Just got back from eating lunch.. I went to a Sushi restaurant in the building at work.. The restaurant had 25 seats, when I got there at 11:50 there were 8 people, when I left there was 24! Out of those 24 I was the only non-Japanese person.. I had a Sashimi platter which was 10 pieces of Sashimi, a bunch of roe, miso soup and tea. All that for $10.80!
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I am troubled by Japanese baseball.. The Nippon League is always bitching about their star players leaving for MLB, I have a good idea why now.. I walk around the office here and see people wearing Red Sox hats or Yankees hats. Most of the people here know more about MLB than they do about the Nippon League. I was talking to one of my co-workers and he didn't even know Bobby Valentine was still the manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines.. Why, you ask?? Because for some stupid reason they don't televise baseball here.. The only team that gets played on National TV is the Giants, and they only get aired from 7pm to 9pm. Keep in mind the normal start time for a baseball game here is 6pm which means that the TV broadcast starts an hour into the game and ends before the game is over!! Bobby Valentine is becoming more and more my hero... Since he took over management of the Marines he has made them advertise and sell merchandise, he even managed to get radio broadcasts of their home games. Right now the Marines are the only team in the whole Nippon league that have radio broadcasts! The Giants and Tigers each have a pay satellite channel that airs their entire game, but they are expensive channels from what I hear. The Marines radio broadcasts are free..
Last night was the final game of round one of the Central League Climax Series and it was NOT on TV because it was not a Giants game.. Imagine if the only team you could watch on American TV was the Yankees and they didn't air game 7 of the Red Sox/Rays game!! wtf!
The first MLB game broadcast on the radio was August 5th 1921, since July 10 1925 every MLB was broadcast to at least the radio. From 1997-2002 the Expos only had French radio broadcasts because the owner of the team thought that by not broadcasting games he would increase attendance! The team set record lows for attendance numbers in 1999-2001! When MLB bought the team in 2003 and re-instated TV and English radio broadcasts their attendance went from 7, 935 per game to 12,662 per game (the stadium held 65,000 people).
The Nippon Baseball League was formed in 1950, their first broadcasted game was in 1973, in 1999 they aired their first All-Star game, in 2000 the Giants got their own satellite channel that airs all of their games. In 2004 the Marines started thier radio broadcasts. In 2005 the Tigers started their own satellite channel, the Eagles, Hawks and Marines began airing their games for free on the internet! So in today's modern era of internet, tv and satellite you can watch 5 NPB teams (7 teams still have no broadcasts)! Oh, wait, starting in 2006 the Nippon Sports Network airs one game a week on Saturdays! Way to jump into the century!!
How can a Japanese team compete for salary when they don't get broadcast revenue? MLB teams make 50% of their revenue in TV/Radio broadcasts..
Come on Bobby, you need to work faster to fix the marketing of baseball if it's to keep any of it's good players from going to the MLB.
---Comic of the Day
http://xkcd.com/490/
---Thought of the Day
It's amazing how much better I feel eating Japanese food. I have not had any gas issues since being over here.. Now what is it that's causing problems back in America? Since I've been here I've had no bread, no tomatoes and almost no dairy (only a little bit in the rangoons). I went though this same thoughts while in Singapore... I guess I will have to keep a food diary and try to see what causes the problem..
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