Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
baseball (Page 6)
On August 6 baseball magazine Baseball America chose Ichiro Suzuki as their number one on a list of the ‘Top 10 Most Prodigious Best Tools Winners Of The Millennium’, beating out greats such as Pujols and Verlander.
Of course he’s a legend in his home country of Japan, but during his many years in the major league he’s also gained plenty of American fans. To celebrate his win, we want to share this video of a ‘super happy Ichiro fan’, with ‘super happy’ being somewhat of an understatement.
Watch the video below and tell us that robots aren’t going to change everything.
The Hanwha Eagles, a South Korean professional baseball team, recently filled three rows of its stadium with robots designed to cheer in the stead of real fans watching the game at home, reports CTV News.
If baseball wants to increase interest in the All-Star Game for both the fans and the players, there is a radical yet simple solution, but it requires Bud Selig to look across the ocean.
MLB All-Stars vs. Japanese League All-Stars.
While the NFL and its players continue to mull the cancellation of their Pro Bowl due to the lack of interest, Major League Baseball has taken the opposite approach and has gone to great lengths in an attempt to return their mid-summer classic to prominence.
In 2006, Selig tried to artificially increase interest by giving the winner home-field advantage in the World Series. It was a solution that was only slightly less arbitrary than the “alternating years” system that served as the previous method.
Importing All-Stars from Japan’s Nippon Professional League would create genuine interest from both fans and the players.
Here’s how it works:
Even though she grew up in Nagasaki, when it comes to baseball our Japanese-language correspondent Aya cheers for Nagoya’s Chunichi Dragons. Sure, the Softbank Hawks, who play out of Fukuoka, would be closer to her home town, but ever since Aya’s Dragon-loving friend took her to her first baseball game at Nagoya Dome, she’s been pulling for the serpentine team.
The Dragons have given their fans plenty of memories over the years, with the sweetest being the club’s Japan Series championship in 2007. But do they also provide a tasty meal at their home stadium?
When we first saw the above poster advertising a Hanshin Tigers farm league baseball game, we did a double-take and sat there scratching our heads for a few minutes. “That poster looks so familiar…but something seems just a little off,” we mused. After mulling it over for a few minutes, it finally dawned on us: “Oh, that image is almost an exact copy of a recently released movie’s promotional poster!”
Can you figure out which movie this poster is parodying?
The Boston Red Sox have consistently had Japanese players since 2007, when they signed Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima. There’s one thing Japanese players bring to the team that’s been overlooked until now, though: delicious imported Japanese candy.
People around the world love Japanese candy, be it endless varieties of Kit Kat flavours, or do-it-yourself candy sushi. There are even companies that will mail it to you monthly for a small fee (or a hefty fee – choose wisely, readers!). And it seems that recently, Red Sox players and staff have been going crazy over Japan’s long-standing fruit chew top-sellers, Hi-Chew.
Darth Vader is a multi-talented guy. From choking subordinates with an invisible force to performing impromptu amputations on members of his family, he can perform all kinds of amazing feats. But did you know he’s also a major league slugger?
It’s true! As part of a collaboration between Lucasfilm and Japan pro-baseball’s Pacific League, Vader stepped up to the plate to show how the game should be played: with light-saber bats!
“Could there be life somewhere else in the universe?” The recent discovery of the Earth-sized planet (Kepler 186f) is about the same distance to its sun as the Earth is to ours. Is it possible that life does exist outside our planet?
A recent picture from Twitter only helps to increase our hopes while also dragging them away as the aliens are seemingly escorted from “America’s favorite pastime”.
As many of our readers probably already know, baseball is incredibly popular in Japan–in fact it sometimes seems as if Japanese folks love the sport more than people from the US. Japanese fans can be truly fanatical and they gladly follow everything from the local team to the major leagues, which makes it no wonder that so many Japanese players eventually make their way to the US.
Of course, it’s not uncommon to see players going the opposite direction across the Pacific, with MLB players coming to Japan to play professionally. One of the best example has to be Tuffy Rhodes, who played for the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox before moving to the Nihon Professional Baseball league in the mid-1990s. Tuffy recently became a bit of an Internet sensation thanks to his good will and kindness at sports games. The weird thing was that it wasn’t even a baseball game!
