2013年6月7日金曜日

All about Ryota

   Hello everyone.  My name is Ryota Mori and I am from Japan.  My hometown is Tsukuba and I was born in 1994.  I have two older sisters. One sister is seventeen years older than me.  She married five years ago, but she doesn't have a child.  She is a baseball fun.  She likes Saitama Seibu Lions because she lives in Saitama.  The other sister is fifteen years older than me.  She married five years ago too.  She has two children ages 5 and 2. She is busy in caring her children now.  Of course, I don't have any children.  I am a student of University of Tsukuba.  I lived in Tsukuba from I was born to I was 12 years old.  Then I moved into Nara and lived there six years.  There is dialect in Nara.  So I learned and spoken it.  Three months ago, I returned to Tsukuba.  Now I live in Tsukuba, but I can not speak the standard Japanese language, I only speak dialect.

   By the way, I belong to triathlon club of University of Tsukuba.  Do you know triathlon?  If you play triathlon, you must swim, bike and run for long.  It is hard to finish the goal line, but it is interesting.  If you goal, you will get a sense of achievement.  I like triathlon very much.
  However, I don't only like triathlon.  I like rugby, soccer, baseball, swimming, track & field, etc.  Indeed, I had been playing rugby ten years from 2 to 12 years old.  I think that rugby is violence and gentle.  I had been playing swimming for 6 years, tennis for 5 years.  In junior high school and high school, I belonged to track & field club. I like these sports.
  Not only I but also my cousins play sports.  I have 9 cousins on my father's side and 11 on my mother's side.  Three could get a chance to play in an inter-high-school athletic competition or intercollegiate athletic competition.  Their sports are softball, track & field and synchronized swimming.  Of course, others play sports hard too.  Perhaps my lineage  is good at playing sports.
 
   Incidentally, I like ramen. I often eat it various shops on weekends. Do you know its history?  Ramen is of Chinese origin, however, it is unclear when ramen was introduced to Japan. Until the 1950s, ramen was called shina soba but today chuka soba or just ramen are more common. By 1900, restaurants serving Chinese dish from China offered a simple ramen dish of noodles. There was a few toppings and a broth flavored with salt and pork bones. Many Chinese living in Japan also pulled portable food stands, selling ramen to workers. By the mid 1900s. By the early Showa period, ramen had become a popular dish when people eat out. After World War II, cheap wheat imported from the U.S.  At the same time, millions of Japanese people had returned from China. Many of these people had become familiar with Chinese dish. Eating ramen was still a special occasion when going out and eating. Beginning in the 1980s, ramen became a Japanese cultural dish. Now we can eat ramen every day. And I can eat and like it. 

 

2013年5月24日金曜日

1, Explanation of Top League


Rugby In Japan
Week 1
      Top League is a professional rugby union league which was created by the Japan Rugby Football Union.  It want to develop the overall standard and popularity of the sport in Japan and improve the results of the Japan national rugby union team.  The first season was 2003–04.  12 teams participated in Top League. From the 2006–07 season, the league was expanded to include 14 teams.  The chief architect of the league was Hiroaki Shukuzawa who strongly felt the urgency of improving Japanese domestic company rugby to a professional level which would allow Japan to compete more stately at Rugby World Cups.  

There is Top League Challenge which is lower branch of Top League.  The teams belonging to Top League Challenge to fight with Top League's teams next year. The two highest ranks of teams can be promoted to Top League.  The third and fouth rank teams can fight the play-off.  If they win the game, they can be promoted to Top League too.    

By the way, Top League have basic concept which is new challenging to level up.  Top League's logo mark show the basic concept. 
ジャパンラグビー トップリーグ ロゴマーク(Top League's official site)

This is the logo mark.  This includes various meanings.  One is to cooperate.  The secand is powerful.  The third is to advance.  Japan Rugby Football Union treats these dearly.  The basic colors are orange, green and black.  These colors represent the earth, turf and strength. Scram, one of the characteristics of the rugby, is used as a mochif.  JRFU want to tell what it aim at clearly.
 


A lot of foreign professional players have played in the Top League.  Mainly, they are from Australia and New Zealand.  People say,"Salaries in the Top League have risen to become some of the highest in the rugby world in recent years."  However, Japanese players can get only at most 5 million for one year still.  Many rugby players in Europe and Oceania get more salaries than in Japan.  For example,  Jonah Lomu who was a member of Allblacks in New Zealand got about 640 million.  Sinji Kagawa who belongings to Manchester United will get about 600 million in a year. And Darvish Yu who plays in Major League will get about 800 million.  From these reason, some rugby players can get as same as other major sports players. 

Jonah Lomu (cropped).jpg(Wikipedia: Jonah Lomu)

  In future, I hope that 100 million players appear from Japane.  It is not impossible at all.  Now, Japan Rugby Football Union and players have been done their best. I want to support them.