A New Ichiro Documentary!

Someone named “m” linked to this new, 72-minute, Japanese-language Ichiro documentary in the previous post’s comments. I haven’t watched it all yet, but here ’tis… Thanks, m!

Ichiro to the Yankees: The Day After

Here’s some Ichiro/Yankee stuff I found online this morning, like all these gifs…

…some cool art…

Flipflopflyin.com

Oyl in Tokyo

…a newly released song by Seattle resident/Mariner fan/Death Cab for Cutie dude Ben Gibbard, titled “Ichiro’s Theme”…

…a bit of silliness…

…and a couple interesting links: Sportspress Northwest‘s exhaustive compilation of highlights of Ichiro’s 11-1/2 seasons in Seattle, and the Japanese reaction.

More to follow.

Ichiro on TV: Some Game Show

This looks like one of those things where you have like a minute to run through a supermarket and load up your cart with as much stuff as you can…

Ichiro eats his veggies…

Mmm, eggs…

The doo-rag is unfortunate, and possibly unrelated to the stuff above…

Link.

Ichiro on TV: Furuhata Ninzaburō

Ichiro played a fictional version of himself on the January 4, 2006 episode of Furuhata Ninzaburō, a popular Fuju TV police detective drama. I can’t find any clips other than the intro…

In the episode, Ichiro kills a guy who blackmailed his older brother. Here are a couple screen shots…

The show inspired this bit of fan art…

And some comics (I lost track of where the first one came from, but I found the second one here)…

The detective looks like a Japanese Richard Lewis.

Ichiro on TV: The Wire

While watching The Wire before today’s game, I heard Ichiro’s name mentioned in passing. In the first-season episode The Cost, Orlando is booked into the county jail as a radio plays in the background: “Mariners trail the Orioles, two-nothing… Suzuki’s at the plate… Here’s the pitch… Line drive up the middle, a base hit for Suzuki… Suzuki’s very patient at the plate…”

Though the Mariners faced the Orioles 18 times between Ichiro’s April 2, 2001 Mariners debut and this episode’s August 11, 2002 premiere, there was never a situation in which Ichiro got a hit with the O’s leading the M’s 2-0 (not even in spring training). So the fictional audio was apparently recorded just for this episode.

Anyway, that’s Ichiro running across the field at Baltimore’s Camden Yards before some game. No word whether Bubbles, Omar or Poot were in attendance.

Ichiro on TV: 1995 Japanese Documentary

Here’s an hour-plus, up-close-and-personal doc following a wide-eyed, 22-year-old Ichiro on a visit to America (his first?) in December 1995. It’s broken into ten clips — I can’t find the first one, so we’ll start with the second. After a montage of childhood baseball photos and some Orix-era footage, we see Ichiro visit a California youth baseball camp, where he meets Reggie Smith and Tommy Lasorda (Ichiro’s wearing a too-big Dodgers Starter jacket; what’s that “h” on his cap?)…

Then Ichiro plays catch with and gets fielding tips from a condescending Lasorda. Afterwards, Ichiro takes a sunset horseback ride on a SoCal beach…

This next clip isn’t embeddable (probably because of the Roy Orbison song), so watch it on YouTube, where you can see Ichiro ride in a convertible around Rodeo Drive and Hollywood Boulevard, and then take in the Universal Studios tour. At clip’s end, he enjoys the December 19, 1995 Ducks/Sharks hockey game in Anaheim…

After the game, Ichiro flies to Cincinnati to dine at a Japanese restaurant with the Ken Griffey Jr. It’s the first time Ichiro meets his idol, who he would play with on the Mariners 14 years later. In his Tom & Jerry sweater, Ichiro talks shop with Griffeys Junior and Senior, and they exchange baseball-themed gifts…

Ichiro then travels to Chicago where he chows down on steak at Michael Jordan’s Restaurant, wearing a different (but equally silly) Tom & Jerry sweater…

Ichiro finishes his steak, then shops for Air Jordans at Niketown, where he displays his basketball ineptitude…

Next Ichiro hangs out during practice at the Bulls’ suburban training facility, and carves a turkey at a Christmas house party…

The documentary, likening Jordan’s dominance in American basketball to Ichiro’s dominance in Japanese baseball, builds to a meeting between the two. So, after watching a warmup before the December 22, 1995 Bulls/Raptors game, a nervous, starstruck Ichiro finally meets a cool, detached Jordan for an awkward, translator-assisted conversation…

This next clip isn’t embeddable either (probably because of the awful Billy Joel song), so watch it on YouTube, where you can watch Ichiro watch the Bulls game. Lastly, he goes to New York, where he buys a hot dog from a Times Square street vendor and reflects on his American odyssey…

Thanks to letsgomeiden for posting these clips.