Japan Reacts

Category: Sports

  • Track coach’s 8-minute delay picking up lunches locks 4 middle schoolers out of national meet

    At the All-Japan Junior High School Athletics Championships held in Yamaguchi Prefecture, an accompanying teacher from Kofu Municipal Kamijo Junior High School submitted the entry form 8 minutes past the deadline after it overlapped with picking up the athletes’ boxed lunches, barring four students from competing in the girls’ 4×100m relay.

    On 5ch, opinions split between sympathizers saying “cut them some slack over 8 minutes” and defenders of the organizers arguing “it could’ve been avoided by submitting early” and “granting exceptions would make the deadline meaningless.”

    “It overlapped with the boxed lunch pickup time” — All-Japan Junior High School Athletics Championships: 4 students barred from competing due to a procedural error, entry form submitted 8 minutes after deadline but not accepted — Yamanashi

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    2AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:38
    It has come to light that four students from Kofu City were unable to compete in the girls' 4×100m relay at the All-Japan Junior High School Athletics Championships after the supervising teacher forgot to complete the entry procedure.
    At the meet held in Yamaguchi Prefecture on the 21st of this month, four students from Kofu Municipal Kamijo Junior High School were scheduled to run in the girls' 4×100m relay.

    However, the accompanying coach forgot to submit the entry form before the race, and although it was handed in to meet headquarters 8 minutes after the deadline, it was not accepted, resulting in the team's withdrawal.
    3AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:39
    The coach reportedly explained, "It overlapped with the time I had to pick up the athletes' boxed lunches."

    The school says it will hold a briefing for parents tomorrow, the 26th.

    The Kofu City Board of Education stated, "We feel deeply sorry about this. We will work to prevent a recurrence and to care for the students' feelings."
    21AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:43
    Re: #3
    The coach needs emotional care too
    He's an adult, sure, but getting bashed and called an idiot,
    turned into a meme on 5ch and X,
    and feeling awful toward the kids on top of it — that could break someone
    5AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:39
    They were doomed either way — you can't win a race on an empty stomach
    6AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:39
    Even so, the organizers are being way too strict here
    12AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:41
    Re: #6
    "That school got away with it, so we'll be fine too" — that's exactly the mindset this creates lol
    19AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:42
    Re: #6
    Teams register their lineup right up to the wire to check everyone's condition
    Missing the cutoff just isn't okay
    28AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:45
    Re: #6
    Is that so?
    If you knew other schools' entries ahead of time, you could adjust your own team's lineup
    Once you know their 4 runners, you can change who you're matching up against
    8AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:40
    The parents probably traveled all the way from Yamanashi to Yamaguchi to cheer them on too, lol
    That's a memory that'll last a lifetime
    9AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:40
    Wait, they went all the way from Kofu to Yamaguchi for the national meet just for this to happen? Rough
    11AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:40
    Does it really need to be enforced that strictly?
    16AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:41
    Cut them some slack over 8 minutes
    65AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:55
    Re: #16
    It's that defiant, unapologetic attitude that rubs people the wrong way
    17AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:42
    They could've just let them run unofficially, off the record
    18AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:42
    Re: #12
    Then you should let that slide too
    34AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:46
    Re: #18
    But then the deadline loses all meaning
    20AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:43
    If someone told him "make the lunch shop wait instead," he'd probably lose that argument
    22AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:43
    Why would picking up a lunch order even make you late for the deadline?
    23AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:43
    8 minutes is a lot
    If it had been more like 2 minutes, maybe there'd have been a chance
    26AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:44
    There's no reason for organizers to grant an exception to people who just slacked off on the paperwork
    If a properly-registered school lost out on a medal because of that, it'd be way too unfair
    27AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:44
    Well, if it's the lunch shop running 8 minutes late, they'd probably cut you some slack
    29AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:45
    Isn't the All-Japan Junior High Championship about the biggest meet there is?
    Blowing it over 8 minutes is rough
    30AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:45
    They could've just submitted the entry form early in the first place
    He flat-out forgot and used the lunch as an excuse
    31AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:46
    "Your middle school's All-Japan meet? Oh, the lunch-box forfeit one" lol — imagine having that said to you for the rest of your life
    32AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:46
    I've actually been through this myself
    And yeah, I was the one it happened to
    33AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:46
    Wonder what was going through his head while eating that lunch
    54AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:52
    He really messed up
    If I were the coach, I'd take my severance and quit on the spot
    57AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:53
    Re: #54
    Reemploy at the lunch shop, maybe
    64AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:55
    He's probably going to remember exactly what was in that lunch for the rest of his life
    76AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:59
    Re: #64
    So that famous line "Damn it, this rice ball had to be salmon!" (a melodramatic quote from the manga Slam Dunk) becomes real life?
    69AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:56
    Why cut it so close to the deadline in the first place?
    73AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:58
    Re: #69
    When you've got several candidate runners and are narrowing it down to the final 4, waiting until the last minute makes sense
    Someone could tweak their leg in another event that same day
    77AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:59
    Why does entry even need to happen on the day itself?
    Sounds like the organizers are just being bureaucratic for its own sake
    83AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:02
    Re: #77
    That's because lineup changes are just normal in this world
    Guess your brain's the small one here
    100AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:06
    Re: #77
    Why would you deliberately create extra hassle — reopening slots, processing withdrawals — for same-day scratches?
    Have you ever even played a sport?
    88AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:04
    What kind of lunch was it, anyway
    If it was a fancy makunouchi bento, I'd be mad
    If it was a cheap nori-ben (seaweed-and-rice box), I'll let it slide
    96AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:06
    Re: #88
    Apparently it was a Jojoen bento (a boxed lunch from the famous, pricey yakiniku chain) ordered for good luck
    93AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:05
    It's just heartbreaking watching kids who did nothing wrong get denied the chance to show what they can do, all because of an incompetent adult
    It's been like this from the Showa era clear through to Reiwa — a homeroom teacher forgets to submit an application and it just ends with "ah my bad, I'll be more careful next time"

