World’s Fastest Man and two-time Olympic champion in the hundred meters, Usain Bolt earned $15,000 in track competitions in 2015, according to Forbes. But in terms of endorsements, the sprinter from Jamaica pulled in a cool $21 million.
Puma alone invests $9 million a year lacing Bolt up. Rio, more gold and deeper reservoirs of endorsements are potentially around the corner for Bolt in August.
At the end of the commercial, Bolt says “Bolt-un deru?” (ボルトんでる？) It’s a Japanese play on the phrase “bu-tton deru” (ぶっ飛んでる), which means “crazy”, but in this case probably means “going crazy” in a fun, exciting way. An ordinary way of saying it, more appropriately for ANA perhaps, is “taking off”.
On Saturday, February 13, over 370 runners competed for a spot on the US Olympic marathon team. The USOC will send the top three finishers in the marathon race held in Los Angeles. It is considered a very American competition as the threshold was any American running a marathon in 2 hours and 45 minutes or less. As Amby Burfoot, an editor of Runner’s World said in this New York Times article, “Each of our runners must earn his or her bid for the Olympics — we tell them to line up, we’re going to shoot the gun, and you decide for yourself. It feels very American. One athlete, one vote.”
Apparently, other nations pick their marathoners through a committee of officials.
Move to a Different Country: Kosovo and South Sudan are entering the Olympics for the first time. You should look into their citizenship requirements and get in touch with their Olympic committees.
Identify an Easy Position: the article points out that being a coxswain in rowing events that require one has low barriers to entry. You need to be light and have a strong voice, with some sense of race tactics, but you don’t have to row. You just need to be strong enough to steer the shell. Apparently, China ran an American Idol-like competition in 2006, in which they tried to find two coxswains for the China teams at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Jamaican bobsled team: Michael White, Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris and Frederick Powell
3. Enter a “Target Sport”: Shooting a rifle or an arrow apparently doesn’t require you to be in tip-top, high performance shape. You just need a steady set of arms and very good eyesight.
4. Start Your Own Team: The country you’re in may not naturally have athletes for a particular sport. Think the Jamaican bob sled team, or Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards in the ski jump – both of whom were the first to represent their nations in their sports at the Calgary Winter Games in 1988.
5. The Old-Fashioned Way: Identify what skills and physical attributes put you in the top percentile in your age group, and train, train, train.
Japan’s Women’s Soccer Team defeating Brazil at the 2012 London Games.
I remember being surprised to read that the Japanese Women’s National Soccer team, the team that was the reigning world cup champions and went on to win silver at the 2012 London Olympic Games, had to fly economy class to London, while the men’s soccer team flew business class.
The Japanese Football Association, the organization that oversees soccer in Japan, stated that the men’s team were afforded this perk due to their “status as professionals”, according to this article from the Daily Mail. This was despite the incredible popularity and success of the women’s football squad, affectionately known as Nadeshiko Japan.
Alas, Japan isn’t alone in these sexist attitudes that are rapidly appearing blatant. Australia was also guilty of this as it sent its men’s basketball team to the London Games seated in business class, while the women’s basketball team flew economy.
In order to correct what apparently is a common practice in Australia, the AustrNadeshikoalian federal sports minister Sussan Ley and Australian Sports Commission (ASC) chairman John Wylie, jointly sent a warning letter to the top 30 funded sports organizations in Australia to refrain from this practice, according to this BBC story.
“In 2016, we can think of no defensible reason why male and female athletes should travel in different classes or stay in different standard accommodation when attending major international sporting events.”
This letter was sent recently on February 2, with a clear attempt to preemptively avoid any further embarrassing examples during the Rio Games in August. The veiled threat is that funding for the various sports associations would be impacted if treatment was viewed as not equal.
My guess is that Japan’s women’s soccer team will be afforded similar travel arrangements to the men en route to Rio. But will that hold true for all sports associations in Japan? Not so sure…..
