shohei ohtani alert

Opposite of caek's experience with my large wires, 3% down was hardly a blink, 27% took over 20 minutes...

Steve you’ll love the conspiratorial slant of this article

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39817568/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-authorities-contacted-theft

Can the relevant agencies even confirm that?

#FreeIppei

did you make it out to his dad’s resto?

Opposite of caek's experience with my large wires, 3% down was hardly a blink, 27% took over 20 minutes...

no idea how long mine actually took to arrive. my point is that the first one came with security controls, and after that the controls went away, even for an anomalously large transfer.

I 100% want to but I have no SoCal trips planned until end of May at the earliest:

https://www.hachius.com/costa-mesa

This could all have been avoided (c/o gyac):

Q. Have to brush up on your Japanese a little?

DAVE ROBERTS: I definitely need to brush up on my Japanese. I'm a momma's boy, self-admitted momma's boy. She's fluent in Japanese. Have to get home cooking and go back to mom and go back to Japanese 101.

i just closed on our new apartment and for the down payment i was asked to bring a certified check. that completely skeeved me out, carrying a piece of paper for that amount of money. would much have preferred jumping through a bunch of controls and red tape. but then i guess you run the risk of being scammed by a man in the middle attack. which is not uncommon!

Congratulations and I believe hand-delivery or courier was also presented an option and I was like... yeah no.

Back to gyac's insuation that ESPN (and the LA Times based on their article today) is still harboring a neutral-angle in their reportage:

Both media accounts have access to Bowyer's wire data and can see if Ippei is curiously absent from the list of individuals that Bowyer and his associates were connected to financially.

WaPo also did a deep-dive into Bowyer and he is a real piece of work, a child of a Long Beach Fire Department employee, they called him a high-end Baccarat (! lol) player who is banned from seemingly half of Vegas casinos, divorced (once? twice?) dad of four with 2 bankrupcies on file. Lives in a sprawling orange county luxury mcmansion (that was raided by federal agents) tucked between the hills and the ocean. He runs a BJJ studio called (don't laugh) RYSK.

I wasn’t really insinuating, just saying based on the questions put out in the article that ESPN themselves may be. I have zero knowledge of the banking & various protocols to be able to know if the article is insinuating that Ohtani’s people may not have made a report to a relevant agency, or if it’s common practice for an agency to not confirm whether they’re investigating on the basis of a person’s request to journalists. Personally I would be surprised if they did.

Anyway Passan tweeted out a link to this piece:

Other players have interpreters, but only Ohtani had an interpreter who worked as a trainer and a coach and a valet and a best friend and a bellman in addition to translating his interactions with the media.

…which I pressed send on new zing before linking or quoting further from

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39816463/shohei-ohtani-dodgers-interpreter-gambling-betting-scandal-ippei-mizuhara

That, and everything else, was left to Ohtani and his ever-present confidant. "Interpreter" was never an adequate word to describe Mizuhara, who toted Ohtani's training tools and to-the-second workout schedule in the backpack. Ohtani's rhythms were Mizuhara's rhythms. They occupied the same locker, ate at the same table in the players' lounge, sat on the same five feet of bench in every dugout. Until Ohtani got his driver's license last season, Mizuhara drove the two of them to the ballpark every day. Nobody knew if they lived together, but his Angels teammates assumed they did. From the outside, it appeared that Mizuhara cleared away every menial task and potential obstacle; the great one would worry only about his game. Mizuhara's constant presence was proof of Ohtani's singular genius, so much so that it is jarring to see him, now, walk alone.

“I’ve enjoying driving,” Ohtani said in February 2020 through his interpreter.

When asked if he was a good driver, the baseball star replied: "Pretty good."

Shohei's garage:
Rolls Royce Wraith: $330,000
Aston Martin DB11: $205,000
Bentley Continental GT: $200,000
Porsche 911 Targa 4S: $175,000
Mercedes Benz S63 AMG: $170,000
Porsche 911 Carrera T: $125,000
Tesla Model X PD90: $100,000

What 😭😭😭

Now those are some eye-popping WHIPs

disappointingly quotidian taste in cars, imo. sad!

basic bitch millionaire cars.

he should be driving a tricked out supra or nismo or something

A lot of money for what was basically a fancy chair collection for him

it would be like me buying a very expensive skateboard

Trying to find pix of the luxury++ stuff is impossible, only mentions in japanese sports pages (and machine translations of).

The Porsche stuff is easy to find because he's a brand ambassador

Targa: https://i.imgur.com/Q5Fgjwm.png
Carrera: https://i.imgur.com/OF5pbqa.jpeg
Taycan: https://i.imgur.com/wu3iPZX.jpeg

2 OTHER Porsche models that I don't know from earlier this year in AZ (Ippei driving):
https://i.imgur.com/zOrqGoZ.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/TNac8YM.png

The black matte Tesla pix are easy to find and is ugly and dumb so I won't link.

