My New Favorite Thing: Yamakatsu Blue Train Full Box!

 I was browsing around Yahoo Auctions last week looking for Yamakatsu baseball cards when suddenly something I had never seen before showed up in the list - a full box of Yamakatsu Blue Train cards.  In addition to baseball I am a huge train fan and I just love it when something has interdisciplinary appeal across my various hobby interests so I put a bid in and won.

"Blue Train" is a generic name that describes all long distance sleeper trains in Japan, whose cars are blue (though sometimes the engines that pull them are not).  They used to be extremely common sites, even as recently as the late 90s when I first arrived in Japan.  The spread of the Shinkansen network to almost every corner of the main islands from Kyushu to Hokkaido has basically made them redundant and the last one, the Hokutosei, retired in 2015 to much bittersweet fanfare.

 The box is great, it shows a picture of the "Fujii" - each blue train has its name and distinctive logo on the plaque on the front of the engine.  Inside the box you find right on top you find a mini album which would have been given out to recipients of atari cards.  The one I got features the Hayabusa, which looks similar to the one on the cover of the box but is actually a completely different train.

Two other recipients of atari cards would get these beauties, erasers shaped like Blue Train engines.

 The packs are wrapped in paper, very similar to the 1980 Yamakatsu baseball packs I have, and are stapled shut at the top.  The box contains 30 packs with 2 cards each, which retailed for 20 Yen back in the day.  I'm not sure what year the set was released in but I am guessing late 1970s.  The cards are small size, about the same as 1980s era Calbee baseball cards (or 1950 Bowman baseball cards for American collectors). The packs with atari cards in them are wrapped in plastic so the store owner could know which ones they were.

 I decided to open a pack.  These would be extremely easy for unscrupulous collectors to search through if there were any valuable single cards to chase, since the staples can be easily pried off the pack without damaging it and then resealed.  Not that I plan on doing that, but I wanted to keep the pack looking nice.

 Inside, there they are, about to see daylight for the first time in their 40 years or so of existence.

 Score!!!  I got the Myoujou (the red engine) and the Suisei!

 The backs of the cards show you the train's logo that appears on its engine, how far it travels (967.4 km and 965.9 km respectively), how long it takes (16:23, 15:43) and its average speed (59.3 kmph, 65.6 kmph).

It doesn't actually tell you where the train went from, but a little research reveals that the Myoujou went from Osaka to Kagoshima until the line was discontinued in 2008 (shortly before the Kyushu Shinkansen was introduced).  The Suisei went from Kyoto to Miyazaki and was discontinued in 2005 (ridership having fallen from 93% in 1989 to a mere 30% in 2004 - quite the rapid decline).

I'm not too sure how big the set is or how close I am likely to get by opening the box, but I am quite motivated to find out more.  The Japanese language internet doesn't turn up much information on them, save for this blog entry by someone who, like me, just bought a box and was quite excited by them!

Upskirt Photo Taker Card of the Week: Yamawaki Koji

This is kind of a random thing.  Koji Yamawaki was a utility infielder for the Hanshin Tigers in the late 80s-early 90s.  His claim to fame is that he had all of 5 at bats during the 1985 season (getting 2 hits for a .400 average) and thus merited an appearance on this commemorative card honoring the Tigers' championship that year.  He never played a full season, though did appear in about half of the Tigers games in 1990.  He retired after the 1993 season and became a scout for the Tigers, a job he held until Tuesday this week.

On Tuesday he was in Sendai casually riding an escalator behind a 25 year old woman wearing a short skirt.  He then pulled out his phone and started trying to take pictures up said skirt.  The plan apparently worked well until she turned around, saw what he was doing, yelled at him and then a passerby subdued him until police arrived.

"I was simply trying to take a photo from behind her" Yamawaki told police, who were unconvinced and placed him under arrest.

I just read this news and became curious if Yamawaki had any cards, but I wasn't able to find him in any of my Calbee sets.  He had a regular card in the 1991 BBM set, but most of the other cards I could find of him via Google searches were commemorative cards like the above produced well after his retirement (funny how utility infielders appear on so many commemorative cards, I guess its a revenue stream for them).

So if anyone is working on a "guys who have been arrested" themed collection (for whatever reason....) you can add Koji Yamawaki to your want list.