Another staple of the Japanese oshogatsu diet is to watch the annual Hakone Ekiden. The ekiden is a marathon relay race where runners from all the major Japanese universities compete. The course starts from Otemachi in downtown Tokyo and follows the Tokaido up to lake Ashinoko in Hakone and then back to Otemachi. About 217 kms in total and comprised of 10 sections for 10 runners from each team. I imagine the run uphill to lake Ashinoko would be the toughest part.
On digital TV, they have lots of peripheral info like the current leaders and course description. You can also send messages which will appear on the message board. There’s also some historical information like the record time for the run which was 11 hours and 3 minutes. The Hakone Ekiden is quite a big sports event and as you can see there are a lot of people out to watch it, especially considering that those screenshots were taken around the Odawara area which is not a highly populated town.
How long has digital TV been around in Japan? That completely passed me by :-( I thought England was ahead of the game! Here we have loads of channels now - BBC1,2,3,4 ITV 1,2, Channel 4, E4, Film4, Five Life, US etc.
Is it the same in Japan?
Cool. You can be playing a game in your house, pop on the TV, grab a few screen shots, do a blog posting, and be back on-game in moments. Way to go.
Roy, may I take this opportunity to wish you a prosperous new year and many thanx for all your observations and photos during 2006. You made me buy a Ricoh and I hope soon to follow that with a Roadstar. May a Chinese movie star fall into your lap.
p.s. My chum in Hong Kong has asked me to ask you this: Why is there little mention of alcohol on your esteemed site?
PA, digital TV has been in Japan for a few years now. Most of the TV here is also high definition 1080p
Percy, yep I got me a good set up here.
timothy, thanks for the good wishes. I hope you will be able to get a roadster soon. And I think I would rather have a Japanese movie star fall into my lap rather than a Chinese one but it would depend on who she is. Not sure why your friend would ask a question like that but to answer, I’m not interesting in posting blog entries that go like “we got sooo wasted”.. etc.