When I stopped by the Nintendo store in Kyōto, I knew I needed to get an product with the company’s oldest mascot on it. No, I don’t mean Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, or even Mr. Game and Watch. I’m talking about… Napoleon Bonaparte?
If you weren’t aware, the Nintendo corporation is much older than video games. It was originally founded in 1889 (Meiji 22) to produce hanafuda cards (花札) — which it still makes today!
A hanafuda deck consists of twelve suits of four cards each, all with abstract designs (originally to evade Edo-era anti-gambling laws). The cards are much thicker than western playing cards (トランプ) but are about a third of the size.
As shown above, Nintendo’s hanafuda come in a box with Napoleon’s portrait on it. That has been the case since at least 1901 (Meiji 34), although the company once had many other brands of cards featuring other historical figures like Saigō Takamori (西鄕 隆盛) and fanciful designs like tengu (天狗).
A rare poster listing all of Nintendo’s onetime
1 card brands (Yamazaki
Isao/Tofugu)
It’s not clear why Napoleon was chosen, why he got top billing, or why he remains the face of hanafuda today. One theory suggests it was copied or acquired from an American brand, which in turn may have been named after an English card game, but this is purely conjecture.
While in Japan, I dabbled in the perfect hobby for obsessive-compulsive travellers like myself: stamp collecting!
All over the country, train stations have distinctive rubber stamps (駅スタンプ) for travellers to mark their stampbooks with to commemorate their journey. These really took off in the 1970s1 when Japanese National Railways installed stamps at 1400 stations as part of its DISCOVER JAPAN campaign.
Prior to then, stamps were already offered at a handful of individual stations; enthusiasts had been collecting commemorative postmarks since the late Meiji era (1900s-1910s). An even earlier tradition had temples and shrines award stamps called goshuin (御朱印) as a proof of pilgrimage for their devotees.
With that said, here are the stamps I collected on our recent trip!
JR West stamps
I collected four classic stamps from JR West’s stations in Kanazawa and Kyōto.
The stamp for Kyōto Station
(京都駅) has very faint ink from repeated use, but I’m pretty sure it shows
the station building, Kyōto Tower
(京都タワー), and the Yasaka
Pagoda (八坂の塔).
JR East stamps
I absolutely love JR East’s refreshed 2020 stamp designs for its Tōkyō stations. Each incorporates one character of the station’s name with some distinctive feature of the surrounding neighbourhood. I collected six stamps from the Yamanote line (山手線) and one from the Chūō line (中央本線).
The stamp for Tōkyō Station
(東京駅) uses the character 東 and depicts the station’s architecture.
The stamp for Ueno Station
(上野駅) uses the character 野 and features Ueno Zoo’s panda, a ubiquitous
mascot of the neighbourhood.
The stamp for Ikebukuro
Station (池袋駅) uses the
character 池 and a neighbourhood pun: Ikebukuro rhymes with fukurō (梟),
meaning “owl”.
The stamp for Yūrakuchō
Station (有楽町駅) uses the
character 楽 and celebrates the surrounding shopping district and movie
theatres, including the Toho
headquarters.
Train stations aren’t the only places you can get stamps. Tourist information centres at major destinations often have their own stamps for visitors, and even some stores participate in limited-time stamp rallies.
The Imperial Palace East National
Garden
(皇居東御苑), unlike the rest of the palace, is open to the public and has a
stamp commemorating the date of your visit.
Yoyogi Park (代々木公園) is a
quiet oasis in the middle of the big city. The pond and fountains depicted on
its stamp were under maintenance when we visited.
If you’re counting, I collected three separate stamps related to Kenrokuen.
Kanazawa Castle (金沢城) is
right across the street from Kenrokuen.
Stamp collecting in Japan is at least informed by, if not directly descended from, the practice of receiving goshuin (御朱印) on a pilgrimage to a temple or shrine. Conversely, goshuin were influenced by the success of stamp collecting: many sects offer them to collectors and other travellers for a small donation, regardless of faith.
I had one goshuin entered into my stampbook at Honnōji (本能寺) in Kyōto.
The goshuin commemorating my visit to Honnōji on November 16 of the sixth year
of Reiwa.
Leah and I are back from a three-week trip to Japan! It was my first trip to the country, and only my second time away from North America. Over the next few months, you can expect plenty of posts with photos, observations, and souvenirs from the trip.
For now, here’s an overview of our itinerary and some initial thoughts of how it went.
Tōkyō (東京)
Restaurants under the train tracks near Ginza.
We started the trip with four full days in Tōkyō. I was worried I’d be totally overwhelmed, but I was pleasantly surprised by how manageable it was. Part of that was location: our hotel in the centrally-located but less hectic neighbourhood around Ōtemachi (大手町) and Kanda (神田) provided a home base for us to retreat to.
But even the busiest areas of Shibuya (渋谷), Ginza (銀座), and Ikebukuro (池袋) were not as bad as I expected. It turns out that thousands of pedestrians and tens of vehicles is not much more of a sensory overload than an urban experience with hundreds of each.