Kristie Moore of Canada who competed at the Vancouver Olympics while 5-month pregnant.Health officials in several countries stricken by the Zika virus have given their female citizens an unprecedented warning: “Don’t get pregnant.”
That’s the first line of this New York Times report, the advice that basically assumes a possible connection between the Zika virus in pregnant women and deformities to their children.
I can only imagine what women planning on visiting areas like South America, or female athletes planning to compete in Rio this August are thinking. Should I stay or should I go? If you are pregnant, and planning on going to the Rio Olympics with your family, you may want to reconsider your decision. Of course, no athlete would go to the Olympics if they were pregnant.
But apparently, that is a naïve assumption, for there have been quite a few known cases where women athletes were 1 to 3 months pregnant, and were not aware until after the Games. But three in this list of pregnant Olympians were at least five months pregnant when they competed:
Kristie Moore of Canada, who won a silver medal in curling at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics,
Anky van Grunsven of the Netherlands, who won a gold medal in individual dressage at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Cornelia Pfohl of Germany who had been in early pregnancy when she won bronze in team archery at the 2000 Sydney Games, but was an amazing 7 months pregnant when she competed at the 2004 Athens Games.
Anky van Grunsven of the Netherlands competed while 5 months pregnant at the 2004 Olympics.Van Grunsven in particular has had a stellar Olympic career, winning a total of 8 equestrian medals, including three golds in individual dressage, over six Olympics, from 1992 to 2012. In November, 2004, only three months removed from the end of the Athens Games, she gave birth to her first son, Yannick.
Clearly, the Zika Virus should be giving women, who are pregnant, pause. But the Olympics come only once every four years. Who knows what stories Rio will bring.
Nearly 20 million foreign tourists visited Japan in 2015, already approaching the 2020 goal. This 47% year-on-year increase has been a revelation to Japan, making citizens and business owners keenly aware that Japan needs to gear up for continued growth, particularly as we get closer to the opening ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
According to this article, the ability for Tokyo to accommodate this sudden influx of foreign tourists has been strained by the supply of hotel rooms. The room shortage is compounded by the weak yen, which results in more Japanese taking vacations within Japan as opposed to overseas. Occupancy rates at hotels in Tokyo and Osaka are routinely over 80%, and sometimes over 90%.
So into the breach steps Airbnb, a peer-to-peer business that connects travelers with individuals who want to open their homes, or a room in their home for rent. Airbnb has exploded worldwide as travelers seek greater choice of accommodations, as well as the possible added experience of personalized service and comfort by the owner. It was once thought that Japan, and its particular sensitivity to privacy, would be a bad fit for an Airbnb model. But Airbnb Japan’s business has grown 529% since last year, while the number of listings in this country has also jumped year on year 373%.
And this is for a business that is essentially illegal, as Japan’s Hotel Business Law includes taxation of officially recognized accommodations, as well as various regulations around hygiene and safety, all of which Airbnb hosts have ignored.
But now, Ota Ward, one of the 23 districts that make up Tokyo, is hoping to legitimize the model, opening the door to individuals and families who need the income, want the business, and perhaps enjoy the experience of hosting strangers in their homes. Along with Osaka, the Japanese government will be looking closely at Ota Ward, with the hopes of expanding this model over the coming years.
In an attempt to eliminate such problems, Ota Ward has published rules and screening criteria. They include a requirement that neighbors who live within 10 meters of a rented property be notified in writing before an application is made. The local fire department must also be advised beforehand. Under the ward’s rules, minimum stays are set at six nights and seven days. Guest information such as names, contact numbers and passport numbers must be kept for at least three years. A host must also set up a window to accept complaints from neighbors and be ready to respond in foreign languages in emergencies.
What’s special about Ota Ward? It houses Haneda Airport, the expanding gateway to Asia and the world. Between 1978 and 2010, Haneda was, for all intents and purposes, the airport for domestic flights. But since 2010, it has taken on significant capacity as a port of call for international flights. Haneda is now the third busiest airport in Asia, and fourth in the world.
