A Quick Olympic Break

I’ve mentioned before how much I love the Olympics, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear how excited I was when I realized that in Japan, I would be able to watch them in real time, rather than tape delayed. What I didn’t realize was that the Japanese coverage of the Olympic games would be much different than American coverage.

In these first few days, I have watched more hours of judo than I ever imagined I would. And I have to admit that I still don’t have any better understanding of judo than before. The competitors look like schoolchildren on the playground, slapping away the other’s hands and trying to sweep their feet from under each other. And just as it seems to get interesting, the schoolteacher (or referee in this case) blows their whistle and breaks them up. There’s also some point system that despite my best efforts to understand, appears to be completely arbitrary.

Badminton is also another popular Olympic sport here in Japan. Unfortunately, it is only slightly more comprehensible, but no more interesting to me, especially since they only seem to show one match over and over again – Japan wiping the floor with China in the women’s double badminton quarterfinals.

Speaking of watching things over and over, I have watched Japanese swimmer Kosuke Kitajima win the men’s 100 m breast stroke about 15 times. And I have see his 5-minute post race interview in which he cries into his towel for about 4 and a half minutes about ten times. And then, to dispel any mistaken belief that the American media has cornered the market on sappy Olympic coverage, the Japanese not only aired the post race reactions of Kitajima’s coach, mother, sister, father, guy that gave him a piece of candy when he was five years old, etc. (all of whose reactions can be described as hysterical), they also appeared to have a camera on each of these people during the race and insisted on airing each of those on split screen with the race as well. Now that I think about it, I’ve probably seen the race close to 25 times.

Luckily, in the last day or so, we seem to be getting more swimming. I have seen all of Michael Phelps races, including the incredible men’s 4 x 100 m freestyle relay – forget Phelps, that Lezak is amazing. And once more, the French surrender.

I love the Olympics.

- Jenny