Photo Source: New York Times.

Japan came back from behind twice, and then showed remarkable poise to take the penalty shoot-out 3-1 to win their first World Cup. The US had gone into the match as favorites, not only due to their number one world ranking and two previous World Cup victories, but also the [...]

The latest FIFA Soccer rankings released last week saw Japan move up to 13th place, their best ranking since achieving the same mark in July 2005. Quite remarkably, the Japanese team is yet to lose an international match since falling to Paraguay in the round of 16 at the World Cup just over a [...]

Fresh from their victory last week over Australia in the Asian Cup Final, Japan, under new coach Alberto Zaccheroni have leapt 12 spots to No. 17 in the latest FIFA rankings. The Samurai Blue are the top ranked Asian nation, after joining the top 20 for the first time in 5 years. They still [...]

Japan defied all of their pre-tournament form last night, with a steady and defiant 1-0 win over top ranked African nation Cameroon. Japan, ranked 45 in the world, defeated the 19th ranked Cameroon with some great defensive pressure, matching the African team’s physical presence. Their defence was basically inpenetrable, and after a series of recent [...]

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported that Kim Yu-Na is in line for a US$1 million bonus from sponsors for smashing the world record in the ladies figure skating at Vancouver last week. Kim was already the world record holder for scores for both the free programme and overall scores, both of which were [...]

The Japanese Ladies’ Team Pursuit Speed Skating team have won a silver medal for Japan on the second last day of competition. The team of Hozumi Masako, Kodaira Nao, and Tabata Maki (and reserve, 15 year old Takagi Miho) defeated Korea in the quarter final by 4.56 seconds, before meeting Poland in the semi final. [...]

If you live in Japan and watched even a moment of television over the last week, you have heard of Asada Mao. The nation’s media have been frantic in their hopes that surely, after two weeks of competition, somehow the Japanese team would win their first gold medal. And none in the team were better [...]

Takahashi Daisuke became the first Japanese man to win an Olympic figure skating medal when he claimed the bronze medal behind American Lysacek and Russian Plushenko.

Attention before the final performances centered on who would, and who wouldn’t try the quad jump, which few skaters are able to accomplish with precision and consistency. Lysacek contraversially [...]

The media explosion over the ‘Kokubo scandal’ over the last week was one of the biggest feeding frenzies over nothing that I’ve seen in the Japanese media in a while – and they are very good at feeding frenzies over trivial things.

I first heard about Olympic snowboarder Kokubo Kazuhiro’s ‘fashion choices’ and ‘attitude’ from [...]

Japan has claimed it’s first medals of the Vancouver games, claiming the silver and bronze medals in the Men’s 500m Speed Skating. Nagashima Keiichiro (27) won the silver medal, and Kato Joji (25) took the bronze, with the two Japanese skaters just 0.16 and 0.19 seconds respectively behind gold medalist Mo Tae-Bum of Korea. Korea’s [...]