And let me tell you, as someone who has flown primarily into Narita International Airport, which requires at least another two to three hours of waiting and travel time to just get into downtown Tokyo, I much prefer to fly into Haneda. Tourists will as well. And wouldn’t it be nice to hop into a short taxi ride to your Airbnb accommodation about 10 to 15 minutes away.
Haneda Airport in 1964, the entry point for Olympians from overseas.
It is not a pretty sight – a newly born child with an unusually small head and brain damage. The working theory is that these abnormalities are caused by a virus, known as the Zika Virus, delivered by a certain strain of mosquito. It is believed that millions of people in the Americas, particularly South America, are infected, but that for the most part, “the infection causes no symptoms and leads to no lasting harm.” (See the New York Times article “Short Answers to Hard Questions About Zika Virus.)
And as the New York Times emphasized in another article, the connection between Zika and abnormalities in newborns is still unproven: “…the big question is whether Zika is responsible for the huge increase in birth defects reported by doctors, hospitals and other medical officials in Brazil over the last few months. That connection has still not been proved.”
And yet, it is the fear Zika creates that is of most concern to people in the Americas, particularly in Brazil, where the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in August and September this year. Millions of people from all over the world will visit, and while transmission of the Zika virus is unclear, the fear of the spread of the disease has increased. Will people who get bit in Rio de Janeiro become infected, and can they spread the virus in their own country via mosquitos locally? Will pregnant women be at significant risk?
In fact, The Center for Disease Control in the United States has issued a warning against travel for pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant to over 20 countries, primarily in the Caribbean, Central and South America, including Brazil. And the World Health Organization has declared Zika an “international health emergency.”
In the run-up to the London Olympics in 2012, there were fears of a flu pandemic. The Chinese government publicized the fact that thousands of additional hospital beds would be kept open in case of an outbreak of SARS. Fortunately, those particular fears never became an issue, and ultimately, those epidemics never emerged. Will Zika be different? One concern is the unknown nature of the Zika virus. The American Psychological Association explained the impact of the fear of the unknown disease in this article.
Research has shown that different threats push different psychological buttons. Novel, exotic threats like Ebola or avian flu raise anxiety levels higher than more familiar threats do. This reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear. In one recent study, for example, Nicholas Balderston and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee found that activity in the amygdala increased when participants looked at unfamiliar flowers right after seeing pictures of snakes (PLOS ONE, 2013).
And, at the same time, people often under-react to familiar threats. For example, influenza sickens as much as 20 percent of the population a year, and kills thousands. Yet because most people have had the flu and survived, or know someone who has, people may feel less urgency toward getting a seasonal flu vaccine. This may help explain why the U.S. vaccination rate for the 2013–14 flu season was only 46.2 percent.
Fun Fact #17: The biggest Japanese community outside of Japan is in Brazil.
I and my direct family and relatives are among the 1.4 million Nikkei living in the USA, which is the second largest home to people of Japanese ancestry. I had assumed American was the largest home to Nikkei (or people of Japanese ethnicity). But no, Wikipedia informs me that as many as 1.6 million are in Brazil, out of 2.6~3 million people who make up the Japanese diaspora.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan had pockets of deep poverty, and like the poor in so many other countries, the Japanese emigrated to the Americas. The Japanese were attracted to the lure of sugar in Hawaii, of oranges in California, and coffee in Brazil. When it became harder for Japanese to gain entry to the United States in the 1920s, they began to pour into the coffee bean plantations of Brazil.
Early 1900s propaganda poster encouraging Japanese immigration. Image courtesy of the Brazilian government.The Japanese diaspora is not as numerous or far-reaching as the Chinese or Indian diaspora. But you will find evidence of the Japanese here and there. There are memorials dotted across Southeast Asia that note the presence of Japanese in the past two or three centuries. Surprisingly, many of them moved overseas during a period of internal conflicts and external isolationism – it was hard for Japanese to leave the country, and hard for foreigners to dock and enter Japan.
