You’re reading the sixth chapter of my eight-day travelog recounting my unbelievable trip to Japan to cover the 2023 Pokémon World Championships.
Day 6 - The Competition (and the Weather) Heats Up
7:00 am - I have some hot tea with honey with my breakfast lasagna. My voice seems to be holding up alright.
7:20 am - I meet up with the media group and get ready to take a tour of the main stage.
7:30 am - We’re taken up on the Worlds main stage, pose for a group picture, and are told we have 30 minutes to explore. And boy is there a lot to see! The Worlds stages traditionally feature iconic elements of the hosting city and have grown in elaborateness over the years. I remember being blown away seeing the Washington, D.C. Worlds stage that had the giant skeletons of Fossil Pokémon.
The Yokohama stage is massive and features the main presentation area and four distinct zones to spotlight each game, each one styled after a different season. Signature Yokohama landmarks such as the Cosmo Clock 21 ferris wheel and the Yokohama Landmark Tower. The stage looks spectacular from the crowd but getting to see the craftsmanship up close makes me appreciate little details, like how different colored seasonal leaves from each of the four sections come together in the center where the presenter stands. Walking the stage from end to end feels like going to a Pokémon theme park, with standees of different Pokémon like Mew and Squirtle scattered about, and much like Disney World and Universal Studios, I feel a pang of sadness when we’re told we have to leave.
My last stop is the TCG table that I’ve seen a hundred times from afar on stream, so it feels surreal to actually stand in front of it. I sit down in the padded chair and run my hands across the desk marked with the TCG playzones and wonder if I’ll ever make a successful Worlds run and get to play here one day. Yeah, when Tepigs fly.
9:10 am - We wrap up and exit the stage. As we walk to our next activity, Cody from ScreenRant tells me he noticed I really seem to enjoy breakfast more than the average person.
9:52 am - We brave the relentless heat once more and head to Pokémon Matsuri Park.
We're attending a Japanese-styled summer festival at Rinko Park. We arrive to see a large, wooden tower topped with a huge Poké Ball, which is standing in the center of a grassy field. It’s covered with Pokémon decorations and is known as a yagura stage. Atop the tower is a taiko drummer pounding away, and a woman starts the Bon Show by singing a cute Pokémon song for the kids in attendance, instructing them to parade around the tower and perform some Pikachu dance moves. It’s the cutest thing in the world. But it’s so hot and humid that it’s unbearable, and we retreat under a tree across the field and watch from afar.
It’s marginally better under the tree. My clothes are so drenched with sweat they’re sticking to my body and I’m feeling a little light-headed.
A Pokémon rep encourages us to try some of the Pokémon-themed carnival games, such as Poké Ball Throw or Magikarp Fishing, and I see that the heat isn’t stopping the kids, so what excuse do I have? We stand in line for about 30 minutes to try our hand at Voltorb's Rollout, where we have three tries to roll a Voltorb down an obstacle course without letting it fall off and land it in the goal. I manage to succeed on the final try and as my prize to myself I immediately head over to the Full Restore Tents where there’s shade and misting fans, aka Heaven on Earth.
11:30 am - Mercifully, we’re done with the festival and I return to the hotel to take the coldest shower of my life yet somehow still feel warm.
12:40 pm - I head to the media room inside the convention center and eat some little sandwiches for lunch, then we get ready for our interview with someone who has only been described as a “special guest.”
1:00 pm - That special guest, as it turns out, is The Pokémon Company COO Takato Utsunomiya. He’s wearing glasses, a nice suit with a black and yellow checkered tie, and a white shirt dotted with little Unowns. We’re speaking to him through a translator but it’s clear to see he has a good sense of humor. He laughs and smiles a lot and is full of little anecdotes about his life and his experiences with Pokémon.
He says that his first Worlds was in Hawaii back in 2010, and he was moved by how amazing the show was and had wanted to bring it to Japan ever since. Now, 13 years later, his dream is finally realized. However, he says that bringing Worlds to Japan was very challenging, and I get the impression that it isn’t likely to happen again, at least not anytime soon. This makes me appreciate how special this trip is even more than before. Talk turns to whether Pokémon is “beholden” to a certain release schedule, and he says The Pokémon Company is currently having conversations about its constant release schedule. And with that, our Q&A is over.
2:30 pm - I head back down to the tournament hall and bump into French player and Pokémon TCG champion Stéphane Ivanoff. He talks to me about how Worlds is usually held in North America but he really appreciates how it’s now being held in other places around the world. He says coming here to Japan shows him how Pokémon is still a huge phenomenon among the Japanese people, and he’s seen tons of people outside the venue wearing Pikachu stuff and participating in the activities, even if they’re not involved in the competition. He’s wowed by how the city of Yokohama has been transformed for Worlds and says how nice it is to see Pokémon recognized outside of the tournament hall. All this makes him proud to be a competitor.
3:00 pm - I continue my lap around the hall and meet a staff member named Demarcus. He has multiple Pokémon plushies resting on his hat and shoulders and says he’s really enjoying helping run the event. He tells me that Japan is not built for tall people. He says he has to crouch to take a shower, get through doorways, or even walk down the hall. He looks to be about 6’5, if not more. I can totally see what he means.
3:10 pm - Earlier I requested an interview through Pokémon, and now it’s time. I meet up with a Pokémon rep and they introduce me to Diane Schemanske. I had heard some buzz about her on Twitter, where she’s known as “The Best Schemanske,” so I wanted to write an article about her unique experience. She and her son Alex both qualified to compete in the Pokémon TCG World Championship. A mother-son duo is incredibly rare in the Pokémon competitive scene.