Puyo Puyo

A Puyo Puyo (Tetris+Dr.Mario type puzzle game) comedy sketch in Japanese, but you don’t really need to understand Japanese to enjoy the sketch.

China Sharks game times changed

All times for the China Sharks weekend home games in January 2009 have been changed to 15:00 starts. The 4 games will be on 10th and 11th against the Nippon Paper Cranes, and the 17th and 18th against the Oji Eagles to cap off the Sharks home schedule. The weekday dates against the same opponents will start at the originally scheduled 19:05 face off time. (There was a notice on the AL site landing page in Japanese but not English, so I’m just reproducing the notice in English here.)

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Seibu uniforms

A couple of Seibu uniform announcements for both their baseball and hockey teams.

First the Saitama Seibu Lions baseball team is apparently completely overhauling its uniform next season with new colours, logo, and uniforms. This may or may not be their primary logo, colour, and uniform, but this photo was taken at Tokorozawa station (home of Lions) but before a public announcement. Weird, but Seibu has never been good at marketing. Personally, moving away from the Tezuka Osamu designed Leo logo to a generic claws and baseball logo is a huge mistake, along with darkening the skyblue that has been the Lions colour since the team moved to Tokorozawa some 30 years ago, the new navy makes them similar to Chunichi Dragons, Tokyo Yakult Swallows, and Yokohama BayStars. Then again, I suppose this move in the new direction is probably meant to signal their new attachment to their hometown “Saitama”, but just seems like a bad move right after winning it all (Japan Series and Asia Series champions).

Now onto the Seibu Prince Rabbits hockey team that has just announced that they will be folding (or hopefully selling) the team after this season. The team will play in throwback Seibu Railway (Seibu Railway and Kokudo teams merged to form the current Seibu team a few years back) uniforms. The ads take away from the mood, but a classy move nonetheless as it’s a classic uni that I should’ve bought while the Railway team was still alive. The throwbacks will be worn in the game on 11 January 2009 against long time archrivals Oji Eagles at the Dydo Drinco Ice Arena home game (Higashifushimi, Tokyo). The ceremonial faceoff will be taken by the brothers Mel and Herb Wakabayashi who led Japanese hockey through the 70’s and beyond as player and coach on Kokudo, Seibu, and the Japanese national team.

By the way, Seibu wore this uniform for a while after the SEIBU era:

Either way, much better than the Kokudo bunny donchya think?

I used to be a fun of the rough and exciting Seibu Railway team, but could never support the team after it was merged into Kokudo even though many of my favourite players like Ryan Kiyoshi Fujita (the Theo Fleury of Japan, he led the Japanese league in PIM and goals once or twice, I think) play on the team. Just for good measure, here’s Ryan who’s been playing in Japan since 1995 and played on the 1998 Nagano Olympic team:

KHL オールスター他

１月１０日にモスクワの赤の広場で開催される、KHL の屋外オールスターゲーム（粋ですね！）のファン投票チームが発表されました。元NHL 選手の名が結構見られます（といっても、ロシアの経済事情だと来年何人残っているのか分かりませんが…年俸全30%減の話が浮上してたらしいのですが、新しく結成されたKHL 選手会の反対で実現しなかったそうです）。ちなみにオールスターチームは外国籍選手のチーム・ヤーガー対ロシア籍選手のチーム・ヤシンで、もちろん彼らスーパースターは投票の対象から外されてましたｗ

Team Jagr

GOALTENDERS: Robert Esche (SKA St. Petersburg) 32,712. Ray Emery (Atlant Mytishchi) 24,160. Rostislav Stana (Severstal Cherepovets) 3,500.

DEFENSEMEN: Ray Giroux (SKA) 28,548. Kevin Dallman (Barys Astana) 26,869. Ben Clymer (Dinamo Minsk) 24,161. Magnus Johansson (Atlant) 11,353. Karel Rachunek(Dinamo Moscow) 10,707. Mark Popovic (SKA) 9,426. Miroslav Blatak (Salavat Yulaev Ufa) 9,323. Rodrigo Lavins (Dinamo Riga) 6,275. Filip Novak (Dinamo Riga) 6,226. Joel Kwiatkowski (Severstal) 2,197.