    Background and Key Points

    The All-Japan Junior High School Athletics Championships (全国中学校陸上競技大会) is the top domestic meet for middle-schoolers, one qualifying rung below anything international, so a berth here is often the single biggest moment of a 13- or 14-year-old’s competitive life. Japanese school meets typically keep entry forms open until race-day because coaches are expected to finalize a relay lineup based on same-day conditions — a pulled muscle in an earlier event, a subpar warm-up — rather than locking rosters days in advance. That is why the deadline exists at all: it is not paperwork for its own sake but the mechanism that keeps every team’s final four fair to the others. The formal parent briefing and the Board of Education’s scripted apology (“we feel deeply sorry, we will work to prevent a recurrence”) are standard Japanese institutional ritual after this kind of failure — expect contrition, not reinstatement; the students almost certainly do not get to run.

    The thread’s real fault line isn’t whether the coach messed up — nearly everyone agrees he did — it’s whether an eight-minute miss should be forgivable at all, given how small the number looks against a year of training. The “no exceptions” side wins the argument in-thread because same-day entry only works if it’s enforced uniformly.

    What’s easy to miss: the coach wasn’t slacking off, he was fetching a Jojoen boxed lunch — a genuinely expensive gesture meant to send the kids off well-fed for a national final. The good intention is exactly what turned into the story’s cruelest irony.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Live News board) thread “[Sad News] Track team coach: “I was picking up the lunches and the entry ended up late” → Team barred from competing.”

  • New Akita Stadium: Mayor Numatani to Submit Master Plan Budget Bill to August City Council

    Akita City Mayor Jun Numatani has announced that a supplementary budget bill for drafting a master plan for J.League club Blaublitz Akita’s new stadium will be submitted to the city council session opening August 31. The club explained that it now has a prospect of raising nearly ¥100 million from private sources — but on 5ch, commenters were quick to point out this is merely a “prospect,” not money actually “raised,” with many questioning how realistic the funding plan really is.

    Regarding development of the new stadium that will serve as the home ground of J2 club Blaublitz Akita, Akita City Mayor Jun Numatani revealed on the 24th that a supplementary budget bill for drafting the master plan will be submitted to the August city council session.

    Mayor Numatani made the announcement to Blaublitz Akita President Kosuke Iwase and others, who had come to report on the season opener.

    Mayor Numatani stated clearly that he will submit the supplementary budget bill for drafting the new stadium’s master plan to the August city council session, set to open on August 31.

