Japan Baseball Trip: Buying tickets

Tokyo Giants Ticketing (in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean)

After determining the schedule and making hotel reservations, the next order of business was securing tickets, a process in which I am still engaged.  All Japanese teams have fan clubs that are given priority access to tickets.  Sales to the general public don’t begin until a month or two before game dates (depending on the team), though some Japanese ticketing systems (such as Pia) offer the option to make ticket reservations.  A reservation does not guarantee a ticket, only a place in line.  There are other complications.  Pia, for example, will not accept credit cards issued by a non-Japanese bank.

Each team also maintains its own online ticketing system, but apart from the Giants no team appears to offer ticket sales in English.  You can work around this to an extent by having Google translate pages, but you’ll be stuck trying to figure out the character input system, which often requires Japanese characters (of which there are subsets for specific types of information).  The Lions’ system, for example, requires the use of kanji, or Chinese characters, to input the buyer’s name.  If you’re not Japanese or Chinese, you’ll have to make one up.  (For many, easier said than done.)

Lions payment/delivery options (via Google translate)

If you do succeed in making an online order, not every team offers the same delivery options. The Lions, for example, require you to either have them delivered by courier or post to your home or hotel, or pick them up at convenience stores such as 7-11 or Lawsons.  The Giants, on the other hand, provide similar choices as well as allowing you to print out your own tickets. 

For those who don’t want to or can’t possibly deal with this, there is at present a convenient alternative.  Japan Ball Tickets is an online service managed by a long-time American resident of Japan.  All you have to do is pick your dates and preferred seating or ticket prices, make payment with your credit card, and the tickets will be delivered to a physical address in Japan.  You pay the actual ticket price plus a fee for the ordering and delivery service.  What could be easier?

Early on in my planning I considered using this service, but by the time I was ready to make my order I found the Giants games I wanted to attend sold out.  I visited the Giants’ ticketing website to confirm and found a few seats still available.  I made my purchase directly with the Giants, and that led me to checking out and purchasing tickets from the Lions, and then to finding that tickets for August games for the Eagles and Buffalos are not yet available to the general public.  

While I’m waiting on those tickets to become available, I’ve begun researching stadiums and their neighborhoods.  

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