in Japan, and relieved
Ted and I are on simultaneous business trips, him to Taiwan and me to Japan. I am pleased to report that both countries have much better Olympic coverage than Taiwan did in 2008. When I spoke to Ted briefly, he reported having the Olympics on four channels, all in Chinese. I have four also, though they only seem to show two different sports at a time. So far I’ve seen bits of swimming (women’s 100m) and badminton and intensive coverage of wrestling-with-your-brother, which I was not aware had been elevated to Olympic level. OK, I’ve looked it up and it’s actually judo, and I’m sure there are lots of tricky and skillful technical moves that I’m missing entirely, but what it looks like to uneducated eyes is lots of grabbing each other’s clothing and trying to knock each other over. The only major difference I see is that they aren’t trying to throw each other onto the sofa. (Don’t worry, it was a big sectional – no chance of hitting an edge and getting hurt.) I can’t help but wonder if adding a sofa event would bring new challenges and spectator thrills to the Olympics.
I’m just relieved that they are showing different sports – I was so worried that we’d end up missing most of the Olympics again. If I’m really lucky, the Japanese rowers are good enough that they’ll show a lot of rowing. I don’t think I have to worry that they won’t show gymnastics!