Japan buying sport access to the Olympics
With only 11 days to go until the Olympics start in Beijing, the world media is getting whipped into a frenzy. American news stories seem to still be circling around Beijing’s skies and air pollution, despite Dr Patrick Schamasch, the IOC’s medical and scientific advisor stating that ozone, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide all fell within World Health Organisation limits set in 2005. Japanese news is touching on this, but mainly focusing on its judo stars and table tennis star, Ai Fukuhara (commonly known as Ai chan). That’s natural as they have the biggest chance of coming up with medals for Japan.
But the BBC is reporting a story that I doubt will get much coverage here in Japan. This is the result of an investigation into a Japanese domestic cycling sport called the keirin, and it is believed the organisers of this sport have paid sums of money to the world cycling body to promote the sport and eventually give it access to the Olympics. The BBC story from Matt McGrath is below:
Sport ‘bought access to Olympics’
A BBC investigation has raised concerns that a sport may have bought its way into the Olympic Games. Documents given to the BBC suggest that $3m (?f1.5m; 1.9m euros) was paid by organisers of a Japanese cycling event to the UCI - the world cycling body. The payments were allegedly made in the 1990s. The sport, called the keirin, was supported for inclusion into the Games by the UCI, and admitted in 1996. The UCI and its president at the time, Hein Verbruggen, deny any wrongdoing.
The keirin is a rapid and exciting track cycling event an event where riders are initially paced around a track by a motorcycle before sprinting for the line. It is big business in its country of origin, Japan, commanding tens of millions of dollars in gambling revenue every year. But despite its financial clout, the one thing keirin has always lacked is an international profile.
Omega Drags 2008 (July)
Well, the Omega Drags have been and gone this past Sunday and they were a big disappointment, although not an unexpected one. I was up until about 3am on Sunday morning trying to work out what was causing my engine misfiring problem, all in vain. To be honest, when I went to bed I was in 2 minds about even competing on Sunday. The only reason I did in the end was because I’d paid my money to enter. To summarise my problem, when driving normally and when I put my foot down from a roll, there are no issues. However, if I launch the car then when I hit 2nd gear my car seems to misfire through the rev range up until about 6,000rpm. The problem is temperamental and very annoying as it can cripple my runs. As it indeed did on just about every run I did on Sunday. My times were slower than before, even after the methanol injection I have in the car, mainly due to my not getting a clean run at full boost the entire day. And the weather was scorching up there. I like warm weather but it was just solid sunshine all day with virtually no shade. And for some reason there was almost a 2-hour wait between qualifying and the actual knockout tournament, where everyone just sat and burnt to a crisp. A few people talked about just leaving, noting that they weren’t going to win anyway and were just uncomfortable. I could understand where they were coming from. I drank about 6l of fluids on Sunday, and was still dehydrated at the end of the day.
So it’s looking forward to October 19th now, when the next drag tournament will take place. I have a couple of strong leads about what could be causing my misfiring though and I intend to put in a much better showing next time. To be honest it can’t be much worse! Ah well… my first tournament was a learning experience but a fun one; this was a poor one all round; next one will be more successful and fingers crossed I’ll be competitive again. I’ve got my eyes on a couple of things to help that but will tell you more about that later.
So all that remains is for me to give you some photos from the day. Am pretty pleased with how my camera is working, and it’s taking some decent shots. See more of my photos here. Mentioning that, my soldave.ismysite.co.uk site might be closing soon. It is probably better for me to just have a Flickr account for my photos and I think it’s cheaper for me. Will let you know if this happens though.
News confirmed: Yomiuri Giants player gets let off scot free
You may have read my article earlier this week about Mona Yamamoto being caught at a love hotel with Yomiuri Giants player Tomohiro Nioka. I commented in that story that a lot of the emphasis seems to have been placed on Yamamoto and very little seems to have been said about Nioka. But it seems that Nioka was the instigator in what went on when they met and what they did afterwards, as this report in Japan Today shows:
Mona takes the fall, while Nioka gets off
Hardly a day has gone by over the last week that the tabloid media hasn’t put the boot into Mona Yamamoto, 32, after she was forced to quit her job as a news program anchor due to a scandal surrounding her visit to a love hotel with a married Yomiuri Giants baseball player. Since Yamamoto had to leave another news program in October, 2006 in similar circumstances, the media have been calling her all sorts of names.