    Source: akt.co.jp / Original article here

    7AnonymousAug 24, 2026 19:37
    Nearly ¥100 million (they never said ¥100 million)
    18AnonymousAug 24, 2026 19:45
    Re: #7
    A prospect has emerged for raising nearly ¥100 million
    (Note: they didn't say it *was* raised)
    14AnonymousAug 24, 2026 19:43
    Japan's largest AI data center to be built in Akita, ¥2 trillion construction cost, UAE set to invest
    http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOCC138LW0T10C26A7000000/

    Just ask the Arab billionaires
    They'd probably just hand it over
    33AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:09
    Re: #14
    Whoa
    Why not just ask them?
    It's pocket change to those guys
    26AnonymousAug 24, 2026 19:55
    I'm a baseball fan, but
    baseball's been leeching off taxpayers since Showa 29 (1954)
    As payback, they should start a baseball lottery

    and use that money to build
    soccer stadiums all across the country, no?
    40AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:20
    Re: #26
    College baseball, high school baseball, and pro baseball all used to pay a tax called the admissions tax, you know
    27AnonymousAug 24, 2026 19:59
    Raising ¥100 million is impressive, but ¥500 million for design costs is still a long way off
    Maybe they should keep "staying in J3" as a backup option
    29AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:03
    Re: #27
    > Raising ¥100 million is impressive, but ¥500 million for design costs is still a long way off

    They never said "raised"

    > They explained that a prospect has emerged for raising nearly ¥100 million from private companies.
    31AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:06
    Akita Prefecture doesn't even have a pro baseball team, yet it has six baseball stadiums seating over 10,000 — but somehow they can't build a single soccer stadium? Doesn't add up.
    58AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:52
    Re: #31
    Then go donate already
    37AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:16
    Heard Kiyota went to Kitakyushu to see the sorry state of the J.League with his own eyes
    Did you soccer fanboys (サカ豚, lit. "soccer pigs" — a mocking term for soccer fans) see that?
    55AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:45
    Re: #37
    Isn't he going to Akita?
    41AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:21
    The reason Akita Prefecture has so many baseball stadiums seating over 10,000 is that baseball fever runs high there — it ranks among the top prefectures nationally for stadiums per 100,000 people — and stadiums with a certain seating capacity were built at general parks across the prefecture to host top-tier pro baseball games (played regionally) and large-scale national/regional tournaments in rotation.

    Every top-tier (first-team) official pro baseball game held in Akita Prefecture since last year (2024-2026) has been a home game for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, held at Komachi Stadium (Akita Prefectural Baseball Stadium) in Akita City.

    ■ Wednesday, May 8, 2024
    Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles vs. Orix Buffaloes
    Attendance: 14,047

    ■ Wednesday, August 27, 2025
    Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles vs. Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks
    Attendance: 11,107
    45AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:33
    Re: #41
    Baseball fanboys (焼き豚, a mocking pun on "yakyuu"/baseball) say J.League isn't worth tax money because home games only happen twice a month — but baseball only gets one game a year here
    And it's half-empty too
    48AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:37
    Re: #41
    That's 40 times FC Osaka's attendance, impressive
    And Komachi Stadium's construction and upkeep costs are like a quarter of Mikuni Stadium's
    59AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:53
    This isn't technically false, but it's misleading. Both the prefecture and city are moving forward on the assumption that Blaublitz Akita raises ¥500 million. Nothing has changed about the basic agreement: if they can't raise the ¥500 million, the whole thing freezes. Confirmed from the meeting details via ABS Akita Broadcasting.
    63AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:05
    Re: #59
    Well, of course
    The mayor's policy hasn't changed one bit
    62AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:04
    Re: #50
    Apparently you get paid to cheer for FC Osaka lol
    64AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:06
    Re: #62
    But only 894 people actually showed up, though
    67AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:10
    There's no way they're raising ¥500 million
    Blaublitz would never agree to such lopsided terms
    This ends with a "we tried our best but it didn't work out"
    70AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:13
    Re: #67
    So it's basically unconditional surrender then
    It's already over — might as well just declare defeat already
    68AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:12
    Re: #64
    They're padding 404 people up to 894, you know
    91AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:39
    Re: #68
    I figured that guy would definitely show up, and sure enough he did — cracked me up
    75AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:21
    Re: #74
    What do you mean it's a bust even if they wait?
    What happens then?
    79AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:26
    Re: #75
    "Bust" means they don't make it in time
    It gets scrapped or frozen
    To put it plainly, this whole plan goes away
    83AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:28
    Re: #79
    That's fine, isn't it
    What's the problem
    84AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:29
    Re: #83
    No problem at all
    Hope soccer stadium (サカスタ) plans collapse the same way all across the country
    87AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:32
    Re: #84
    Just curious, though
    Did you actually think Akita's stadium plan would get this far?
    78AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:26
    The prefecture and city jointly develop and own it
    The private side raises about 50% of the development costs