FORWARDS: Pavel Brendl (Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod) 41,570. Tony Martensson (Ak Bars Kazan) 35,266. Jan Marek (Metallurg Magnitogorsk) 34,032. Oleg Antonenko (HK MVD Balashikha) 31,167. Alexei Kalyuzhny (Dinamo Moscow) 30,620. Nils Ekman (SKA) 18,159.Jaromir Jagr (Avangard Omsk) excluded from ballot. Marcel Hossa (Dinamo Riga) excl.Jakub Klepis (Avangard) excl.

Team Yashin

GOALTENDERS: Alexander Eremenko (Salavat) 18,738. 2. Konstantin Barulin (CSKA Moscow) 8,227. Georgi Gelashvili (Traktor Chelyabinsk) 6,429. Maksim Sokolov (Metallurg Novokuznetsk) 4,845.

DEFENSEMEN: Ilya Nikulin (Ak Bars) 24,854. Vitaly Proshkin (Salavat) 23,026.Konstantin Korneev (CSKA) 19,936. Igor Schadilov (Salavat) 17,886. Kirill Koltsov(Salavat) 12,369. Darius Kasparaitis (SKA) 9,649. Vitaly Atyushov (Metallurg Mg) 8,486.Alexei Zhitnik (Dinamo Moscow) 7,490. Alexander Guskov (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl) 6,778.Dmitri Yushkevich (Sibir Novosibirsk) 5,461.

FORWARDS: Alexei Morozov (Ak Bars) 44,549. Danis Zaripov (Ak Bars) 37,279. Maksim Sushinsky (SKA) 25,839. Alexander Radulov (Salavat) 23,652. Alexander Perezhogin(Salavat) 23,106. Sergei Brylin (SKA) 12,806. Alexei Tereschenko (Salavat) 11,762. Alexei Yashin (Lokomotiv) excluded from ballot. Andrei Nikolishin (Traktor) excl. Alexei Kudashov (Lokomotiv) excl.

カナダ・オタワではU20 のジュニア世界選手権（早速５連覇を目指しているカナダがチェコ相手に８－１の大勝）、スイスのダボスでは伝統のスペングラー杯が共に幕開けして、年末にも盛り上がっている海外のホッケー界です、是非とも日本とアジアにもおすそ分けしてほしいですね（アジアシリーズの札幌クリスマスゲームズの満員御礼は嬉しかったのですが）。

ジュニア選手権前の強化試合でのJohn Tavares （来年のNHL ドラフト１位指名ほぼ確定）のスーパーゴール：

ついでにロシアが無敗で独走してるEuro Hockey Tour （参加国はチェコ、スウェーデンと、フィンランド、各国で持ち回りのグループ試合を行う）のハイライト。世界チャンピオンのロシア、強いです：

「SEIBUプリンスラビッツアイスホッケー部の存続を求める署名」活動

「SEIBUプリンスラビッツアイスホッケー部の存続を求める署名」活動 のバナーを左コラムに貼りました。まだ署名をしてない方は是非、会場に足を運んでか、オンラインで署名を！今まで日本とアジアホッケー界を引っ張ってきたチームがこのままだと消滅してしまいます。東北フリーブレイズが生まれたとはいえ、これはいきなりかなりの向かい風です。日本とアジアホッケー界の為にも是非、宜しくお願いしますっ！

署名活動はこちらか会場から：

http://sports.geocities.jp/princerabbitsfan/

一月に８試合と、プレーオフがまだ残っています！

http://www.alhockey.jp/schedule_record/schedule/index.html

Seibu Prince Rabbits to fold after 2008-09

Seibu Prince Rabbits, the perennial powerhouse team in the Asia League Ice Hockey (and also separately as Seibu and Kokudo in the Japan Ice Hockey League before their merger) will effectively cease team operations following the current 2008-09 season due to the termination of funding from the main sponsor Prince Hotel Group (a Seibu Holdings company). This announcement was made to the players from the team owner on 18 January.

