A Dodgers “concierge” for Japanese superfans

Good morning. It’s Monday, April 13. The weekend’s pockets of rain have given way to mostly sunny skies, with a high of 63 degrees. 

In today’s newsletter, Swalwell suspends his campaign, a new agency to oversee the Salton Sea, and arrests of SoCal-based Iranian nationals. But first, an Echo Park store that specifically caters to Dodger fans from Japan. 

One block from Vin Scully Ave on Sunset Blvd, tucked in between a coffee shop and a vintage clothing store, sits a small storefront completely drenched in Pantone 294 C blue. That’s not unique for the neighborhood, because this is Dodgertown.

But inside the dugout-sized shop, among the caps and memorabilia, this store also offers an unusual portal to the Dodgers experience — specifically catered to visitors from Japan.

BLD Clubhouse, which stands for Big League Dreamers, is owned by diehard Dodgers fan Noriko Nagakura. Nagakura provides what she calls “concierge services” to a growing roster of Japanese clients who want a first-class Dodgers vacation. With two pairs of season tickets in prime real estate near home plate, she offers seats at the game as well as advice on navigating Los Angeles.

Since Shohei Ohtani joined the Dodgers in 2024, the number of Japanese fans making an international trip to catch a game or three has exploded. Halfway through the 2025 season, L.A. Tourism Board president Adam Burke estimated that 80 to 90 percent of Japanese tourists buy a ticket to a Dodgers game during their trip to L.A. 

“Sounds so low to me,” said Nagakura. “I feel like the entire airplane that comes from Japan to LAX comes to the stadium. Why would you come to L.A. and not go to a Dodger game?”

Born in Japan, Nagakura first came to L.A. as a foreign exchange student. She works in finance, and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and teenage son, an aspiring professional baseball player.

She began paying attention to the Dodgers in 1995, the year that Japanese pitcher Hideo Nomo found a loophole in his contract that allowed him to leave his native country’s Nippon Professional Baseball for the United States. When Ohtani and three-time NPB MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto joined the Dodgers for the 2024 season, followed by countryman Roki Sasaki in 2025, Nagakura’s passion for the Dodgers was reignited — and gave her a business idea.

She opened BLD Clubhouse on Opening Day 2025. That same day, she met a familiar face. A very familiar face, actually: Yoshiki Ideguchi, a catalog model and aspiring actor from Tokyo who also works as a Shohei Ohtani impersonator.

“On opening day, he happened to be driving by. He found a blue shop and was like, ‘Let's go check it out.’ And that's how we met.”

Ideguchi is now a regular at the BLD Clubhouse when he’s in town from Japan, along with other Dodgers superfans like Yamamoto impersonator Ideken and noted man-whose-head-is-a-baseball L.A. Baseballhead. The shop opens for a few hours before every home game — the Mets are in town tonight — and sometimes hosts watch parties during road trips.

Nagakura’s four season tickets are all in the Dugout Club section: two in the first row directly behind the Dodger dugout, and two in the ninth row behind the home team’s on-deck circle. Pricing for comparable seats on the Dodgers ticketing site runs about $100,000 each for the season.

"My clients prefer the first row behind the dugout roof. But somebody who really likes baseball would prefer the one closer to the batter's circle, because it's a better angle to watch baseball."

Nagakura is careful to mention that the services she offers are part of a VIP package — tickets can be revoked if the team thinks someone is acting as a broker. And the team has an official partnership with travel agency JTB, which provides similar services to Japanese fans on a larger scale.

"I always go with my clients. I can’t just sell and not show up,” said Nagakura. She says she flies in from San Francisco before each homestand and goes to every game. “They're not buying tickets from me. They're buying the entire experience.”

“They don’t know the language, the neighborhood. They don't even know how to get to the stadium. There’s so many gates and every security guard says different things."

BLD Clubhouse has one more year on its lease, and Nagakura hopes to keep running her business for as long as she can. She expects new customers will continue to arrive, but only as long as the roster is winning and Ohtani is on it.