However, the Portuguese, effectively trading firearms and providing new insights into science and medicine, were allowed limited entry to Western Japan. And here is Fun Fact #2000 on Japan…something I had not known until I started looking into this so-called Japanese Diaspora: The Portuguese traders in the 16th and 17th centuries sold Japanese slaves to buyers overseas, particularly in the Portuguese colonies of India, Malaysia, Macao and Goa, India, as well as Europe.
As revealed in this research of Japanese historian, Michiko Kitahara, in his book “Naze Taiheiyo Senso ni Nattanoka (Why Did the Pacific War Break out?), “the trade between Japan and Portugal included Chinese products and, in fact, most of the products that Portuguese sold to Japanese were Chinese products, such as silk and spices. But along with the trade of this kind, there also was a different type of trade, that has been little known both in Japan and in the rest of the world even to this day—Portuguese sold Japanese slaves overseas.”
Toyotomi HideyoshiWhen de facto leader and victor of a civil war in Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, heard that Japanese were being sold into slavery, he was outraged, and in the strongest diplomatic terms, insisted that the Portuguese stop trading in Japanese citizens and to return them to Japan at the expense of Japan. Hideyoshi understood that the Portuguese would not change, and so he applied real pressure to the only people he could, threatening the Japanese who were selling slaves to the Portuguese with execution.
The cold reality was that slavery was not outlawed in Japan, and that warring daimyos in Japan often converted their war prisoners into slaves. The most unfortunate of the unfortunate were shipped off to unknown shores, a lingering legacy of the modern-day Japanese diaspora.
2012 Vogue Japan Woman of the Year: Saori Yoshida and Kaori Icho
There are only two people, both male, who have won individual gold medals in a single event four Olympic Games in a row: Al Oerter in the discus throw from 1956~1968, and Carl Lewis in the long jump from 1984~1996.
At the Rio Olympics in August, we may bear witness to a historical achievement by a Japanese wrestler, not once, but twice.
Both Saori Yoshida (吉田 沙保里,) and Kaori Icho(伊調馨) have won consecutive gold medals in wrestling at the Olympic Summer Games in Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012). And they won their respective weight classes at the Japan national championships in June last year to get their tickets punched to Rio. In fact, they both won their 13th straight national championship.
Yoshida of Mie Prefecture and Icho of Aomori are quite simply the two most dominant wrestlers on the planet. They are both referred to as the “legends of the unbeaten streak” (不敗神話). Ito has won 172 straight times since May, 2003, and Yoshida has lost only twice in her career, most recently in May, 2012. But they are both perfect at Olympiads.
There was a brief time when both Yoshida and Icho competed in the same weight class, but fortunately, Icho moved up to the next heavier weight class, setting up this year, a historic opportunity.
For some reason, Yoshida has become more the face of Japanese wrestling, as the front person for the Japanese security company, Alsok. But they are both supported by Alsok, as you can see in the commercial below.
But come August, we will be hearing a lot about both of these two wrestling legends.
How do you clean up corruption when it is perceived that all parties are steeped in it?
According to this powerful opinion piece by Juliet Macur of the New York Times, better to go with the devil you know, than the devil you don’t.
She writes how the head of WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency), Dick Pound, has consistently been blunt and hardline with regards to corruption in athletics, particularly as it relates to doping. (She cites in the article a hysterical quote from Pound about a famous cyclist’s testosterone levels as a case in point.) But for some reason, when it comes to the fate of IAAF leader, Sebastian Coe, Pound somehow found it in his heart to praise and support, not tear down. As Macur wrote, “What had WADA done with the real Dick Pound?”
Coe took gold in the 1500 meters in 1980 and 1984, was elected as an MP in the British Parliament, and has been a leader in the International Amateur Athletics Federation since 2007, recently becoming the head of the IAAF last August. To be honest, it’s a lousy time to be the head of the IAAF, which is under a dark cloud of suspicion.
