On The Olympics

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Since the Olympics is dominating news coverage, I might as well toss in my two yen's worth.

Twelve years ago, economist Stephen D. Leavitt patted himself on the back for having the brains and the guts to produce a study proving something everyone already knew was true: matches in sumo were fixed. Brains for noticing a bizarre and reliable weakness of rikishi with a majority of eight losses when facing opponents on the brink of relegation. Guts for taking on the Sumo Federation, which denied match fixing was taking place.

Leavitt's study was never a big a deal in Japan. When a rikishi at 7 wins and 7 losses on the final day grappled with one with a record of 5 wins and 9 losses, the question in the minds of viewers was not "Who would win?" but "How much did the stable of the guy at 7 and 7 offer the other stable for that all-important eighth win?"

As for the denials from the Sumo Federation regarding match fixing, what did Leavitt expect? "Oh, an American economist has discovered that match results veer wildly from randomized competition. Oh, gosh golly, we admit it: we are no better than professional wrestling!"

As if that were going to happen.

The only reason the cheating buggers got caught is because they began cutting their deals via email.

If Dr. Leavitt had a spare moment for some further feretting out of facts from out of data, perhaps he should consider this year's Olympics. Japanese athletes have collected a serious haul of medals (only two of which are gold) putting the country in fifth place in total medals, even after getting mauled in the national sport of judo. Now there are fewer sports in the last week of the Olympics where Japanese athletes are likely to excel, so the final national totals may be completely different from the current distribution. However, the Team Japan performance -- especially in swimming -- begs the question: where have all these world-class athletes come from? Japan has a declining number of young people, two decades of below-par economic performance and declining fitness among its youth.

One answer of course may be from greater international experience. More Japanese Olympians are competing professionally in foreign sports leagues or on international tours.

Greater genetic variation? Admittedly there is a smattering of bi-national athletes: hammer thrower Murofushi Koji, javelin thrower Genki Dean (No, that is not a typo. That is his real name. His father is a British national), soccer player Sakai Takatoku and rhythmic gymnast Saeed-Yokota Nina (not to be confused with her younger sister Elena, who is a member of AKB48. That is also not a typo).

However, five individuals out of 487 athletes seems an insignificant number.

Which brings up my guess -- the international crackdown on doping.

Based on the number of Japanese athletes who have been caught doping or accused of doping over the last two decades, Japanese athletes have been pathetic in taking advantage of advances in performance-altering chemistry (keirin cyclists may be the exception here).

Now that the international athletic federations are coming down like a load of bricks on doping, the international playing field is more level. Japanese athletes, who had never boarded the chemistry express, may be winning medals in accordance to a more natural distribution taking into account  national wealth, national health and national resources devoted to sports talent development.

Given the seeming Japanese failure to cheat (Is this where we can start talking about culture? - Ed.) it is possible to speak of virtual medals in past Olympiads, where Japanese might have won had they not been facing enhanced rivals.

Finding out whether or not that nasty little truth is lurking in the stats -- that would be a worthy endeavor.

Update On Nobody Pays Retail

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In order to check the figures in my post of the other day, I took a detour to the rice section of my local supermarket. I found that I had been too generous in my quoted figures. Uonuma Koshi Hikari, the most prized rice, was 3480 yen for the 5 kilo bag, not 3850 as I had remembered it. As for the low price substitute, the supermarket had 5 kilo bags of Koshi Hikari from other parts of Niigata Prefecture, the prefecture reputed to grow the best rice, for 2180 yen, well below the 2850 figure I quoted for what are less popular strains of rice from less-well-regarded growing areas.

All this fact-checking was possibly for naught, however. The comments section of my earlier post offers a revelation of spicy duplicity, which, upon reflection, is an obvious bit of cheatin' in order to stick it to the The Man Back At HQ.

Nobody Pays Retail

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, These, according to Business Week, are the prices one pays for goods in Tokyo:

No. 1 Most Expensive City: Tokyo
Quick lunch: $20.80
Beer at a bar: $10.56
Kilogram of rice: $9.80
Dozen eggs: $4.50
Movie theater ticket: $23.80

(Link)

Has anyone ever paid these amounts, even at 80 yen to the dollar, except in Azabu-Juban or at inside an international-class hotel?

The highest class Koshi Hikari from Uonuma in Niigata-ken (Niigata connoisseurs prefer rice from Sadogashima, but that is another story) costs me 3850 yen for the 5 kilo bag at my local supermarket, which works out to $9.63 at 80 yen to the dollar.

But I never buy Uonuma Koshi Hikari. I might accept it as a gift but I would never buy it myself. I am more than happy with Akita Komachi at 2580 yen or Tochigi Koshi Hikari at 2850 yen per 5 kilo bag. However, even these I prefer to buy on sale, which they are at least once a month.

A dozen eggs at $4.50? First of all, you cannot buy eggs in a dozen, not formally: eggs in this blessed land come in packages of ten -- as they should in any country with a commitment to the decimal system. Second, the most expensive eggs at my supermarket come in at 298 yen for a package, which if you upped it to a dozen, then divided by 80 yen to the dollar, comes to $4.47.

Whisper close, but again, I baulk at buying eggs at 298 a package. Eggs at 258 yen for 10 is my speed.

The same holds true for almost every price one sees quoted in these lists, whether they are compiled by ECA International, The Economist Intelligence Unit or whomever. Whenever sees the prices residents in the blessed must supposedly pay, even in high-priced Tokyo, one suspects that the test shoppers made at least one trip to Meiji-ya in Hiro, which is like calculating fruit costs based on a trip to Senbiki-ya -- something one does to get a good laugh, not a serious result.

Even if one drops the likely cost-skewing culprits -- the aforementioned Meiji-ya, Nisshin World Delicatessen and Mitsukoshi (for clothes, perfume and accessories) -- nobody ever pays retail for anything. There is always a coupon, a time-limited sale, a price for employees of keiretsu ally or, if one is willing to gamble a little, a low-cost alternative source.

The gamble sometimes does not pay off, as the unfortunate passengers on a Tokyo Disneyland-bound bus found out in horrifying way on Friday (E). The regular fare on a JR expressway point-to-point passenger bus from Kanazawa to Tokyo Disneyland is 7850 yen. This type of bus transportation is strictly regulated as to its operations, particularly the number of hours a driver can be on the road during a given span of time.

However, the passengers on the deadly bus ride from Kanazawa paid only 3500 yen for the same trip, based upon the semantic subterfuge of labeling the bus a "tour bus." Regulation for the operations of tour buses are much more relaxed than those for point-to-point buses, meaning that the same driver can drive many more hours, lowering the unit labor costs, which make up a significant portion of the cost of the drive. (J)

The accident and the likelihood that cost cutting measures shortcuts were taken demonstrate that outside the purview of the providers of information for the international traveling set, this blessed land is becoming more like other countries. Safety regulations can be and are circumvented -- and as the customers move downscale in terms of their consumption patterns, they will encounter these heretofore atypical tradeoffs more and more often.

An aside, but did anyone notice how it took only a day for the police to raid the premises of the tour bus company and the home of the company's owner in search of evidence of illegal cost-cutting practices -- but a month to decide raid the offices of AIJ Advisors after the story of the obvious Ponzi scheme made the papers and the news broadcasts?

Any chances that in the intervening month, AIJ executives might have altered, deleted or destroyed evidence?

A double standard in an underregulated industry, would you say? (E)