Pokémon Sleeves - Waraji Festival Pikachu (64 pcs, Japanese)

64 official Japanese Pokémon sleeves featuring Pikachu re-enacting the Waraji Festival, from the series the Pokémon Center released for the six great summer festivals of Tohoku.

Specifications

• Quantity: 64 sleeves
• Artwork: Pikachu dressed for the Waraji Festival
• Festival: Waraji Festival, Fukushima (the first weekend of August)
• Officially licensed, Pokémon Center Japan

Why 64 and not 65

Western sleeve packs contain 65, Japanese ones 64 — a difference that comes purely from each market's own convention. A deck holds 60 cards either way, so you're left with a few spares regardless. Just keep in mind that Japanese sleeves are sized for Japanese cards, which are a fraction smaller than Western ones.

What the Waraji Festival is

At the Waraji Festival in Fukushima, participants carry the largest straw sandal in Japan through the city: twelve meters long and two tons heavy. It's rewoven every year and offered to the mountain god with a prayer for strong legs — a custom that's been going for well over three hundred years.

The six festivals of Tohoku

Tohoku is the north of Japan, and its six prefectures each hold their own summer festival in the first week of August. Together they're known as the six great festivals of Tohoku, and since 2011 they've also come together once a year in one place. In 2025 the Pokémon Center released its own Pikachu for each of the six to mark the reopening of the Sendai store — and all six are here in full.

What sleeves are for

Sleeves protect your cards from fingerprints, moisture and damaged edges, and let a deck shuffle more smoothly. At tournaments they're effectively required: every back in your deck has to look identical, so no one can tell which card you're holding from the back.

Also from the same series:

• Nebuta-Pikachu
• Kantō-Pikachu
• Sansa Odori-Pikachu
• Tanabata-Pikachu
• Hanagasa-Pikachu