Head coach Chris Wakabayashi was in tears after the announcement, captain Takahito Suzuki was in shock and said “I can’t believe this right now. The most important thing at the moment is to finish the season, but this will be very difficult for (Japanese and Asian) ice hockey.” 

The current economic climate also aided in this decision by the parent company to stop funding the team, which is said to cost about JPY 500 million (~ US$4.5 million) per season (equivalent to the salary for a couple of Saitama Seibu Lions star baseball players…). There is a possibility that the Seibu team will continue to exist as a club team (like how Yukijirushi (Snow Brand) became Sapporo Polaris for a season, and how Furukawa became the Nikko IceBucks as the parent companies ceased to fund these teams), but with the lack of fan base and community support, this seems like a rather unlikely scenario for Seibu, and Tokyo area hockey fans will lose their only source of watching live high level hockey. The Asia League should continue to exist in the current 7 team form next season, as the Tohoku Free Blades based in northeastern Honshu should be entering the league, barring any more unexpected team foldings.)

On the same day, the much larger American Football X-League’s Onward Skylarks also announced that they will not be participating in the upcoming season as the team has effectively folded as well.

WBC warm up games for Asian teams

 

2/24(Tu) 19:00 Japan　vs　Australia Kyocera Dome Osaka Goes on sale  17 Jan 10am~ 2/25(We) 18:00 Japan　vs　Australia 2/28(Sa) 12:00 China　vs　Yomiuri Giants Tokyo Dome 19:00 Japan　vs　Saitama Seibu Lions 3/1(Su) 12:00 China　vs　Saitama Seibu Lions 19:00 Japan　vs　Yomiuri Giants 3/2(Mo) 12:00 Korea　vs　Saitama Seibu Lions 19:00 Taiwan　vs　Yomiuri Giants 3/3(Tu) 12:00 Taiwan　vs　Saitama Seibu Lions 19:00 Korea　vs　Yomiuri Giants

 

World Baseball Classic 2009, Asian teams warm up games that take place in Japan has been officially announced.

Interestingly Australia will play 2 games early against Japan (in 2006 it was Japan vs PL and Japan vs CL at Fukuoka, if I remember correctly).

Also, Japan seems to have set up the warm up games and tournament schedule with full control of the schedule, giving Team Japan 3 days rest between the last warm up games while Korea and Taiwan only get 1 day of rest. And Japan gets the first of 2 wins needed to enter round 2 of WBC out of the way early with its opening match against China all but guaranteed. It’s obviously rigged in Japan’s favour as hosts for the Asia round, but this tournament is still in its infancy and this is one of the kinks that needs to be worked out in the future ensure better fairness.

Giants and Lions are rewarded(?) with the right to play against the 4 Asian WBC teams in warm up games. Well, Yomiuri’s involvement is obvious what with Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper being a WBC sponsor.

2009ウィンタークラシックのイメージ図

MLB シカゴ・カブスの本拠地リグレー・フィールドで、２００９年元旦に開催されるシカゴ・ブラックホークス対デトロイト・レッドウィングスのウィンタークラシック2009のイメージ図がNHL から公表されました。

今年バファローで開催した時はアメフト専用球場だったので、それに比べるとどの席もリンクからかなり遠い印象です。野球場のホームベース、ファールラインやオンデックサークルを取り込んでるのはなかなか粋です。

ちなみにライバルリーグのロシアのKHL は2009年のオールスターゲームを1月10日に、モスクワの赤の広場で屋外開催するそうです。

ド、ドラゴンボール…

マトリックス３の方がよっぽどドラゴンボールぽかったぞｗ

まあ、リークされた写真のピッコロが白だったから、緑になっただけでもマシかｗ

日本が世界に先駆けて３月１３日に公開だそうです、どうなることやら…ストリートファイターＩＩの実写版並のクオリティーっぽいからな…

子供の頃リアルタイムに読んでた世代からしたら、想定の範囲内だけど結構ショックかも…

やっぱアニメとかゲームの実写化は無謀だよ。

The Big Three