Where is Shohei?
On March 5, I took a trip to Japan. Before leaving, I joked around with friends saying that Shohei Ohtani, the designated hitter for the Dodgers, would be everywhere.
While walking around Tokyo, Ohtani kept on showing up, in the subway, on vending machines, on my hotel TV, and in convenience stores. You couldn't escape from the guy. After the first couple observations, I decided to try to document every new Ohtani I found while in Tokyo.
Vending machines are everywhere in Japanese subway stations, neighborhoods, and alleys. It was normal to see different types of ads on them, for popular artists, shows, and even athletes like Ohtani.
Just walking around Tokyo, Ohtani would be on advertisements, some small and some giant on the side of a building. The advertisements were for tea, food, headphones, beauty products, shoes, clothes, and even companies he works with.
I’d think that most of this is happening because Ohtani signed with the Dodgers and dominated in the 2024 MLB season. In his first year with the Dodgers, Ohtani went and won the World Series, a big deal for Ohtani because he had never even played in the playoffs.
With the Tokyo Series coming up during this time in March, there was a lot of promotion around it in the city, mainly because five of its players were from Japan. These were Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki from the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki from the Chicago Cubs. All over Tokyo, ads and pop-up shops were selling merch for the Tokyo Series.
One of these pop-up shops was in Ikebukuro Station, the third biggest railway station in the world. As trains passed by and people got off, they went in to look at what was available. Some Facetimed and called their friends and family, asking them what they wanted so they could pick it up.
There were a lot of Dodgers shirts at this pop-up, many starring Ohtani. One was about his 50/50 record of 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in one season, which was the first time that had happened. Another shirt celebrated Ohtani for being the 2024 National League MVP.
But apart from those shirts, another team shirt caught my eye because Ohtani isn’t part of that team anymore. It was a shirt of Shohei Ohtani, but when he was an Angel for the Los Angeles Angels.
With that, and seeing how many people were buying Ohtani-related items, it was clear to me just how much Tokyo loves Ohtani. But the city also adores the other Japanese players; those being Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Yu Darvish, Kodai Senga, Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki to name a few.
It makes sense when you realize that baseball is a big sport in Japan, with their own league, the Nippon Professional League, where Japanese MLB players played before going MLB.
Japan has a long history with the MLB, with many players from Japan going to MLB and having successful careers. These are players like Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and Munenori Kawasaki to name a few. When I came back to Los Angeles, I told my friends that the jokes we made were actually true: Shohei was everywhere.