About a half a year ago, the charming face of a local idol from Fukuoka was plastered all over the internet. Kanna Hashimoto’s genuine charm and cuteness had won over the country literally overnight. Shortly afterwards, we were able to meet the up and coming star and buy a pair of glasses. There we found Hashimoto’s charm wasn’t just a fluke of the original photo that shot her into the spotlight.
Now we’re happy to see that her rise to fame hasn’t slowed down one bit with a recent appearance in the hugely popular SoftBank commercial series featuring the Shirato family. Not only that, she has also thrown the ceremonial first pitch at Opening Day of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 2014 season.
New York Yankees’ pitchers and catchers report to spring training on February 14, and among the new faces will be Masahiro Tanaka, a 25-year-old phenom from Japan who signed a seven-year, US$155 million deal in late January.
Ma-kun, as Tanaka is affectionately known (“kun” is an informal Japanese suffix generally used to address young boys or subordinates), is coming off an unbelievable season, going 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA. He also had eight complete games, more than any MLB team in 2013. Now it’s time to test his arm against MLB lineups.
Perusing Japanese Twitter feeds, you’re likely to come across the word “nau” at the end of a sentence. This word has the same meaning as the phonetically similar “now” in English. It’s used to simply state what the tweeter is doing at that given moment. Examples include “Unko Nau” (pooping now) or “Jishin Jiko Nau” (physical injury now).
Even Nippon Professional Baseball star Masahiro Tanaka, fresh off his perfect season got in on the action and tweeted out what he was doing nau. However, when you’re a pro-pitcher rumored to be imminently signed to a Major League Baseball team, an innocent little tweet can create unusually big ripples.
South Korean netizens are apparently up in arms over their president’s choice of shoes that she wore when throwing the opening pitch of the third game of the Korean Series baseball tournament in Seoul on October 27. Her fashion crime? President Park Guen Hye had the “audacity” to show up wearing a Japanese brand of sneakers!
Like many a baseball player in Japan, Munenori Kawasaki looks up to Japanese baseball legend Ichiro Suzuki. But Kawsasaki has been especially well known for his unflinching support of the future Hall of Famer. Even during his younger days of playing the sport in Kagoshima his style was compared to that of Ichiro.
Years later, on 21 August it would seem the stars aligned just right for Kawasaki as he found himself on the field just as Ichiro made his 4,000th professional hit in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. But Kawasaki’s pure enthusiasm that night might have even eclipsed his hero’s milestone.
The ceremonial first pitch is a century-old tradition of baseball, where we get to watch notable politicians and celebrities try their hand at the great American pastime. There’s a lot of entertainment to be had to see if these outsiders can get the ball across the plate cleanly or at least avoid bouncing it.
Then, every once in a while, someone comes a long and revolutionizes the first pitch. This recently happened in South Korea when rhythmic gymnast Shin Soo-ji stunned the audience and redefined the phrase “throw like a girl”.
The Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo have long been the powerhouse team of Japanese Baseball. Through highly effective promotion and the acquisition of top players they often draw parallels with the New York Yankees.
So it’s no surprise that a month and a half into the 2013 season the Giants are sitting in a familiar first place spot in the Central League standings. However, things have begun to take a turn for the worst after a comment made by model Aki Higashihara in her supernatural “death blog.” Over the past decade people, places and businesses have all suffered some form of misfortune shortly after being mentioned in her blog Higashihara Desuga?
Recently a video titled Where is Dobayashi’s Ball Going… Home Run Girl Stares as She Waits Her Turn was uploaded onto the official YouTube channel for Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League. Within days it became the most watched video on the channel with 286,249 views and counting. The reason why this video of a failed home run became so popular is clear from the image above.
However, you might be wondering what this stunningly beautiful woman is doing in full uniform clutching a doll of what appears to be the Phillie Phanatic and intensely staring at player, Shota Dobayashi.
Starting April 2, the Lotte Marines baseball club announced that local fisherman and stadium food vendor Taichi Sone, 87, would start providing wind and weather forecasts prior to night games.
Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture?
That’s right. This slide into home is going the wrong way. Some were concerned that future hall of famer Ichiro Suzuki may have been past his prime when added to the Yankees this year, but he certainly pulled his weight scoring the first run in their second divisional playoff game against Baltimore.
