Sean Akiyama and his girlfriend Nicole Lin travelled from Toronto to Tokyo in 2023 to watch their first live game in the Nippon Professional Baseball League. It involved the Yomiuri Giants and their third baseman Kazuma Okamoto and the Yokahama DeNA BayStars.
The couple were born in Toronto and are more Major League Baseball fans than followers of the NPBL. More specifically, they root for the Blue Jays. “We never thought Okamoto would come to play for the Jays,” Nicole said. “It was never on our radar screen.”
“We heard he might sign somewhere,” Sean said. “Lo and behold here he is.”
Kazuma Okamoto made it to photo day at Jays spring training in Dunedin, Fla., last month after visa issues delayed his arrival.Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
In January, Okamoto signed a four-year, US$60-million contract with Toronto. When the regular season begins on Friday at Rogers Centre, he will man the hot corner for the Jays.
The 29-year-old blasted 30 home runs or more in six of eight years in Japan and has been favoured to be the American League rookie of the year by at least one major sports book.
He was the buzz of Toronto’s player development camp in Dunedin, Fla., and batted .316 in eight spring training contests. During that time he hit one home run and drove in four runners, finishing with a 1.066 on-base plus slugging average.
His lone homer came against Clay Homes of the New York Mets on Feb. 23 when Okamoto crushed a sweeping curveball 431 feet to dead centre field.
“He hits baseballs that should never be touched,” said Adam Macko, a left-handed pitcher who will start the season at AAA Buffalo. “He is a sweet and very humble guy but when he steps on the field he is all business.
“That home run he hit was probably a ball but he completely demolished it.”
Okamoto’s arrival in Dunedin was delayed due to visa issues. He also played for Japan in the World Baseball Classic, which limited his plate appearances during spring games.
Okamoto, signing autographs at a Dunedin game against Philadelphia, joins the Jays as the team regroups from its World Series run last year.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
He will become Toronto’s eighth player from Japan and among 80 or more to have reached the major leagues, and the list is growing.
The top players to come from Japan include Hall-of-Famer Ichiro Suzuki, the unworldly Shohei Ohtani, Hideo Nomo, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who won three games for the Dodgers against the Blue Jays during the 2025 World Series.
Toronto reached the series for the first time since 1993 and won the American League East Division for the first time since 2015. It lost the World Series in seven games to Los Angeles, which has won it two straight years.
The Blue Jays have a chance to build on their success. If last season was just a flash in a pan, it will be seen as a disappointment and a missed opportunity. To improve its chances it brought Okamoto into the fold, the first legitimate star from Japan to crack Toronto’s daily lineup.
“He has good power, which comes from his tree trunklike legs,” said Takeru Fujii, a former bullpen catcher for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, who came to Toronto from Japan a year ago and now works at Taro Akiyama’s seafood restaurant in Markham, Ont. Taro is Sean’s dad.
“He is getting better every year,” Fujii continued. “I’m a bit worried about him adjusting to major league pitching but I believe with a bit of time he will do it.”
Takeru Fujii, a recent arrival to Toronto, once worked for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.
The transition Japanese players face is more challenging than those from other countries for a number of reasons. Language, of course, is a big one. But they need help with emotional support and practical things such as banking, shopping and activities that most of us take for granted.
Ryan Mittleman, the Blue Jays’ vice-president of pro personnel, said the organization has invested heavily in the Asian market over the past eight years. The club has added scouts and researchers, data analysts, massage therapists and nutritionists, among other specialties.
“Collectively we set out to pour more resources for players in that market,” Mittleman said. “It’s not a cheap place to scout and the players in the Nippon league are making good money and you have to spend to get them. You need to have a commitment to be there. If you don’t have the money to pour into it you are playing short-handed.”
Mittleman has worked for the organization for 22 years and at one point was in charge of scouting operations. He scouted Okamoto. “He is a guy the whole industry was aware of for a long time,” Mittleman said. “We were certainly ecstatic to get him. All of us knew the type of player he could be. The things that stand out to me are his consistency and poise. He doesn’t seem to be fazed by anything. The biggest adjustment of his career is about to begin. It’s a long process, but he has fit in very well so far and his demeanour has clicked with a group [of] guys that [have] been around for a while.”