He’s driving the car in that one photo? We need an ESPN source check on him not being able to drive

Sorry, this is indeed on ESPN for some sloppy cut and pasting from an older article I guess: https://www.mlb.com/news/shohei-ohtani-got-his-driver-s-license

I know Porsches make RHD for the UK market but it's weird to see a LHD one in Japan (unless this was shot here):

https://www.instagram.com/porsche_japan/p/CmP_TpMP8Tr/

(^^^shot in Tokyo, pardon me!)

that one appears to be RHD based on the second and third pics?

he’s probably getting out of the passenger side after one of porsche’s pro drivers took him for a lap

kinda surprised he can fit in that porsche

I join this thread in clowning Ohtani's taste in cars. wack tbh

kinda surprised he can fit in that porsche

Yeah but is that the largest auto he could afford

Monster truck doesn’t fit the vibe

My sad urbanist take: It's very telling that here is a kid who grew up in rural Japan who moved to the extreme north of his country (akin to moving to somewhere like Juneau for Americans) who NEVER needed nor felt the need to have a driver's license even as a celebrity and the best player in NPB.

When he first joined the Angels, he lived next to Angels stadium and would "walk to work" until paparazzi and fans bugged him and honked at him and then Ippei started driving him.

Did America (Anaheim)'s car-centric post-war urban design warp this carbrained mentality for Shohei and create eventual additional codepedency layers between he and Ippei? Is Walt Disney at fault because he created a carfree Utopia (well, except for Autopia) positioned in the middle of several thousand acres of parking lots which used to be endless citrus groves? Do you know in Japan you can take the commuter train directly INTO both DisneySea & Tokyo Disneyland?

The only city in Japan I’ve been to is Tokyo and my single criticism is what the FUCK is the deal with the various metro and train lines all being run by different providers, and no integrated transport system for payment? Otherwise 10/10 experience outside rush hour.

I read that many Japanese MLB players prefer to live in the cities they play in - this is said to be part of Imanaga’s draw to Chicago. Maybe he should have taken a leaf out of Yoshida’s book

NHK filmed Masataka Yoshida riding his scooter around Boston.

He’ll be on Monday’s episode of Sports x Human. pic.twitter.com/HEVAFMfDHV

— Jason Coskrey (@JCoskrey) August 13, 2023

More seriously, LA Times alluded to this when he signed & interesting to see ESPN make the same point:

At the beginning of spring training, Roberts, perhaps jokingly, nominated outfielder Jason Heyward to be the one on whom reporters could rely to contextualize Ohtani's achievements when Ohtani chooses not to -- a designated speaker of sorts. It was a nod to Heyward's experience and statesmanship, but it also served to emphasize Ohtani's lack of availability. In Anaheim, the guys speaking for Ohtani were Zach Neto, Taylor Ward and Logan O'Hoppe. When it's a team filled with All-Stars and three other MVPs, maybe the most accomplished collection of talent in the past several decades, it's a tougher sell.

He seldom speaks for himself. "I know," catcher Will Smith said during spring training. Then, perhaps thinking that it sounded harsh, he quickly said, "And I'm fine with it."

...and no integrated transport system for payment?

There are integrated forms of payment FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY (except Okinawa) even as long ago as 25 years ago (via mobile phone!!!) which blew my fragile american mind... but they are not easy for tourists to navigate.

What I mean is if you’re buying a ticket and changing to a line owned by a different company than the one you started with it’s confusing. I’m sure permanent residents have passes that navigate all that but it was confusing to me

ime a pasmo or suica card is all you need to get around tokyo? even when transferring to different lines.

leaving tokyo was where things got squirrelly for me

yup, add Suica, Pasmo or ICOCA in wallet (or watch) and tap transponder- voila. We (SF) didn't have that tech (FeLiCa NFC) until 2021 I want to say...?

Fellas did I mention I’d never been there before

did you go to a baseball game (y/n)

The run line on this game was BAL -1.5 ... Ippei could have easily thrown $500k on that.

xp I didn’t care about baseball in 2018 & it was December so no :(

The run line on this game was BAL -1.5 ... Ippei could have easily thrown $500k on that.

i’ve only been to tokyo twice! and we got pasmo cards the first time. it was as easy as using an oyster card presumably is (i’ve never used one).

I like buying the tickets because you get to put them in the turnstiles afterwards for them to eat.

Nah I’m telling you if you don’t know what an Oyster card is you can buy a paper ticket for the day that covers you everywhere and it’s easy to find and buy. But I’m not comparing it to London, which I’m obviously very familiar with comparing it to taking public transport in Moscow, Paris, Hong Kong etc.

Looks like Ippei and his fat wallet paid off the 3B coach B-)

#ippeicurse

Does he ever not get on base?????

Do not feed the Oyster~🎵🎵

(xps: You can get a multi daypass for all JR regions (7/14/21 days iirc) *OR* Tokyo Metro/Osaka Metro (1-day open) but all are independent agencies which I believe is gyac's gripe. And that's not even mentioning the regional railways.... Keisei and Seibu lines may have some form of daypass? In Kyoto there is an obscure pass that gives you access to all buses, tramways, ropeways and funiculars if you are feeling adventurous.)

Next time I go to Japan I’ll ask you for tips (and Dayo too?)