We mostly stuck to the central core of Tōkyō within the Yamanote Line (JY 山手線) and took advantage of our central location on several metro lines:
I’m very glad I studied the geography and metro lines of Tōkyō before I left!
Locations we visited in Tōkyō.
Kanazawa (金沢)
The wooden bridge to Higashi Chaya (東茶屋) and
Utatsuyama (卯辰山).
After we had our fill of Tōkyō, we took the Hokuriku Shinkansen (北陸新幹線) to Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture (石川県) on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The city is home to roughly half a million people and many traditional arts and crafts dating from the Edo era.
In our three days in Kanazawa, we stayed in the historic Higashiyama (東山) teahouse district and took a bunch of craft workshops I’ll cover in future posts.
The final leg of our trip was five days in Kyōto. The cultural capital is home to lots of historic landmarks and is ground zero for Japan’s challenges for overtourism. Our itinerary was focused more on Kyōto’s traditional crafts than the major tourist destinations, and it became even more so as we adjusted our plans to account for travel fatigue.
With hindsight, it would have been better to plan a slightly shorter trip and stay somewhere on the Karasuma subway line (烏丸線) rather than the tourist-heavy Gion district (祇園), but we still had a very nice time.
The highlight of Kyōto for me was definitely the railway museum — more on that in a future post.
Locations we visited in Kyōto.
Food
It is cliché to talk about all the amazing food one eats on a trip, but this has historically been challenging for me since I have a bit of a fragile stomach.1 Fortunately, Japan is full of food that is tasty and easy on the stomach, so our trip was both gastronomically and gastrointestinally satisfying!
Our favourite go-to meals were cold soba (そば) for Leah and unajū (鰻重) for me, although we also had excellent yakitori (焼き鳥), okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), oyakodon (親子丼), shrimp omurice (オムライス), and grilled salmon teishoku (鮭定食).2 I definitely missed my daily serving of peanut butter, but Japan’s famously incredible convenience stores (コンビニ) made up for it by providing snacks and reasonable emergency meals.
Language
A wall from the Japan Kanji Museum and Library.
It’s been a hot minute since I studied Japanese in university, but I was very thankful for my basic vocabulary and ability to read hiragana, katakana, and a handful of kanji. I’m sure it’s possible to visit Japan without knowing any of the language — million of tourists do it every month — but language was so core to our experience that I have a hard time imagining it.
Multilingual signage can be found everywhere at major attractions, in many restaurants, and on public transportation.3 But it’s a lot more efficient to be able to read and listen for directions in multiple languages, especially in smaller places where the English versions might be slightly dubious.4
I was surprised at how much value I got just from having a working knowledge of katakana. Japanese has a lot of English loanwords, to the point that you can navigate many stores just by sounding things out. At a drugstore, you might see my lips move as I read スキンクリーム as su-ki-n-ku-ri-i-mu — oh, this is skin cream!
People were universally very complimentary of our Japanese skills — not because we were any good, necessarily, but because we were showing consideration by putting in the effort. And they were more than willing to meet us halfway by simplifying their own speech, dropping in English words they knew, and being patient with us. There were a few very special interactions and experiences we were able to have in Japanese, and I’m very grateful to everyone we met for accommodating us.
Back home
We had a wonderful trip, but it’s great to be back home in our own bed with our cat and our routine. I’m sure we’ll be back one day, although it might take a few years to work up the energy for another trip of that length. Until then, I hope you’ll excuse me using this website to look back on my experiences for the next little while!
I recently attended a Seattle Mariners game as part of a Microsoft event. It was my first time at a baseball game, so I recorded a bunch of observations about the experience.
The stadium experience
This was my first time attending any professional sport in person, so I didn’t have any idea what to expect. I checked the stadium rules in advance and found I could bring my camera, but not my camera bag or any of my larger lenses. Fortunately, my wide-angle lens and 20–55mm kit lens — both barely within the regulations — were enough to get some interesting photos.
A big part of the ballpark experience is being able to wander around the stadium; I spent at least half the game exploring rather than sitting in my assigned seat. There’s a lot to look at and do in the stadium, and as long as you’re not blocking anyone’s view during an at-bat, there’s remarkable freedom to walk around the aisles and see the field from different angles.
Baseball is complicated
Many of the Microsoft employees at the game — including myself — are more familiar with cricket than with baseball. Cricket has a reputation in North America for being hard to understand, but when I compare my beginner’s guide to cricket with our deliberations our section had to understand what was going on, I realized that baseball is much more complicated.
Can you decipher these scoreboards?
Answer key (bottom section)
Balls, strikes, and outs are fundamental to the game, relatively easy to explain to a newcomer, and mercifully unabbreviated on the bottom right of the scoreboard.
