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       Destination: Shohei Ohtani

       With huge demand to see the baseball superstar play for the Dodgers, M.L.B. teamed up with a Japanese travel agency. Fans began plotting trips.

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       Shohei Ohtani joined the Los Angeles Dodgers this off-season, signing a 10-year, $700 million contract.Credit...Ashley Landis/Associated Press

       By Scott Miller

       March 19, 2024

       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.

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