンスターズリーグ), …
Read more “I Bought a Pack of Japanese Baseball Cards. They Play the Season.”
Otaru, the historic port city on Hokkaido’s western coast, rarely sits still. Between its canal-side warehouses, hillside streets, and cultural venues, the city maintains a steady rhythm of exhibitions, performances, markets, and community events. Autumn 2026 offers a particularly rich stretch, with overlapping programmes that blend industrial heritage, contemporary art, traditional performing arts, music, and …
New Chitose is the airport you actually want when your flight is delayed, when you’ve got three hours to kill before boarding, when you’re arriving with family who need somewhere to be for an afternoon. It’s the airport where locals from Sapporo will drive out specifically to eat at the ramen dojo or pick up Royce’ bread, because the airport versions are genuinely that good.
The story of how a forgotten Hokkaido location becomes an internationally recognized property market has already happened once, close enough to Otaru to be instructive.