Yahoo! News Photo (AP_ Sept. 6, 2006…Yuji Imai of Japan stumbles over a marshall during his first try at the long jump class F11, visually impaired, at the World Championships Athletics for athletes with a disability in Assen, the Netherlands, Wednesday…

Enlarge.

Hee, hee, this sure looks funny but I’ve done worse at sports meets.
And of course, I just have to mention that the “long jump” is pronounced the “[w]rong jump” and misspelled in all sorts a fun ways in Japanese-English.

Basketball: Not so big in Japan
International Herald Tribune / August 29, 2006–The World Basketball Championships may be the biggest sports event in Asia since the 2002 soccer World Cup. Yet the hype does not appear to be working.
As quarterfinals started Tuesday in Saitama, the latest attempt to import a sport to Japan has been unable to outdraw school baseball in the host country…. In the first round, even China’s Yao Ming and America’s new Dream Team could not fill Sapporo’s 6,400-seat arena, where the DJ played the Ramones’ “I wanna be sedated,” and some fans left their seats to watch baseball on TVs in the corridors...more…

My friend writes that her friends went to, ” a quaterfinal in Saitama yesterday…had tickets for the first game only but because of the poor attendence they were allowed to watch the 2nd quater final at no extra cost. Good for them but its gotta suck for FIBA and the players to be playing to such poor crowds.”

Also in the sports news today….
According to the Associated Press, the American Little League team from Columbus, Ga., beat Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1 on Monday to win Little League title for the second straight year.

While hunting down photos of unwhelming Japanese basketball, I found this bit of 1950s Japanese craftwork.

BASKETBALL MEMORABILIA for sale
Pair of ceramic AFRICAN NATIVE Basketball players. Rabbit fur loin cloths. 1950s Japanese. VERY SCARCE set. $189.50

Very surreal/weird.

Right now the biggest sport of Japan is on TV:  the National High School Baseball Tournament. The “Koshien” games have a 40 percent viewership share—far bigger than any professional sport. High school baseball is held in much higher esteem—it’s considered “purer.”

It’s the dream of every Japanese boy to take part just once in “Koshien” that  held every year at this time in August near Kobe Japan. Note the key concept is just “to take part” — not the Koshien trophy so every year there are several hundred Koshien winners who get to participate in the games leading up to the trophy—Japanese attainable immortality.

Former Japanese F-1 driver to race Dakar rally on ‘tempura oil’
Wednesday July 26, 2006, TOKYO (AP): …..The turbo-engine Land Cruiser 100, sponsored by Toyota, will be the first car completely powered by biodiesel to enter the prestigious event, said Hidefumi Onaka, a lecturer at the Osaka Sangyo University, which helped test the fuel and provided technical support…The Dakar rally starts in Lisbon, Portugal in January next year. The race tests man and machine over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles)…more...

The standard trite phrase to describe this event would be, “it is the test of man and manchine.” However in this case it’s a test of how effective crappy old cooking oil is. The “tempura oil” is described as “donated by students [from] the school cafeteria.” Eeeeh.

SUMO: Tsar’ Roho throws tantrum after defeat
Reuters, 16 July 2006 08:35, TOKYO … Roho, nicknamed the “Russian bear”, chased opponent Chiyotaikai into a bathroom after an explosive bout where both men broke several of sumo’s strict rules of engagement. After exchanging angry words with Chiyotaikai following his loss, Roho punched through a window of a bathroom door, showering his conqueror with broken glass....more…

Well, own it’s official.

The Japan Sumo Association suspended Roho, the Russian sumo wrestler, for his “assault” on the press. You can watch a video on YouTube of the match in question. Roho slapped the two press photographers just after being scolded by sumo officials for showing some emotion during a sumo match (which is a big no-no).

Via crazyJapan here’s a youtube video of “Macho Dragon”

Wrestler Tatsumi Fujinami sings his theme song “Macho Dragon” while showing off his tradmark gimmicks the Dragon Sleeper and the Dragon Suplex.