daigo.org

In keeping with my JapaneseBallPlayers.com website sprit, I root for all and every Japanese athletes competing in the US. We just recently witnessed a devastating defeat… I am not talking about Ai Miyazato and Shiho Ohyama in the US Women’s Open golf, nor Ai Sugiyama’s defeat by Maria Sharapova in the third round of Wimbledon.

I am talking about Takeru Kobayashi’s defeat by Joey Chestnut. Yes, that’s a hot dog eating contest in Nathan’s famous in Corney Island (a Major League Eating event). Kobayashi was a 6 time champion. But the new champ Chestnut ate 66 hot dogs in 12 min., thirteen more hot dogs than the previous record. By the way, 66 hot dogs has 13,860 calories, in case you wondered. There was even a talk about disqualifing him after he “reversed” (read “puked”) second before the time was up, stopping him at 63, ten more than his best… OK, it’s pretty gross.

In more serious and happy news, Japanese wide receiver Noriaki Kinoshita was just signed by Atlanta Falcons (his official site). This makes him first ever NFL player from Japan. I will root for him the same way I root for Yuta Tabuse (his official site) for the NBA…

Last but not least, congrats on Hideki Okajima for making the All-Star team as a 32nd man! He deserves to be selected and I can not be happier for him.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 07/05/2007 @ 8:21 pm and is filed under Asian Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.