Each team’s current score is the total number of runs under the “R” column; columns 1–9 show how many runs were scored in each inning. The “H” column counts the number of hits resulting on a runner on base due to the batting team’s efforts; the “E” column counts the number of errors by the fielding team that allowed their opponent to get a runner on base.
I had no idea what the acronym “MVR” stood for until a colleague expanded it to “mound visits remaining”; this refers to a kind of time out the fielding team can take to discuss strategy or switch pitchers.
Answer key (side sections)
The sides of the scoreboard display the current lineup of each team with jersey numbers and positions; the highlighted name tells you whose turn it is to bat. The batting lineup shows one other piece of information for each player:
For players that have not yet batted in the inning, it shows the batting average.
For players that have batted already in the inning, it shows a cryptic acronym that tells you the result of their at-bat.
For pitchers (who do not bat), I think it shows the pitcher’s earned runs average (ERA) which is its own whole thing.
On the right-hand side of the first scoreboard, we see that the name highlighted in yellow is the current batter, Seattle’s Dominic Canzone, who wears number 8 on his jersey, plays left field, and has a batting average of .219.
The three Seattle players above Canzone have already batted this inning. Center fielder Raleigh had a single (recorded as “1B”), as did right fielder Raley. First baseman France is listed as having a “P3” which is apparently the acronym for “out after hitting a pop fly which was caught by the first baseman.”
Answer key (middle section, first scoreboard)
The middle of the first scoreboard shows the statistics of the current batter. I had to look up most of the stats on Wikipedia:
Abbr
Value
Stat
Meaning
G
15
Games
Number of games the batter has played in this year.
AB
32
At-bats
Number of opportunities the batter had to bat, more or less, except that walks and some other outcomes don’t count towards this statistic.
2B
1
Doubles
Number of hits on which the batter was able to safely reach second base.
3B
0
Triples
Number of hits on which the batter was able to safely reach third base.
BB
3
Bases on balls
Number of times the batter was awarded first base after four called balls. (Better known as “walks”.)
SO
11
Strikeouts
Number of times the batter was called out after three strikes.
SB
0
Stolen bases
Number of times the player was able to steal a base. There are a bunch of rules about when a runner can steal a base and when something is scored under this statistic.
CS
0
Caught stealing
Number of times the player was tagged out while attempting to steal a base.
AVG
.219
Batting average
Percentage of at-bats where the batter hit the ball and safely reached a base.
R
4
Runs
Number of times the batter scored a run by crossing home plate.
H
7
Hits
Number of times the batter hit the ball and safely reached a base.
HR
3
Home runs
Number of hits on which the batter was able to safely touch all three bases and cross home plate. (Usually by hitting the ball into the crowd.)
RBI
6
Runs batted in
Number of times the batter’s action allowed another player to score a run.
OBP
.286
On-base percentage
Percentage of the time the batter gets on base, including being awarded first base for a walk or being hit by a pitch.
SLG
.531
Slugging percentage
Average number of bases achieved per at-bat.
OPS
.817
On-base plus slugging
OBP plus SLG, for some reason.
Answer key (scoring decision, second scoreboard)
Now we just need to figure out what “FC, E5, No RBI” is supposed to mean. This was displayed on the jumbotron after the following play:
“FC” stands for “fielder’s choice”, meaning that the third baseman chose to try to get the out at third instead of throwing it to first. This means the hit doesn’t count towards the batter’s statistics. The “E5” means the scorer decided that the Seattle players were safe because of the third baseman’s error.
Finally, the run that scored during the play does not count as an RBI for the batter because if it weren’t for the error, there would have been three outs and the runner wouldn’t have scored.
Before I came to the game I watched a video about camera assignments at professional baseball games and I had fun finding the camera operators at high first, low first, and center field.
The camera operators at center field are responsible for filming each pitch.
I was walking around the concourse when the Mariners’ Ty France hit a home run. While the crowed erupted in cheers, I was excited for a different reason — I was in the perfect position to watch the cable-suspended camera move into position behind third base and film the runner crossing home plate!
The cable operated camera follows the batter along the third base line after a
home run.
Random people keep the ball rolling
To me, no sport is as compelling as all the logistics and anonymous work that goes on behind the scenes. For example, T-Mobile Park still has an analog scoreboard in addition to all the digital ones, which means someone has to be in charge of updating it.
Every time a player gets on base, their team’s batboy runs out to pick up their discarded bat and help switch their gloves. The home team’s batboy is also responsible for refilling the umpire’s stock of extra balls, which happens a lot — MLB teams go through about a hundred balls in a game!
The most exciting piece of logistics came between innings, when an army of men with rakes came out to smooth the base paths.
Take me out to the ball game?
I’m never going to be a person who regularly attends live sports: it’s too crowded, too noisy, and I don’t care enough about the action happening on the field. But I’m really glad to have gone once. It was a lot of fun to explore the stadium and see a few glimpses of what goes in to putting on a baseball game. Thanks Microsoft for bringing me to a fun event!