    Nobody's putting money into that
    You pay half the cost, and in the end the prefecture and city own it
    On top of that, upkeep and management costs fall on the private side too
    Would you invest in that?
    86AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:30
    Re: #84
    It just becomes the next plan, that's all
    The club doesn't fold either
    Re: #78 There's no way they'd agree to terms like that
    89AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:38
    Re: #86
    What do you mean, "the next plan"?
    92AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:41
    Re: #89
    Guess that's a talk for the next mayor
    So would you invest under Re: #78's terms?
    101AnonymousAug 24, 2026 21:58
    Best you can do is pray Akita BB has no chance
    Though personally, I don't think there's a J2 club out there that couldn't scrape together ¥500 million from here
    105AnonymousAug 24, 2026 22:02
    Re: #101
    That's exactly why they don't need to raise it
    You pay half the money, and everything still ends up belonging to the prefecture and city, and on top of that you're stuck paying upkeep and management costs
    Maybe they'll even keep paying property tax and usage fees forever too

    Just pretending to raise the money is enough
    106AnonymousAug 24, 2026 22:02
    Re: #101
    This isn't "stadium built after raising ¥500 million" lol
    In this soccer-fanboy-beloved (サカ豚) stadium plan, raising that money only gets you to the "candidate site under review" stage lol

    Background and Key Points

    Blaublitz Akita play in J2, one tier below the J1 clubs whose stadiums usually get built through prefecture-city joint financing with baseball as the local benchmark. Akita is a baseball prefecture in a very literal sense: it has six stadiums seating over 10,000, built across different cities so they can rotate hosting national high-school tournaments and the occasional Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles game (Eagles being the regional NPB team, based in neighboring Miyagi). Those venues are public infrastructure, paid for as general park projects going back decades — nothing like the private-capital model J.League now expects of a new club stadium. That gap is the backdrop for this story: the prefecture and city are willing to co-own and help build a Blaublitz stadium, but only if the club’s side raises roughly half the cost.

    The thread’s actual disagreement is not about soccer versus baseball culture, but about the word “prospect.” The club announced a prospect of nearly ¥100 million from private companies, and commenters split over whether that phrasing signals real progress toward the ¥500 million private-funding threshold the project needs, or is essentially non-news dressed up to look like momentum.

    What the thread doesn’t spell out clearly for outsiders is scale: ¥100 million is only a fifth of the ¥500 million target, and even hitting that full amount wouldn’t fund construction — under the current scheme, raising it merely qualifies the project to advance to site-selection review, while the prefecture and city would still end up owning the finished stadium, with upkeep and management costs left to the private side.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuhou+) thread “[Soccer] New Stadium Master Plan to Be Drafted — Akita Mayor Numatani Confirms Budget Submission to August City Council, Club Explains Prospect of Raising ¥100 Million.”

  • FFXIV x Suntory Vending Machine Controversy: ¥900 Limited Cans Sold Warm, Not Chilled

    A collaboration between FFXIV and Suntory has revealed that dedicated vending machines featuring original-label cans will appear at five locations nationwide. The headline item, Lemon Squash, costs ¥900 and is sold at room temperature rather than chilled — prompting a wave of shocked reactions on the thread, with many comparing it to the infamous “filling-less yakisoba” scandal. Some calmer replies pointed out that “Suntory’s collab-exclusive machines have always been room-temperature by design,” and the situation gradually became clearer.

    Original-label FFXIV cans go on sale at Suntory vending machines nationwide starting August 31. Dedicated vending machines also make their debut

    Sales will also be conducted through the dedicated vending machines

    Source: famitsu.com / Original article here

    2AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:47
    This thread's about to get reported for "customer harassment" (kasuhara) too.
    58AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:32
    Re: #2
    It's within the bounds of the Consumer Contract Act, you idiot lol



