Some More BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling Autographs

井上京子 - Kyoko Inoue, 林　結愛 - Yua Hayashi, ミウラアカネ - Akane Miura, 下野佐和子 - Sawako Shimono

I've picked up a nice pile of BBM True Heart wrestling autographs over the last several months, and eventually I had so many scans that I just tossed them all into this post. Some of these come from box breaks, and some are eBay purchases. There are a decent number of these that pop up from a couple of sellers on eBay, and I pick up any below a certain price that I don't already have. I have accepted that I won't ever have a complete set of the autographs from a given series, but I try to pick up any wrestlers that aren't already represented in my collection. If I remember right, these first two scans are from a box of 2015 product that I opened.

星　ハム子 - Hamuko Hoshi / 宮城もち - Mochi Miyagi, のの子 - Nonoko

To be honest I've kind of put my Japanese wrestling cards on the back burner recently. My source for boxes dried up and I've picked many of the lower-priced single autographs from eBay. I did recently get a base set from a past year that I was missing and grabbed some other odds and ends along the way. But in the very recent past I have been focused on things like Star Wars, UFC cards, LEGO kits, sketch cards, M.U.S.C.L.E. figures, and even some baseball and NASCAR stuff, too.

ケンドー・リリコ - Ririko Kendo, 春山香代子 - Kayoko Haruyama, 大畠美咲 - Misaki Ohata, ダイナマイト・関西 - Dynamite Kansai, 弓李 - Kyuuri, 宮城もち - Mochi Miyagi

I kind of keep up with things on the various Facebook fan pages and follow a few of the individual wrestler pages, too, but I am not really an active participant. The good news is that my source in Japan just put up the 2016 product for pre-order, so I have that to look forward to at the end of January or sometime in February. It looks like the release will be structured about the same as the last few years have been, with 20 7-card packs in a box, a 126-card checklist, and autographs and Polaroid photos (like that Kyuuri in the scan above; the Polaroids are numbered out of # / 7 while most of the base autos have print runs in the 90-100 range) as hits. The number of autographs per box has been increasing as the years go by, but I can't imagine that it will go much higher than the six per box that I averaged in 2015. I plan to at least complete the base set, which means I'm looking at picking up a minimum of 2-3 boxes of 2016. We'll see where it goes from there.

寿　ゆり - Yuri Kotobuki, 帯広さやか - Sayaka Obihiro

I finally watched the new Star Wars movie this yesterday. Unfortunately we missed the first few minutes of the film as the parking lot was full and my poor wife had to park pretty far away and herd our three kids all the way to the theater. The theater only had one guy taking tickets, scanning writing down bar codes in a notebook, handing out 3D glasses, and answering questions, so the line to get in took forever. Then the two younger kids had to pee during key parts of the plot. When you are in a hurry and you have a 4 year-old in tow their default speed is measured in geologic time, and if you make any attempt to rush them they actually can freeze themselves and their immediate surroundings while time accelerates outside their sphere of influence. So I missed a bunch of the movie and I was super-irritated much of the time, which kept me from really getting absorbed in the movie. The kids seemed to have a good time, so that was good, but I am going to have to go again without them so I can see the whole movie in a less stressful environment. 

えーりん - Erin, 下田美馬 - Mima Shimoda

In spite of the less-than-ideal experience I still came away from the film excited about Star Wars. It was good to see some of the old characters in their familiar roles and it was nice to see that the new characters aren't too hokey. The dialogue and some of the action was still a bit predictable a la the prequel trilogy, but I don't think you're going to escape that in the Star Wars universe. We'll probably have to see the full trilogy of this installment before I make too many judgments.

KAORU - Kaoru Maeda, 北沢ふきん - Fukin Kitazawa, 田中盟子 - Meiko Tanaka, 木場千景 - Chikage Kiba

We also added a new member to our family. No, we didn't have another kid. One of the twins has been obsessed with spiders for a couple of months, saying things like, "I really like mom, but I love spiders infinity!" So we decided to get a tarantula to feed that interest. I like critters anyway, and I try to indulge any inclination my kids have toward science and learning. Of course the kid who sparked this endeavor has nearly no interest in the spider, while the other two kids are super-excited about it, running in and out of the room to observe and announce the tarantula's movements. They named the spider Orbit after arguing for some time about naming it after variations of their own names.

小松奈央 - Nao Komatsu, ライディーン鋼 - Raideen Hagane, GAMI

While all the previous cards in this post were from the 2015 set, this final scan features a couple of 2014 autos and a 2013 signature. I'm not too picky when it comes to these cards. I am a collector, so I want them all. I did some mixing and matching of checklists in English and Japanese, and for at least a couple of names I used Google Translate, so if there are errors I apologize. If any of the wrestlers capture your interest a little bit of copying and searching from the captions should get you started on your research. I am looking forward to collecting the 2016 set and hopefully I'll be watching more matches in the coming year, too. I've got a few older sets to post about, too, when I get around to it.