An underground room fitted with high-tech cameras and artificial turf may seem like an unlikely setting to practice softball, but it could be a key to Japan's defense of the Olympic title it won 12 years ago.
Softball was introduced as an Olympic sport, for women only, in 1996 before being dropped from the Olympic program after the 2008 Beijing Games, when Japan won its first gold medal. It will be played next summer at the postponed Tokyo Olympics after being added by the local organizing committee.
Since 2017, the Japan Softball Association has been working with the Kashino Diverse Brain Research Laboratory, affiliated with NTT Communication Science Laboratories, to prepare the national team for its date with Olympic destiny — through virtual reality.