    3AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:49
    The label's apparently just a sticker — how does that justify ¥900?
    13AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:02
    Re: #3
    Well, commissioning custom original labels/stickers for a niche game is naturally going to cost more.
    4AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:53
    Guess they jacked up the price since it won't sell much, and went room-temp to save on electricity too. At that rate they should've just set these up at FFXIV event venues only.
    5AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:55
    Is it because once it's been chilled, you can't just put it back out at room temperature?
    15AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:04
    Re: #5
    Carbonated drinks degrade if you keep cycling them between room temp and refrigeration.
    6AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:57
    FFXIV diehards deserve to be treated even worse, honestly.
    7AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:57
    Wait, it's a dedicated vending machine? Yeah, this is 'filling-less yakisoba' tier ripoff, I can tell.
    9AnonymousAug 24, 2026 15:58
    Isn't it just that the dedicated machines are room-temp while the other machines are cold?
    10AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:00
    With the filling-less yakisoba thing they shifted the blame onto the vendor, but this time it's an official ripoff.
    11AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:00
    There are only 5 locations total but they're hyping it like a nationwide release, and ¥900 from a vending machine is absurd even at the summit of Mt. Fuji. For reference, stuff at the top of Fuji runs about ¥600.
    12AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:02
    FFXIV's finally stopped even bothering to hide the cult-religion vibes. Behold, the holy sacred beverage has entered the fray!
    14AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:04
    Think about how the customer's gonna feel the second they pick it up…
    16AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:04
    Even the bouncer at a rip-off bar would be taken aback by this.
    17AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:05
    The haters probably don't even know Suntory's collab-exclusive machines are room-temperature by default.
    20AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:06
    Re: #17
    Of course they don't know. It's unreasonable to expect a first-time customer to already understand something like that.
    24AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:10
    Re: #20
    Exactly this. You finally track down a vending machine in the blazing heat, and what comes out is basically boiling juice — worst possible impression for the game lol
    18AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:05
    Sure, getting charged a premium is common at events and special venues, but this price and the lack of consideration behind it… I can't help but worry it'll hurt the image — mainly not for the game maker, but for the other party involved.
    19AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:06
    Maybe it's room-temperature because the stickers aren't waterproof and they're avoiding condensation. Buy it from a regular chilled machine and the sticker could peel off inside and even jam the thing.
    21AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:08
    Don't you at least get some kind of in-game item with it?
    23AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:10
    ??? "Wouldn't it be frustrating if something convenient were easy to get?"
    25AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:10
    So, haters, what are you gonna do about this thread?
    66AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:37
    What's wrong with spreading the actual facts?

    [Blue Suntory-brand machines]
    Lemon Squash, ice-cold!

    [White collab-exclusive machines]
    Lukewarm Lemon Squash lol
    98AnonymousAug 24, 2026 17:08
    Re: #97
    Re: #66
    Room temperature is only for the diehard fans lmaooo
    69AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:39
    Room temperature, ¥900… by normal standards this seems crazy. Is this just how it is?
    73AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:41
    Re: #69
    By normal standards it's crazy, but think of it as fan-business, and it's pretty par for the course.
    77AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:43
    Re: #69
    Every title's collab is priced like this, and they've been popping up a lot lately — maybe Suntory's really pushing this line.
    82AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:48
    Re: #69
    Thinking of it as a vending-machine drink is the mistake. You should think of this product as a can-sized gacha pull.
    86AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:51
    Even Gemini was taken aback by the lukewarm Lemon Squash lmaooo



    "Selling a brand-new Lemon Squash drink with a ¥900 sticker from a room-temperature vending machine — that can't be right, can it?"
    ↑
    You guys should copy-paste that line into Gemini and try it yourselves!
    92AnonymousAug 24, 2026 16:59
    FFXIV, a summer tradition — the perfect companion to ¥1000 yakisoba lol


    Wash it all down in one go with some lukewarm Lemon Squash ^^
    103AnonymousAug 24, 2026 17:16
    Re: #92
    Apparently to the diehards it's a bargain — buying ¥20-cost filling-less yakisoba with a ¥1000 bill that itself only cost ¥10 to print lol
    97AnonymousAug 24, 2026 17:05
    Looked into it — turns out the blue nationwide-rollout machines are refrigerated, and the white collab-exclusive machines are just room-temperature. That's literally all there is to it.

    Background and Key Points

    Suntory’s collaboration vending machines are a fixture of Japanese anime and game tie-ins: companies pay to install branded machines carrying character art and limited labels, often at inflated prices that fans accept as merchandise rather than ordinary drinks. A standard canned drink from a normal vending machine in Japan runs about ¥120–160; ¥900 for a 5-location-only, room-temperature can is roughly six times that. The “filling-less yakisoba” comparison posters kept reaching for refers to a notorious 2013 incident at a fan convention where a vendor sold yakisoba containing no noodles or filling for ¥1000, which became shorthand in Japanese online culture for any transaction seen as charging real money for essentially nothing.

    The thread wasn’t actually split on whether ¥900 is expensive — nearly everyone agreed it is by normal standards. The disagreement was over whether serving it warm constitutes a deceptive rip-off or just an unadvertised industry norm: several posters clarified that Suntory’s collab-exclusive machines are room-temperature by design (unlike the same company’s regular blue machines standing right next to them, which are chilled), meaning nothing was hidden so much as never explained to first-time buyers.

