The China Connection

Everyone doing their patriotic duty and being good sports fans for the start of the Olympics?! Good, good. I have to say I'm THRILLED to be only 1-hour ahead of Beijing time and hence can watch the Olympics live.....well, I could if the Japanese broadcasting of events made any sense to me. I haven't been able to figure out their rhyme and reason for how they televise events yet. The Opening Ceremony was straightforward, thank goodness....although it didn't finish until 1am here. However, on Day 1, the first televised events were womens weightlifting and judo....totally understandable as there were famous Japanese athletes competing in both sports. However, after the Japanese matches/tries were finished, after showing a few other non-Japanese matches/tries, they kept replaying the same matches/tries multiple times when they could have, in my opinion, better spent the air-time on other sports, which were, as I found by simultaneously following the live Olympic web-text on the BBC website, definitely going on. :-)

Even though they are popular sports and there are high hopes for the Japanese athletes in the following events, the games/heats/rounds for mens gymnastics, womens soccer and swimming weren't shown live, but a bit later, due, I'm sure to the fact that they felt obligated to replay every Japanese weightlifting and Judo bout, as well as the interviews, multiple times before moving on to other events. This is why I love Japan. :-) The things that make absolutely no sense to me. :-) Oh, and the Olympics are being broadcast on 3 different channels, sometimes at the same time (different sports, however....well done!). And I knew to keep an eye out for that eventuality (multiple-channel broadcasting) simply because I've been in Japan for awhile and knew better. :-) Love it!

Of course over the course of my 2 years in Japan I've gotten familiar with the top Japanese athletes because, let's face it, televised sports are the one TV program for which you really don't have to be able to follow the language in order to understand what's going on. Going into the Olympics, I'm finding that I know the Japanese teams/athletes a whole heck of a lot better than I know what's going on for the U.S.! New generations of U.S. athletes....can't handle it! I'm happy to see there are some familiar names on the marquees though, such as Michael Phelps, the Hamm brothers, and the girls and boys of beach volleyball (go May & Walsh!!!). But with the combination of watching primarily Japanese-athlete-competing events (because, of course, that's what Japanese TV is going to focus on broadcasting), and being lopsided on my athletes-knowledge, I'm afraid I'm going to have to admit that I'm probably going to be cheering for Japan more often than the U.S.!

I'm actually sitting in my tatami room (a.k.a. living room) now, surfing the channels every 3 minutes, waiting for the first swimming final to be broadcast. Nothing yet. I'll have to check the BBC site again to see what's going on (SO funny). Luckily the Japan high school baseball "World Series" is going on right now too, so I can follow along with that in the meantime....I have no idea whose playing in the game I'm watching right now, but they are tied in the 11th inning, which is one of the closest and longest games I've seen in the 2 weeks the series has been running so far. This year's series is slightly more interesting to me than last year due in part to the fact that the son of one of the teachers at my current junior high school (you're all following this right?) was part of the team that made it to the World Series from my prefecture. Unfortunately they lost by 1 run in their first game so they are out.

Whoop....400M individual medley is about to start. Phelps' first medal chance....and Japan is all over it! They LOVE the big name American athletes. There was a dubbed "documentary" special done recently on Phelps aired a couple of nights before the Olympics started. The famous American track and field athletes are pretty well-known here too.

So anyway, in case you're interested in following along with the Japanese athletes (if you even have the chance with Olympic broadcasts wherever you are), here's who to watch out for:

Swimming: Mr. Kosuke Kitajima in 100m & 200m breaststroke. I think he won gold in both in Athens, and I unless I'm mistaken (which happens often), I think he's the world record holder in at least one of the events.

Judo: If any of you watch it yesterday, there might have been focus on Ms. Tani Ryoko. Apparently she's been pretty much #1 in the world for ages at 48kg. I read last night that she hadn't lost a major competition since 1996! She was going for her record 3rd gold yesterday, but lost to the eventual gold medal winner and had to settle for bronze....which still gave her a record 5th Olympic medal in the event.

And Phelps gets his 1st gold in WR time! Awesome start to my day! I imagine he's feeling the same (hee hee).

Next is 100m womens butterfly....2 Americans whose names I don't know (new generation sneaks), but no Japanese swimmers in this event, so GO U.S.A.! (ha ha)

Gymnastics: I don't know about the Japanese womens team, but there's a lot of hype about the mens gymnastics team. They qualified for the team all-around (?) yesterday in 4th place behind China, Russia and the U.S. Whoo hoo!

Track & Field: Ms. Mizuki Noguchi won the gold in the womens marathon in Athens, and was looking to do the same in Beijing, however her participation is sketchy now, because she was diagnosed yesterday with severe fatigue after coming back from her Swiss training camp early. But I guess the marathon isn't until Aug. 17th, so get better quickly Noguchi!

Also, the largest non-sumo Japanese guy I've encountered so far, Koji Musofushi, is in the hammer-throw....and/or shot put, or something like that. I can't remember which Games, but he won gold in his event at least once in the past. Both Musofushi and Noguchi are hugely famous in Japan.

Volleyball: Both the womens and mens volleyball teams qualified for the Olympics, which was a huge coup. The Japanese womens team has been strong pretty consistently over the years, but I guess the mens team hadn't qualified for the Olympics for 16 years! The team captain was on the last team to qualify for the Olympics, and at 38-years old, this was obviously going to be his last chance for an Olympics. I've been watching the volleyball tournaments religiously....almost all the major international events have been held in Japan this year, oddly enough.....so it was an absolutely thrilling moment to see both teams qualify. I think they are going to have to play miracle volleyball in order to medal, but hey, they're there! And I love the setter on the womens team, cuz she's so short! I think I heard she's my height exactly. I knew I was playing volleyball in the wrong country...... :-D

Wanna hear something funny? The whole reason I started this entry was because I was in China myself 3-weeks ago, but I'll have to save that story for the next "China Connection" blog because I'm obviously way too excited about the Olympics for the good of my blog. ;-D