But those who were at the party on the night of the latest scandal say that baseball player Tomohiro Nioka, 32, was hitting on Yamamoto much more eagerly than she was hitting on him. Yet he barely received a slap on the wrist.
“As Nioka got drunk, he started to approach a group of girls who were drinking together. But these girls ignored him, so he started to hit on Yamamoto,” said one of Nioka’s friends who was at the party. “He talked to her, and was whispering in her ear. The distance between them got closer.”
After the party, Nioka left with Yamamoto and looked as if he was pushing her into a taxi around 4:30 a.m. “While he was drunk, he tried to kiss me,” Yamamoto said in an official statement to media. “Mr Nioka asked me to go to another bar on the street, but I refused that offer. Because I didn’t want to make it a big deal in public, I reluctantly went to a love hotel nearby to talk with him until he could sober up. We just had a drink there but didn’t do anything more.”
Nioka married a freelance announcer in 2005, and has a son who was born in June, 2007. He is currently president of the Players Union. Nioka’s wife told Shukan Post: “I heard everything from my husband and I am sorry that he has caused so much trouble for many people.”
One Yomiuri Giants fans says, “He hasnft been in good form these days. If Mona is forced to suspend all activities, Nioka should do the same.”
However, a spokesperson for the Yomiuri Giants says, “His behavior was very senseless. We apologize to our fans. He is sorry for his own actions now. Since he is one of our key players, we decided to let him off with just a verbal warning this time.” (Translated by Taro Fujimoto)
Japanese newscaster involved in another scandal
Well, I say “another” but in the sense that this woman has form with this particular thing! Various news feeds are reporting that Norwegian/Japanese newscaster and tarento, Mona Yamamoto (see below), has been caught at a love hotel with Yomiuri Giants baseball player Tomohiro Nioka over this past weekend. The problem is that Mr Nioka is married and with a 1-year old son. Back in 2006, Miss Yamamoto was dropped by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) back in 2006 when she was found to be having an affair with DPJ politician, Goshi Hosono. She managed to salvage her career but it will be interesting to see what comes of her after this setback. Amusingly, one of the employees of the love hotel has told Asahi News that Miss Yamamoto is apparently a regular customer there! Well, when you find one good love hotel I guess you just keep going back…
More Open Water divers in Okinawa!
Well, after a course that has lasted far too long, I am happy to to announce that yesterday the numbers of certified divers here in Okinawa increased by 2. Yvonne Lambert and Everette Milligan completed all 4 Open Water dives at Sunabe seawall over the weekend, and were certified yesterday afternoon as PADI Open Water divers. To be honest I was very impressed with their work and the way they went about their dives, especially with regards to buoyancy. Usually buoyancy is something that will take new divers 10-20 dives to get honed as it’s a tough thing to get right. In contrast, these ladies had their buoyancy almost perfect from the second we descended into the water. Always nice when you’re not having to grab one person from floating up to the surface, and then another from just plunging to the bottom and scraping along the floor as they go!
The water at Sunabe was warm, and the warm water brought in quite a few box jellyfish too. For those of you unaware, the box jellyfish are one of the really nasty jellyfish (or rather, nasty if you have physical contact with them). They can cause injury, paralysis and death in a number of cases. I have never seen them at Sunabe before so when I suddenly saw one about a metre away it was a bit of a shock. The worst part was that they came in where the water was warmest, which was the shallow channel that all the divers walk down to get to the descent point. And it’s where a lot of the Japanese dive shops conduct their diving skill sessions. One of those jellyfish went within a foot of a couple of the divers and I was signaling to the instructors and pointing them out like a madman. Instructors just looked at me as if I was the crazy foreigner and just carried on. I heard no blood-curdling screams though so I assume nobody got stung while I was there.
So another 2 Open Water divers here in Okinawa and hopefully they will keep up the diving and get into the water as much as they can.