    What the thread never addresses is why the temperature difference exists at all — it’s not a cost-cutting choice but a packaging one: these limited labels are paper stickers, not printed cans, and repeated cold-hot cycling risks condensation loosening the adhesive, which can jam the machine. Readers should also know that comparably priced “premium” collab drinks have become common across multiple franchises, not just FFXIV.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “[FFXIV] In this blazing heat they skimped on refrigeration power and are selling lukewarm Lemon Squash for ¥900 from a dedicated vending machine lol“.

  • Is Short Really an Advantage in Soccer? 5ch Weighs In: ‘Top Scorers Average 185cm’

    A thread kicked off with the claim that “being short is an advantage in soccer,” and 5ch users pushed back hard. Someone brought up data showing that the top scorers across Europe’s big 5 leagues average about 185cm in height, sparking a debate over whether short legends like Pelé, Maradona, and Messi are actually the exception rather than the rule. Others pointed out that it really depends on the position.

    1AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:20
    Even looking at some of the greatest players of all time—
    Pelé was in the low 170s (cm)
    Maradona was around 165cm
    4AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:22
    As long as the ball's on the ground, being shorter might help with close control and a lower center of gravity.
    But defenders who can't afford to lose aerial duels definitely need the height.
    10AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:27
    Re: #4
    There used to be a player named Fabio Cannavaro, you know
    5AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:25
    Being tall really only helps for GK, CB, and maybe a classic No. 9 striker.
    6AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:25
    That used to be true, but it's all about physicality these days.
    11AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:27
    Players with exceptional footwork skills were mostly short guys.
    Zidane's about the only exception.
    12AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:28
    Lukaku misses so many shots, he's kind of a letdown as a forward lol
    13AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:28
    Mbappé's 180cm
    19AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:30
    Re: #13
    That guy's a textbook physical elite athlete
    14AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:28
    I don't picture Puyol or Baresi as being all that tall either
    15AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:29
    If you're short, your legs are shorter too
    That's a disadvantage in reach for us
    17AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:29
    If you're short, your legs are shorter too
    That's a disadvantage in reach to the ball
    20AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:30
    It's just the laws of physics in this world—being tall lets you hit more powerful shots
    21AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:30
    Ronaldo isn't really a skill-based player
    22AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:31
    If I had another 10cm of height, I might've aimed to be a pro goalkeeper
    24AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:32
    The three guys in OP were short, but they were physically strong, right?
    Well, I don't really know much about Pelé, admittedly
    But Maradona was like a little boulder
    25AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:33
    If you go by that logic, the 'Ohtani is the greatest' argument starts looking shaky too
    30AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:34
    Re: #25
    Even he'd be below average if he played basketball
    26AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:33
    There used to be a 168cm goalkeeper who played in the World Cup
    27AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:33
    Messi's probably going to be the last guy who could reach the top while being around 170cm
    35AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:35
    Re: #27
    Nah, I bet some surprisingly tiny star player will show up eventually
    28AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:33
    【Top 3 Scorers in Europe's Big 5 Leagues】

    Premier League
    1st Haaland 27 goals 195cm
    2nd Igor Thiago 22 goals 190cm
    3rd Semenyo 17 goals 185cm

    La Liga
    1st Mbappé 25 goals 178cm
    2nd Muriqi 23 goals 194cm
    3rd Budimir 17 goals 190cm

    Serie A
    1st Lautaro 17 goals 174cm
    2nd Maren 14 goals 178cm
    2nd Dovbyk 14 goals 186cm

    Bundesliga
    1st Kane 36 goals 188cm
    2nd Undav 19 goals 179cm
    3rd Guirassy 17 goals 187cm

    Ligue 1
    1st Lepaul 21 goals 181cm
    2nd Greenwood 16 goals 181cm
    2nd Panichelli 16 goals 190cm

