2010/06/27

World Cup Soccer - Go go Japan!

**FIFA World Cup 2010**

FIFA World Cup Soccer Tournament is held right now in South Africa. Many Japanese soccer fans flew to watch the matches.

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(photo via Twitpic of @KNNkanada)

Japan is ranked 43rd in the FIFA ranking, and it is our 4th participation in the matches. Despite all the pessimistic views before the tournament, Japan ended the group stage matches with 2-1 result (won against Cameroon and Denmark, lost against Netherlands) and made it to the knockout stage... yay!

The next match for Japan is against Paraguay, will be aired on TBS television on 6/29 23:00 Japan Time.

Update 6/30: Japan lost the match vs Paraguay (PK) but it was a very very close match. They did a really great job!

**Bidding for FIFA World Cup2022**

Japan co-hosted Worldcup 2002 with South Korea and is bidding for hosting Worldcup 2022 now.

Official website for WorldCup Bidding is here. Concept video for the bid can be seen here:



As you can see from the video, Japanese bidding team is trying to use various technologies to make the experience richer... automatic interpretation device to communicate, augmented reality (AR) devices will be provided to view information of the players etc realtime, " Freeviewpoint Vision" will capture videos in the soccer field using 200 high definition cameras, "Full Court 3D Vision" enables the viewers to watch the matches using 3D technology, etc.

They even had a PSP in their official "bid book"




This is the photo of the bidding team which I took at their report event after the official bidding. 2nd from the right you can find Professor Jun Murai- father of the Internet of Japan joining the bidding team.






OH and don't forget- Japan is the country that Yoichi Takahashi, the author of Captain Tsubasa or Flash Kicker was born, right? He joined the world cup bidding event held in Yokohama. You can see a couple of articles here and here with his photos. (I wish they'd make those photos CC licensed...!)


2 件のコメント:

freckly さんのコメント...

Hi Fumi! I found your blog quite randomly....but I just wanna say how great it is to have someone explain Japan politics (and stuff) in plain English!! Esp about the 事業仕分け、天下り etc...fascinating. Keep up the good work!!

Fumi さんのコメント...

Hi freckly,

Thank you for your comment!