“Most of my clients don't see other parts of L.A. other than the stadium. I mean, maybe they go to Santa Monica or go see the Hollywood Sign. Maybe they go to The Grove. But that's about it.” 

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MONDAY: CinemaCon, the annual trade event where Hollywood pitches its movies to theater owners, will begin Monday in Las Vegas.

TUESDAY: Angelenos have been braced for a threatened school strike beginning Tuesday, but two tentative deals announced Sunday between the school district and the teachers and administrators unions could potentially stave off school closures. The district is still negotiating with the union representing other aides and staffers. (All three unions had threatened to walk out and LAist reports that “educators are expected to honor possible picket lines” if a deal with the remaining union isn’t reached.)

WEDNESDAY: The new, Wilshire-straddling, $724 million Geffen Galleries at LACMA will open for a media preview Wednesday morning, so prepare for an onslaught of coverage. They open to the public on Sunday. 

ALSO WEDNESDAY: It’s the federal tax filing deadline. Slowpokes, get cracking.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY: The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will be on the USC campus. (And for the less bookish festival-hungry, it’s also weekend two of Coachella in Indio.)

We’ll be doing a week-ahead rundown every Monday morning. If there’s something that should be on our radar, please send it to [email protected]

SWALWELL’S OUT: Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell has suspended his once-promising gubernatorial campaign after the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN reported Friday that multiple women had accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape. Swalwell denied the allegations, but much of his senior campaign staff quit and powerful Democrats withdrew their endorsements. The Manhattan district attorney’s office announced Saturday that it had opened an investigation, and the L.A. Times reported Sunday that the Alameda district attorney’s office was evaluating “whether any criminal conduct occurred” in its jurisdiction. The scandal, which comes two months before the June primary, has scrambled the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

STRIKE PERHAPS AVERTED: The L.A. Times has more detail on the potentially strike-quashing tentative agreements reached between the LAUSD and two of the three unions it is negotiating with. The teachers secured an 11.65% increase to their salary scales. 

CORONER DIES: Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who was Los Angeles County's chief medical examiner-coroner for more than two decades, from 1992 to 2013, died last week, according to Craig Harvey, former chief of coroner investigations. Sathyavagiswaran ran the county coroner's office during several high-profile deaths, including that of Michael Jackson, and he testified at O.J. Simpson's murder trial.

PILLAR OF SALTON: On Friday, California launched the new Salton Sea Conservancy, which will oversee efforts to restore and maintain the giant inland lake whose receding shoreline has caused problems for local residents — dust from the dry lakebed contains pollutants and rates of asthma nearby are unusually high — and for migrating birds, which count on Salton as a rest stop along the Pacific Flyway. The Conservancy will among other things continue the work launched in a 2018 management plan for the region. In recent years thousands of acres have been flooded to reduce dust and restore wetlands. Audubon California reports that Salton has already seen a 15 percent increase in waterbirds per year over the last seven years.

GETTY OR NOT: The serene hilltop Getty Center is the latest L.A. institution planning to close up shop and clean itself up before the hordes descend for the ‘28 Games. The museum will shutter from March 2027 through “spring 2028.” Upgrades to the aging tram are the primary reason for the reno.

NEW TARGETS FOR ICE: A trio of Iranian nationals — father, mother and son — have been arrested and are in ICE custody awaiting deportation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday. The father of the family, Seyed Eissa Hashemi, is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, one of the Iranian militants who occupied the U.S. Embassy during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. She later became a reformist politician. The federal government has not publicly cited any crime as reason for the family’s arrest, which came after a California Post story about Hashemi and his life in Southern California.

RODENT INVASION: Nutria, the giant, wetland-destroying, beaver-like rodent that California officials thought they had eradicated in the 1970s is pillaging the state again, and Fish and Wildlife officials revealed last week that they believe the pesky semi-aquatic creature was intentionally reintroduced. Michael Buchalski, the department’s genetics research lead, told SFGATE that the culprit and motive both remained unknown.  

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, check out this photo @Eric Spiegelman posted to the #transit-and-transportation channel.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “To The Words,” by W.S. Merwin.

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