Why does every Pokémon Center opening get its own Pikachu?

The tradition has a grammar: the card is named for the store, wears the store's mascot or colors, and is given out at the store, with purchase or by visit, during the opening days. Its modern founder is Mega Tokyo's Pikachu (098/XY-P), the Mega Charizard Y poncho card handed out at Pokémon Center Mega Tokyo's opening in December 2014, which also founded the poncho line documented elsewhere in this shelf. Two winters later the reopening of Pokémon Center Sapporo produced Sapporo's Pikachu (005/SM-P), on December 1, 2016; and when Pokémon Center Tohoku reopened on June 30, 2017, its card, Tohoku's Pikachu (088/SM-P), wore the store mascot Rowlet as a poncho.

The custom scaled quickly. Pokémon Center Tokyo DX, opening March 14, 2018, arrived with a wardrobe rather than a card: Gentlemanly Pikachu and Cherry Blossom Afro Pikachu at the opening (210 and 211/SM-P), and Hakama Pikachu and Firefighter Pikachu in its Special Box (208 and 209/SM-P). That same year the chain's 20th Anniversary Campaign issued its own Pikachu (224/SM-P), the opening-card idea generalized to the whole company's birthday. Later shop cards were typically given at every Pokémon Center and Pokémon Store in Japan, not only at the shop they celebrate: the name gives the store, even when the counter is in another city.

America has exactly one entry in this tradition, and it is not a Pikachu: the New York opening cards of 2001 have their own page in this shelf. Japan kept the grammar for itself, which is why the opening Pikachu remain Japanese cards, in every sense.