Jamie Bruce comments

Another big challenge for Japan in the Olympics is that the two biggest sports here are baseball and soccer. Combined that with the fact that kids almost exclusively play a single sport year round, you lose out on alot of potential talent for the olympic sports due to soccer and especially baseball. Now to go one step further, its not unreasonable to assume that the best athletes more often than not end up playing the most popular sports .. they may not neccessarily thrive in baseball or soccer, but they will play them at the expense of an olympic sport, like say track and field.

The big losers are the Japanese owners .. the players like Tanaka are going to MLB, whether its this year or next year. The difference is without a posting system the owners cannot auction them off to the highest bidder.

a Romanian bride who freaked out at the sight of her husband swilling raw eggs for his breakfast;

maybe her husband was a huge Rocky fan .. raw eggs arent a japanese breakfast but they are Rocky's traditional breakfast!