16
P/CLOUDY
NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
When then-Yomiuri Giants shortstop Tomohiro Nioka tore his calf muscle during the 2008 season opener, a star was born. In the year since taking over for the fallen Giants star, shortstop Hayato Sakamoto, is starting to live up to the hype. At 22-10-2 the ...
CHIBA — Terrmel Sledge is getting used to playing baseball in Japan. Which could spell trouble for Pacific League pitchers this summer. The Hokkaido Nippon Ham slugger is off to a fast start this season and is one of the driving forces behind one ...
Chiba Lotte Marines pitcher Hiroyuki Kobayashi didn’t come out of Tuesday’s game against the Orix Buffaloes with a win, but he should’ve gained a lot of confidence. Kobayashi (0-2) gave up three runs in Lotte’s 4-3 loss but struck out seven and walked only ...
Finding and identifying talented young players is a big part of the game of baseball. But as the 2009 season is showing early on, there’s no substitute for experience. Hanshin’s Tomoaki Kanemoto and Orix’s Tuffy Rhodes have taken Japanese baseball by storm this year ...
The Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters’ pitching staff has looked surprisingly pedestrian early this season. Even more surprising, however, is the way the Fighters’ offense has rocketed out of the gates. Following Wednesday’s 11-5 win over the Orix Buffaloes, Nippon Ham leads Japanese baseball with ...
Kenta Kurihara was with Samurai Japan for just two games at the World Baseball Classic. Despite it’s brevity, that stint with the world champions may make all the difference for the Hiroshima Carp star this season. Rarely seen without a smile on his face ...
With spring training under way, fans in Osaka and Fukuoka are watching closely as their teams undergo a change. In addition to the usual offseason shuffling, the Hanshin Tigers and Fukuoka Softbank Hawks are busy breaking in new managers before the start of the ...
In the midst of the greatest individual season of his career, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma was left off Japan’s Olympic roster. With any luck, the Pacific League MVP can show the Japanese baseball brain trust the error of its ways at ...
Before the self-proclaimed (and arguably rightly so) “greatest of all time” and new MLB Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson was redefining the way leadoff hitters would be viewed, the Hankyu Braves’ Yutaka Fukumoto was helping to set the standard. Japanese baseball’s career leader with ...
For a team that couldn’t do anything right during the season, things sure seem to be going well for the Yokohama BayStars this offseason. Yokohama had a horrible 2008 season, finishing 19 games behind fifth-place finisher Tokyo Yakult with a dismal 48-94 mark. The ...
There’s talk of revenge ahead of the 2009 World Baseball Classic and it’s music to the organizers’ ears. With the campaign to get baseball back into the Olympic program serving as a backdrop, organizers have been pleased with the level of excitement in the ...
The Yokohama BayStars reached the Nippon Professional Baseball summit in 1998 behind 12-game winner Daisuke Miura. Ten years later, the BayStars have unceremoniously tumbled all the way down the mountain, hitting every bump along the way. Now a grizzled 17-year veteran, it’s Miura who’s ...