Nagoya Dome

ナゴヤドーム

Nagoya Dome near Ozone in Nagoya is the home stadium of the Chunichi Dragons baseball team and also plays hosts to music concerts, conferences and trade fairs.

The Rolling Stones played here back in 2006. Other bands to have performed at Nagoya Dome include Aerosmith, Backstreet Boys, Steve Barakatt, Bon Jovi, Celine Dion, Fuel, Billy Joel, Luciano Pavarotti, Queen + Paul Rodgers, and Wayne Shorter.

Nagoya Dome opened in 1997 and has a capacity of around 38,000 people. The dome is opposite a huge Aeon shopping mall and is a popular spot for joggers running around the stadium.

Nagoya Dome is best accessed by subway to the Nagaoya Dome-mae Yada Station on the Meijo line or Ozone Station on the JR, Meitetsu and subway lines.

Nagoya Dome
Tel: 052 719 2121


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Japan Baseball Season 2010

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The 2010 Japanese baseball season ended last week with the Chiba Lotte Marines edging the Chunichi Dragons 4-2-1 in the Japan Series.

The Marines were led by series MVP Toshiaki Imae and rookie outfielder Ikuhiro Kiyota and won their first Japan Series title since 2005. They are also the first team to finish third in the league standings to reach and win the Japan Series.

The sixth game of the series ended in a 2-2 tie after 15 innings and at 5 hours and 43 minutes was the longest Japan Series game in history.

The Dragons were the Central League champion this season while the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks won the PL. The season also featured three players who surpassed 200 hits, which prior to this season had happened just three times in the history of Japanese baseball.

Leading the way was Hanshin Tigers outfielder Matt Murton who set a new single-season record with 214 hits, Chiba Lotte Marines shortstop finished with 206 and Norichika Aoki recorded 204 hits for his second career 200-hit season.

Hiroshima Carp pitcher Kenta Maeda won the pitching triple crown and edged Yu Darvish and others for the 2010 Sawamura Award, becoming the first CL pitcher to win the award since Chunichi's Kenshin Kawakami won in 2004.

Individual title winners in the major categories for hitters were:

Batting average: CL, Norichika Aoki (Tokyo Yakult Swallows) .358 PL Tsuyoshi Nishioka (Chiba Lotte Marines) .346

Home runs CL, Alex Ramirez (Yomiuri Giants) 49 PL Takehiro Okada (Orix Buffaloes) 33

RBIs CL Alex Ramirez 129 PL Eiichi Koyano (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) 109

For pitchers the winners were: ERA: CL Kenta Maeda (Hiroshima Carp) 2.21 PL Yu Darvish (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 1.78

Wins CL Kenta Maeda 15 PL Chihiro Kaneko (Orix Buffaloes) Tsuyoshi Wada (Fukuoka Softbank Hawks) 17

Strikeouts CL Kenta Maeda 174 PL Yu Darvish 222

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Fukuoka Dome

福岡ドーム

Sitting in a picturesque setting beside a river is Fukuoka Yahoo! Japan Dome, Japan's first multi-purpose stadium with a retractable roof.

Most commonly referred to as Fukuoka Dome, it's original name, or Yahoo Dome, the facility was opened on April 2, 1993.

The stadium has thousands of movable seats which allows it to host a variety of sporting events, such as American football games and has even hosted motor cross races.

Like the Tokyo Dome, a number of musicians, including the late Michael Jackson, have held concerts at Fukuoka Dome.

Mostly, the stadium is used as the home of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks baseball team and also hosted the first game of the 2010 NPB All-Star series. Games are played with the roof closed, though it is opened on occasion following Hawks' wins.

As a baseball stadium, Fukuoka Dome has a capacity of 36,253. The facility is surrounded by Hawks Town, which is a resort style area in Fukuoka that also features a hotel, mall and restaurants.

Hawks Town, also offers a Dome Tour, which is a tour that takes attendees onto the field, locker rooms and dugouts.

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Calbee Japanese Baseball Cards

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Calbee is a major Japanese food company specializing in potato chip and various other snack foods. The company, established in 1949 as Matsuo Food Processing Co., Ltd. in Hiroshima, also dabbles in granola products among other types of food.

Oddly enough, it's also in the baseball card business. Each year Calbee releases it's series of Pro Yakyu Chips in groceries and convenience stores all across Japan.

The chips themselves are standard fare. But glued to the back of each bag is a gray foil wrapper containing two baseball cards featuring players and managers from the 12 Nippon Professional Baseball teams.

The cards are usually released in sets, with the first going on sale around the start of the season, with the others being released later in the year.

Two sets for the 2010 season are currently available. There are 192 "regular" player cards with a host of special cards to go out and find.

Calbee's website contains a database of all the cards from each set dating back to 1998.

The card database can be found here (in Japanese)

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