My last post described how Dollar Rent-A-Car has these great one-way specials for $1 a day plus tax. Unfortunately, circumstances prevented me from taking the trip I detailed there. Fortunately though, Dollar has another one-way deal. This time, you can pick up the car in New York City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Philadelphia and return it pretty much anywhere in Florida. The deal runs from now until November 17th and then from November 29th until December 15th. So I had a quick look at the schedule and found out that the Maple Leafs are in Pittsburgh...
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Monday, 25 October 2010
Dollar Rent A Car has a great special once in a while. You can rent a car for $1/day if you are driving it just one way. Pick up and drop off locations are limited and differ for each special, but are usually far enough apart that you can plan a nice little sports road trip. From now until November 17th, this special is available with pick up locations in New York City and Pittsburgh and drop offs in Houston, Dallas and some other Texas cities as well as Tulsa, Oklahoma. The biggest restriction is that the rental period is limited to 7 days so...
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Saturday was a good day in baseball if you are like me and hate seeing the same teams buying their way to the top year after year. In Japan's Saturday morning (Friday evening in Arlington), the defending champion New York Yankees were eliminated by the Texas Rangers, who advanced to their first World Series. Seeing A-Rod watch the final pitch of his team's season was sweet. Then Saturday evening in Japan, the defending champion Yomiuri Giants were sent packing by the Chunichi Dragons in the second stage of the Central League Climax Series. The...
Thursday, 21 October 2010
I've always been interested in the differences between baseball here in Japan and that played overseas. Of course, there are the obvious things like the longer games that occur regularly here, or the overuse of the sacrifice bunt that , but the smaller things that aren't immediately noticeable. With both regular seasons over, I decided to perform a quick analysis of the differences between the two leagues. I looked at all the offensive stats plus errors to see if there were any large discrepancies on a per game basis. I used mlb.com for their stats...
A friend of mine invited me to the Oi Racetrack where Tokyo City Keiba (TCK) is run on a regular basis. Keiba is the Japanese word for horse racing, and the TCK runs races from the afternoon into the evening on some weekdays. The races held under the lights are known as Twinkle Races and attract a large number of casual fans, including plenty of couples enjoying a date.I had only been here once before, way back in 1997, which is hard to believe as...
Monday, 18 October 2010
Just a quick post, about a week late, to note that the Nabisco Cup final will pit Sanfrecce Hiroshima against Jublio Iwata. I saw Hiroshima's first game in the competition back on September 1st when they lost 1-0 to Gamba Osaka. But they rebounded to win the second leg and then beat Shimizu S Pulse in the semi-finals. Meanwhile in the other semi, Iwata knocked off the team I semi-support, Kawasaki Frontale to advance. Iwata has a much more storied history with several league championships and an Emperor's Cup to their name, mostly from the late...
Sunday, 17 October 2010
I'm always on the lookout for something new to see in the Tokyo sports world. So I was intrigued when a friend mentioned the F League, a futsal league that is in its 4th season. There are two teams in the Tokyo area but both are located in the western suburbs more than an hour away, so I hadn't made the effort to visit either of them yet. Fortunately, the league had a special weekend with 5 games held at Yoyogi's National Gymnasium, located in central...
Monday, 11 October 2010
Last year around this time, I posted a brief note on the minor league pennant race in Japan being decided with ties being ignored, which is stupid and unfair. This year, both NPB playoff races went to the wire, and again ties reared their ugly head.Let's look at the Central League first. The Hanshin Tigers finished 2nd at 78-63-3, while the Yomiuri Giants were 79-64-1. If the simpletons who ran Japanese baseball were capable of understanding math, they would realize that these two records are identical in terms of percentage as ties should equal...
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
During the baseball season, I posted the standings after each team had played 54 and 108 games. It was interesting to see how teams were quite consistent from one segment of the season to the next. Now that the season is over, I thought it would be worthwhile to see how teams performed down the stretch and compare those records to the other segments.What I find interesting is that the playoff teams after 54 games were mostly unchanged. All four AL teams were in playoff position back in May, while the NL saw San Diego and Los Angeles drop out, replaced...
Sunday, 3 October 2010
When I first moved to Japan in 1996, I immediately became hooked on sumo. I would go to every tournament in Tokyo and often travel to various out-of-town events as well. The stars of the sport were the two Japanese brothers Takanohana and Wakanohana, while Hawaiians Akebono and Musashimaru were also at the top of their game. Each tournament was exciting and usually went to the last day before a champion could be declared.But by 2004, all of these...
Saturday, 2 October 2010
After a couple of quiet weeks characterized by bad weather and a rather uninteresting sports calendar, October finally arrived and with it the Toray Pan Pacific Open. It was this week's stop on the WTA tour and it actually started back on September 25th, but I waited for the semi-finals which took place yesterday.The TournamentThe Pan Pacific Open (PPO) has been around since 1984 but was originally played in January after the Australian Open. Tokyo...
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