Sebastian Coe wins gold in the 1500 meter race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games
There are allegations of gifts made in exchange for awarding the 2019 world track and field championships to Doha, Qatar. There is the state-sponsored doping program in Russia that was conveniently ignored by the IAAF but eventually exposed by WADA, resulting in Russia’s track and field being banned from international competition, including the Rio Olympics in August. There is the suspected doping of Kenya’s runners, whose performance at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing last August was so superlative, they topped the medals tables for the first time ever.
And finally, there is Coe himself, who very reluctantly disassociated himself from his long-time paid association with Nike. The IAAF awarded the 2021 Athletics World Championships to Eugene, Oregon in the US, with apparently a formal bidding process. Oregon is definitely a hotbed for track, so Eugene’s selection is not a surprise. But Oregon is also the home to Nike. There’s no real indication that Nike, and thus Coe, had anything shady to do with the selection process. But taken all together, the IAAF is not currently a poster child for transparency and ethical decision making.
But as Macur explains, “It can be difficult to find purity at the top of international sports. In track and field, Coe, the former middle-distance star and Olympic champion, just might be the best option. He should serve his punishment for not speaking out against pervasive doping in track and field. His sentence: to clean up his dirty sport.”
Macur goes on to quote 5,000-meter runner and champion, Lauren Fleshmen as saying that Coe probably didn’t know all the corrupt things going on in the IAAF because of its
Cabral (center-left, pointing) sights the Brazilian mainland for the first time on 22 April 1500.In March of the year 1500, the Portuguese explorer, Pedro Álvares Cabral, left Lisbon and led a fleet of 13 ships and 1500 men to India. Instead of going straight South, and taking the turn around the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of Africa before heading up the African coast to India, Cabral went southwest.
India was the land of riches, where spices like pepper made men rich. But southwest Cabral headed, and about six months after leaving Portugal, they dropped anchor in a natural harbor they named “Porto Seguro”, or Safe Port. The Portuguese traded with the locals, whom they called “Indians”, hunted, fished and foraged for food stocks, and held Christian Mass. They built a 7-meter tall cross made of wood, thus establishing their claim as Christians and men of the Portuguese Kingdom. A few weeks later, Cabral led the fleet on to India and riches, thus becoming the first explorer to venture across four different continents: Europe, Americas, Africa and Asia.
Since the early 15th century, Portuguese explorers have spanned the globe seeking items of value and territories to possess. The Portuguese Empire dotted Africa and Asia: Timor and Malacca in Southeast Asia, Macau in China, Goa in India, and what are now called Angola and Mozambique in Africa, for example.
And while Portugal never established any permanent stronghold in Japan, Portugal has had an impact on Japan since the 16th Century, when Portuguese traders turned the sleepy port town of Nagasaki into a bustling center for international commerce. For the first time, Japanese were exposed to tobacco, bread and Christianity.
Nagasaki CastellaWhile Christianity never took root in Japan, other customs did, as evidenced by words now considered Japanese (see source here):
Buranko (ブランコ): From the Portuguese word balancé or baloiço, “buranko” is the word for “swing” in English.
Castella (カステラ): From the Portuguese “Pão de Castela”, which means “bread from Castile”, a region in Spain, is today the word for a popular Japanese sponge cake, often found in gift shops in Nagasaki.
Tempura (天麩羅): And most famously, this classic example of popular Japanese cuisine, tempura, came to Japan via the Portuguese missionaries in Nagasaki, who would cook up a Portuguese dish called “peixinhos da horta“, commonly green beans dipped in batter and then fried. One etymological explanation, according to Wikipedia, is that
The word “tempura”, or the technique of dipping fish and vegetables into a batter and frying them, comes from the word “tempora”, a Latin word meaning “times”, “time period” used by both Spanish and Portuguese missionaries to refer to the Lenten period or Ember Days (ad tempora quadragesimae), Fridays, and other Christian holy days. Ember Days or quattuor tempora refer to holy days when Catholics avoid red meat and instead eat fish or vegetables.
Peixinhos da horta, the Portuguese ancestor of Japanese tempuraAnd now you know the rest of the story.
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