The loosey-goosey Blue Jays already appear in mid-season form. On the day Okamoto was introduced to sports writers and broadcasters he joked through interpreter Yusuke Oshima by calling himself “very serious and manly.” Vladimir Guerrero Jr., meanwhile, has tossed sunflower seeds at teammates and Schneider as they did live television interviews during exhibition games.
Okamoto speaks a bit of Spanish and has become fast friends with Guerrero. They have even come up with their own handshake – a fist bump and a bow. From Day 1 in Florida, Okamoto took swings in the batting cage with a group that included Guerrero, George Springer and several of Toronto’s other sluggers.
As of the last census in 2021 there was a population of more than 17,115 people from Japan living in Toronto. When Canadian-born Japanese are added in, the number grows exponentially.
Within that diaspora there is a Japanese Canadian Baseball League that in May will celebrate its 59th season. Sean Akiyama is a pitcher, Nicole Lin is a scorekeeper and Taro Akiyama, a restaurateur with a famous sushi house in Markham, has been involved for decades.
Richard Goto is 69 and has played in the league off and on since 1981. He can play all nine positions and still fills in, “When the younger guys show up late.” He has served as the league’s president for more than 40 years, and calls Sean Akiyama “the president-in-waiting.”
Taro Akiyama said that, especially among older generations, baseball is considered as Japan’s national pastime, just as it is America’s.
There is a collection of baseball memorabilia at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, which is Toronto. The 10,500-square-foot building, which is surrounded by 120 cherry trees, has 4,000 members, 800 to 1,000 volunteers and welcomes more than 220,000 visitors a year.
The baseball assemblage includes team photos of the Asahi, a Japanese Canadian baseball team that was formed in Vancouver in 1914 and competed in local leagues from 1915 to 1941. The team was seen as an important cultural bridge between Japanese newcomers and the mainstream population.
Christine Takasaki, a program specialist at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, remembers watching the Jays play at Exhibition Stadium as a child.
A number of staff members at the cultural centre are fans of Japanese and major league baseball and, of course, the Blue Jays.
Christine Takasaki, a program specialist, was born in Toronto.
“I am a Jays fan from the beginning,” she said, calling Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield her favourite early players. “I would go to games at Exhibition Stadium where the wind would blow off the lake. If you sat in the metal bleachers it would freeze your bottom off.”
Mayu Okamoto – no relation – sat in a meeting room at the cultural centre wearing a Dodgers World Series T-shirt. She came to Toronto six years ago to learn English. Doing that, she met her husband and decided to stay.
She allows now that she may purchase a Kazuma Okamoto jersey.
“I should,” she said. She is an event co-ordinator at the cultural centre. “How many times do you get to see your name on the back of a jersey?”
Posters of Shohei Ohtani are hard to miss around the Heisei supermarket in Markham.
J-Town, which is also in Markham, is Toronto’s largest Japanese shopping mall, full of bakeries, restaurants and the Heisei Mart grocery store. Inside its front door there is a life-size cardboard cut-out of Ohtani as well as photos of him behind the cash register.
Staff members joke that they may now have to spruce things up with pictures of Okamoto as well.
Two weeks ago Sean Akiyama and Nicole Lin spent a week in Miami along with Sean’s dad, Taro, and attended games at the World Baseball Classic.
They had hoped to take in a few of Team Japan’s contests but only saw one because the club was eliminated in the knockout round by Venezuela, the eventual champion.
On an off day, Sean and Nicole went shopping and came across a family from Japan. The woman was wearing a Jays’ baseball cap, her husband an Okamoto jersey from when he played in Japan.
The couple told the family from Japan that they are from Toronto and are excited to get to cheer on Okamoto.
The woman in the Jays’ cap told them to please take care of him.
'We never thought Okamoto would come to play for the Jays,' Nicole Lin says. She and other Torontonians will get a chance to see him in action when Toronto plays the Athletics at 7 p.m. ET on Friday.
Editor’s note: The final photo caption in a previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Toronto plays Oakland on Friday. Toronto plays the Athletics.
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