Ichiro, after being waved home suddenly found himself cut off by an early throw to Baltimore catcher Matt Wieters. Staring an inevitable 3rd out in the face, Ichiro wondered “What would Naruto Uzumaki do right now?”
We usually hear of pitchers utilizing killer breaking balls to earn need strikes in clutch moments, but how often do you see a batter hit what appears to be a curve ball in what Japanese baseball fans have dubbed the “paranormal homerun.”
The above video was taken during the sixth inning of a game between the (Tokyo) Yomiuri Giants and the Yokohama DeNA BayStars on 26 August. You have to watch it carefully, but if you follow this homerun, it seems to clearly change its trajectory – almost as if it was bouncing off some invisible object.
What followed was a flurry of speculation and theories ranging from the logical to the ridiculous However, one video on YouTube almost certainly has closed the case on this magical hit.
Wisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Japan’s best conveyor belt sushi restaurant of seven years ago has now, finally, come to Tokyo
Japanese government wants overseas anime market to roughly triple in 10 years, but are they crazy?
Japanese bento shop sells croquettes for 13 cents, but are they any good?
Howl’s Moving Castle’s scene-stealing dog is here to clean your home as a plushie mop
Japan has new rules for bicycle riders, and these 14 things could get you a fine or a court date
Japanese city abolishes 88th birthday celebratory money gift because people are living longer
Japanese trains in Sapporo might be better than those in Tokyo, thanks to one special feature
Akiba Dental Clinic: The Akihabara dentist where a moe maid in cosplay cleans your teeth
We try new ‘adrift at sea’ experience and end up floating alone on the Yamaguchi coast
Japan reportedly adding Japanese language skill requirement to most common foreigner work visaJapan’s best conveyor belt sushi restaurant of seven years ago has now, finally, come to TokyoWisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Mt. Fuji decorated with a 500,000-flower pink carpet is Japan’s ultimate spring view
Lawson convenience store at popular tourist site is one of the most unusual in JapanJapanese trains in Sapporo might be better than those in Tokyo, thanks to one special feature
30 Pikachus want to share a Tokyo hotel room with you that has separate Grass, Water, Fire spaces
Man bites woman at cherry blossom park in Japan, dies shortly after
Starbucks Japan releases FIVE new Frappuccinos in a day, and we try them all in 90 minutesHowl’s Moving Castle’s scene-stealing dog is here to clean your home as a plushie mopJapan reportedly adding Japanese language skill requirement to most common foreigner work visa
Pokémon and Ikea Japan cross over into each other’s worlds with collaboration events
Japan now has a special desk for people who work at home with a pet cat[Photos]
Famous Tokyo cherry blossom spot installs view-blocking screens to fight overcrowding[Video]Japan’s best conveyor belt sushi restaurant of seven years ago has now, finally, come to Tokyo
Uniqlo announces new T-shirts for One Piece, Naruto and more for manga publisher’s 100th birthday
Train station platform ramen store closes its doors on half a century of history in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new My Fruit³ Frappuccino at only 34 stores around the country
Krispy Kreme releases Super Mario doughnuts in Japan for a limited timeWisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
Japan has new rules for bicycle riders, and these 14 things could get you a fine or a court date
Japanese city abolishes 88th birthday celebratory money gift because people are living longer
Japanese trains in Sapporo might be better than those in Tokyo, thanks to one special feature
Akiba Dental Clinic: The Akihabara dentist where a moe maid in cosplay cleans your teeth
We try new ‘adrift at sea’ experience and end up floating alone on the Yamaguchi coast
New Travelling Bento pouches turn your luggage into a Japanese lunch box
Yoshinoya invites you to give the gift of beef bowls this Mother’s Day
Schoolkids learn life skills through shopping field trips at street markets in Kochi Prefecture
Downtown Tokyo’s meaty monster Kaibutsu ramen will challenge your stomach, thrill your taste buds
Giant Pokémon appear in Yokohama sky in awesome drone art show at World Championships【Pics, vids】
Police officer caught smelling coworker’s shoes, Department: “sniffing shoes is not illegal”
Mt. Fuji decorated with a 500,000-flower pink carpet is Japan’s ultimate spring view
Passing the JLPT N1 — Here’s how I did it, so you can too!