It has already been a sweet life for Fumihide Oda, chief executive of Rokkatei, one of the oldest confectionary shops in Hokkaido, Japan, and the birthplace of the popular Marusei butter sandwich cookies.
This summer, Mr. Oda anticipates life becoming even sweeter. He and his wife, along with two other couples — including his sister and her husband — will take their four children to Oakland, Calif., to experience, in person, another of Hokkaido’s treasured exports: Shohei Ohtani.
This is the family’s first overseas trip to see Mr. Ohtani. And it will be the children’s first visit to the United States.
“We have decided to go to California now because we want to see Ohtani in a Dodgers jersey!” Mr. Oda, 45, wrote in an email.
In a serendipitous bit of timing, the family will open Rokkatei’s first store in Southern California this summer. That gave them a perfect excuse to find a way to see Mr. Ohtani, whose ability to thrive as a star batter and pitcher led to his signing an outrageous and record-breaking 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers — the largest contract in North American sports history.
“We are very, very excited that it happened to be in the same year that Mr. Ohtani will be playing for the Dodgers,” said Mr. Oda, whose grandfather founded Rokkatei under a different name in the 1930s.
As a new baseball season dawns after Mr. Ohtani’s move from the Los Angeles Angels to the Dodgers this winter, travel stories like Mr. Oda’s will crop up all season long. Having been stuck on an irrelevant team for his entire Major League Baseball career, Mr. Ohtani has joined a storied franchise packed with other stars, with a singular focus among them of winning the team an eighth World Series title.
Anticipating unprecedented interest in Mr. Ohtani and the Dodgers — especially from Mr. Ohtani’s native Japan — Major League Baseball entered into a multiyear partnership with JTB Corp., the largest travel agency in Japan. To get the ball rolling, JTB has offered international travel packages to the season-opening series between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres in Seoul, which begins on Wednesday. The company intends to roll out further packages for regular season games in the United States as well.
Catering to very casual fans as well as those who are more passionate, the travel packages are expected to include airline tickets, hotel accommodations, transportation from hotel to stadium and pregame tours and…
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