It's been awhile but I'd figured I'd throw up this video on spider fighting. Apparently, anything can be raised for fighting these days. This guy pairs his smaller Samurai Spider up against the larger local stock in Kajiki Japan.
This tournament, known as Kumo Gassen (クモ合戦), has been around for over 400 years and is what one blogger calls "the original Pokemon" (source). Haha! In one of the earlier videos in the National Geographic documentary, there is footage of him blowing a mixture of
a Gatorade-like substance to help his spider grow. I wonder
if it worked...
It's almost two years now since the Sumo match-fixing scandal went public. Remember that? A winning wrestler would offer another a victory just so to keep his higher title (and higher-bracket paycheck). This was happening often. In fact, according to Levitt from Freakonomics, there was a 75 percent chance a 7-7 (wins/losses) Sumo wrestler would win against an 8-6 wrestler in a tournament. This means that every time the opportunity appeared for a 7-7 wrestler to lose, not advance in the tournament, and lose money, that wrestler won 75 percent of the time. So, that's like a 50 percent chance of cheating, huh?
The word 八百長, or yaochou, is the Japanese word for "match-fixing". The kanji literally translate to "800 leaders". Hmm, I don't get it. But that often happens when you're learning Japanese.
Prior to the big press stink, often a related skirmish would surface concerning some foreign Sumo wrestler. The truth is though, "the Japanese-born seemed to be just as corrupt as the foreigners" according to the statistics (source). I guess when someone got wind of the cheating, everyone tried to use the foreigner as the scapegoat. Oh, Japan.
This isn't just a problem of xenophobia either. The Japanese media is very conservative and likes to protect the country's image. Here's another clip from Freakonomics:
The moral of the story: go watch Freakonomics and check out their blog.
Kenichi Ito just broke the record for the fastest man running 100 meters on all fours with a time of 17.47 seconds. That's right, he utilizes his legs and his arms to run and quite frankly, he looks like a skilled monkey. His time is less than double that of Usain Bolt's 100m dash world record. See Ito breaking the record for yourself...
Apparently, Ito practices moving on all fours everyday indoors and outdoors. He has been studying African Patas monkeys and spent the last 9 years developing his running technique. I guess this is his last 9 years of work coming to fruition. (At least it's not as anticlimactic as some other record breakers.)
And so I was still wondering, "Why?" When Ito was a little kid, his classmates used to make fun of him for looking like a monkey in the face. He says he was never bothered by the mean comments because he always had an affinity for simians. Check out more footage of him and his training techniques here.
Sometimes I get frustrated with the painstaking efforts of Japanese artists. You might have seen one of these documentaries (the camera pans in on the light playing off a wooden shape):
Here, Osaragi-san slowly polishes the outside of his cedar bowl with his fingernail. He blows the dust away through filter paper as to not impose his own germs upon the art. He will now place the bowl outside for 5 days moving it to always face the sun. If the humidity reaches 65 percent this bowl will be abandoned and used for scrap wood. To think, the finished product is only 19 weeks away from its last shellac coat.
I jest only because this kind of art is something of which most Americans are just not capable. I don't have the patience to "perfect" anything artsy. In fact, I usually cut a lot of corners when the going gets rough and compromise my original intention selling my soul to the devil of sloth. I'm guessing the average Japanese might understand my complete indifference with such tedious perfection as well. But Japanese artists have this special capability as if it's genetic.
Master Kikunaga is simply a master in this same vein. In this video it's apparent he has this unwavering patience to create a zen-like masterpiece of a bow, or yumi. Also, more importantly, the video is pretty darn interesting (excuse the subtitles and German voice-over).
In honor of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, in all its fury and violence, and the Flyers who just tanked in game 4 of the series, I present to you the Pan Asia Aeron Hockey Championship.
The game is basically a testament to the comfort level of one of the highest-end ergonomic business chairs: the Herman Miller Aeron chair. These chairs are pretty amazing if you didn't know, in performance and price. If you poke around enough online you can find the base model for just under $600 (without shipping, of course).
To break it down; it's sitting - like a boss.
Mixing office camaraderie (a la chair-hockey) and a very sleek, yet expensive office chair, you've got yourself one heck of a promotional campaign. Which means more money to make more overpriced chairs.
Ramped up from the office time-waster with makeshift sticks and a paper ball, the Aeron Hockey Championship has an official court, rules, and is complete with real sticks and pucks. I guess when a bunch of business men are playing though, you don't need helmets or face masks...or do you?
Apparently, the Pan Asia Championship includes 9 countries that eventually meet in Hong Kong for the crazy hockey-chair finals. Enough with the preamble; check out the semi-finals for Japan in Tokyo.
...It may be strange to discover Charlie Manuel received a lot of his coaching savvy from Japan (a country that had appropriated the game from America almost a century after its appearance in America). It wasn’t an easy task for Manuel, considering Japan is notorious for its xenophobia. In fact, circumstances for the first few foreign ball players in Japan could be compared to Little Rock and by Manuel’s appearance things were only slowly improving...