    Average height of these 15 players: approx. 185cm
    36AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:35
    Re: #28
    Taller than I expected, honestly
    Guess goal-scoring forwards really do need height after all
    31AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:34
    At this rate Kawasaki Frontale's gonna be the best team in the world (joke about a mid-table J.League club)
    32AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:34
    I saw Harry Kane get blown clean away by Messi in the last World Cup
    33AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:35
    Yamal's gotten taller too
    The era of short guys dreaming big is over
    38AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:35
    Re: #33
    Yamal's around 180cm now, right?
    34AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:35
    Well, Maradona could head the ball with his hand, after all (a jab at the 'Hand of God' goal)
    37AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:35
    Haaland, here we go again
    Son Heung-min, here we go again
    39AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:37
    Spain's national team averages 181cm, ranking 32nd out of 48 countries
    Yeah, height's got nothing to do with it
    By the way, Argentina averages 179cm
    41AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:44
    Re: #39
    Japan's about the same, I think
    40AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:41
    Rodri, who comes across as a classic skillful midfielder, is actually 190cm too
    42AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:44
    In running-based sports, being tall is an advantage
    Assuming the shorter guy puts in just as much effort, of course
    47AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:49
    Soccer's totally role-based. Center forwards and center backs clearly need tall players,
    but for midfielders, my impression is that the world's top players are actually mostly in the 170s (cm).
    55AnonymousAug 17, 2026 23:09
    Re: #47
    That's exactly why soccer's a more equal-opportunity sport than most others
    48AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:50
    Back in the Zidane, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaká era, everyone was tall
    Then in the Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Neymar, Salah, Griezmann, Hazard era, it was all short guys
    Is the tall-player era making a comeback now?
    51AnonymousAug 17, 2026 22:53
    Re: #48
    It's the opposite
    Spain winning brought back the passing-soccer era
    Same thing happened back when Barça was dominant—it became all about passing then too
    53AnonymousAug 17, 2026 23:00
    Being short only helps in cases like horse racing, where the rider is basically cargo
    Or airsoft, where being small makes you harder to spot
    Generally speaking, being tall is the advantage
    Tennis is a clear example—short players got weeded out
    57AnonymousAug 17, 2026 23:14
    Re: #53
    Still, today's top tennis players are only around 180-something cm
    so it's not like they're that tall
    56AnonymousAug 17, 2026 23:11
    Guys like Franco Baresi, a center back who was only 176cm
    I love players like that
    58AnonymousAug 17, 2026 23:14
    Re: #56
    The guy who broke Kazu's nose, huh 🅆 (referring to Japanese soccer legend Kazuyoshi Miura)

    Background and Key Points

    Being short is an advantage in soccer, the OP says. Data from Europe’s “Big 5” leagues—the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1, the highest-revenue domestic competitions in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France—undercuts that: the top three scorers in each league this season average roughly 185cm, taller than the general adult male population in any of those countries. That framing matters because soccer’s short-legend mythology runs deep: Pelé (~172cm), Maradona (~165cm), and Messi (~170cm) are held up worldwide, including in Japan, as proof that skill beats size.

    The thread didn’t split on whether tall players dominate scoring charts—the data settled that. It split on why. Some read the height average as confirmation that physicality now rules center-forward play. Others argued the stat is misleading because it only counts strikers and center-backs, positions that have always favored height, while midfielders (Rodri at 190cm was the thread’s own counterexample, notwithstanding) and creative players still skew shorter. No consensus emerged on whether soccer overall favors height or is, per one poster, more “equal-opportunity” than sports like basketball or tennis.

    What the thread never addressed: national team averages. A poster noted Spain averages 181cm (32nd of 48 nations) and Argentina 179cm, implying height barely correlates with success at the country level even as it does among individual scorers—a tension nobody in the thread reconciled. Readers unfamiliar with Japanese soccer discourse should also know the “short players can still win” narrative carries extra weight domestically, since Japan’s national team has long been shorter than its European and South American rivals.

    ※This article is an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “No matter how you look at it, soccer’s a sport where being short is an advantage.”

  • Machida Zelvia Close to Signing Japan Striker Koki Ogawa — Salary Over ¥300 Million, First Domestic Return in 3 Years

    It was reported on the 23rd that J1 side Machida Zelvia have all but finalized the signing of Japan national team striker Koki Ogawa (29, NEC in the Dutch Eredivisie). With word of a lucrative contract worth over ¥300 million ($2 million+) a year, along with mixed opinions about his World Cup goal against the Netherlands and his return to Japan after three years abroad, reactions on the forum thread were divided.

    Machida’s signing of Japan national team striker Koki Ogawa now all but decided — offered over ¥300 million a year, persistent courtship pays off… the striker who set up the equalizer against the Netherlands at the North/Central America World Cup

    It became all but certain on the 23rd that J1 club Machida will sign Japan national team striker Koki Ogawa (29), currently with NEC in the Dutch Eredivisie. An official announcement is expected in the near future.

