I had no idea when the Dodgers were scheduled to arrive in Japan until I walked out of Haneda Airport’s baggage claim area on Thursday afternoon.
Fresh off an 11-hour flight — not including a connection through San Francisco — I practically ran into a wall of camera phones. The Dodgers, it seemed, weren’t long behind me.
Fans waited with baseballs in hand, held back by a short fence, ready to greet the reigning World Series champions and Shohei Ohtani, the most famous man in the country.
That’s definitely understating his celebrity status.
Though during the workouts Friday at the Tokyo Dome on some Cubs gear could be spotted in the crowd, the “Tokyo Series” stand at a convenience store across the way was stocked with strictly Ohtani memorabilia. Twenty-four hours into my time in Japan, I had already lost count of advertisements featuring Ohtani.
He is everywhere.