    According to multiple sources, the club has offered Ogawa’s camp an estimated salary exceeding ¥300 million a year. This marks Ogawa’s first return to Japanese football since he left Yokohama FC in 2023, three years ago.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    2AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:00
    Already giving up on the next World Cup, huh?
    10AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:03
    Re: #2
    A 29-year-old riding the bench at NEC making the next World Cup squad is a stretch to begin with.
    Most Dutch NEC fans rated Ogawa below Shiogai anyway.
    4AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:01
    Feel bad for Ogawa — Kamada stole the spotlight from his goal.
    7AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:02
    Re: #4
    Kamada stole the spotlight from Tanaka Ao's goal too, come to think of it.
    6AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:02
    Guess he's satisfied just having a World Cup memory (lol)
    He never really produced results abroad anyway.
    9AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:03
    Guess Ogawa's ceiling really was just the Netherlands.
    11AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:04
    Re: #7
    What a fearsome 'goal thief'… if it weren't me, I'd have missed it. (riffing on the famous JoJo's Bizarre Adventure line "If it were anyone but me, I'd have missed it")
    12AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:04
    He did well against the Netherlands, but he probably won't make the squad for the next World Cup anyway, so this is fine, I guess.
    13AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:04
    A guy at Ogawa's level pulling in over ¥300 million — that's the dream.
    15AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:06
    So in the end, every striker from this generation except Ueda has flamed out…
    16AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:06
    Re: #1
    Who?

    Is he more popular than Kazu and Mitoma in football circles?
    17AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:07
    If the next national team manager values domestic-league players too, he's still got a shot at the national team.
    20AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:09
    Re: #17
    No way.
    Don't disrespect the national team like that.
    18AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:08
    Re: #1
    So Ogawa's going to get 'Machida-fied' too, just like Soma, Masako, Sento, and Fujio? 🤣🤣
    19AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:09
    Three years ago when he was still in Japan he wasn't even making ¥100 million,
    and in the Netherlands he's been just a bit-part player,
    but score a goal (well, assist) at the World Cup and suddenly it's ¥300 million? Wild.
    21AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:10
    Re: #1
    Ah, so that's why there were reports of Fujio transferring to Kashiwa or Nagasaki.
    22AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:11
    If it's Moriyasu, he'll probably get called up for the Asian Cup.

    But he won't get called up for Asian qualifiers anymore.
    76AnonymousAug 24, 2026 03:13
    Re: #22
    If anything, my impression is that Moriyasu has treated Ogawa pretty coldly.
    I mean, he started Machino against Brazil.
    23AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:11
    Re: #1
    There's also a chance he ends up washed up, like Takahara after coming back from the Bundesliga.
    24AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:12
    Machida for the title, calling it now.
    27AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:13
    Re: #24
    Lol, this is the same crowd that was saying 'Cerezo's winning it' back in 2014, now predicting Machida for the title.
    25AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:12
    If we're still calling up guys like Ogawa, Ito, Taniguchi, and Mitoma four years from now, that's a problem in itself.


    Might as well call it a retirement home.
    28AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:14
    One stint abroad and suddenly Ogawa's worth ¥300 million. Both Ogawa and his overseas club must be thrilled.
    30AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:15
    I'm actually from Machida, and honestly, despite all this money being poured into strengthening the team,
    most regular people just don't care that much.
    Such a waste.
    There are posters at the station with Soma front and center, but I doubt anyone even recognizes him.
    31AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:16
    Re: #1
    Such a nobody getting ¥300 million, lol.




    He's even less impressive than Satoteru or Nakano lmao (Satoteru = nickname for Hanshin Tigers slugger Teruaki Sato; Nakano = fellow Hanshin infielder Takumu Nakano)
    33AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:19
    Re: #1
    Playing Soma and Ogawa together is weak.

    They were terrible at the Toulon Tournament too.

    That runner-up finish was basically thanks to Tanaka Ao, Hatate, and Obi anyway.
    39AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:21
    Machida alone has 12 players earning over ¥100 million a year,
    so they'll probably win the title.
    42AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:24
    Re: #39
    That's not a prediction, that's just wishful thinking.
    41AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:23
    Baseball fanboys ('yakibuta' — a derisive nickname soccer fans use for baseball fans) love to whine about deficits, but football's business model is: revenue goes up, it gets poured straight into player salaries, and everyone gets rich together.
    Machida's leading the charge, but others will follow.
    Surpassing pro baseball is close.

    https://image-tm.s2mr.jp/i/original/1787505728657.jpeg
    48AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:28
    Re: #1
    Teruaki Sato — salary ¥450 million

    Takumu Nakano — salary ¥300 million



    Koki Ogawa — salary ¥300 million 🤣🤣


    Sato >>>>>> Nakano >>>>>>>>>> Ogawa (lol)



    Hanshin Tigers >>>>>>>>>>>> Machida Zelvia (lol)


    By the way, Morishita will probably hit ¥300 million too this offseason 🤣🤣
    52AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:30
    Re: #48
    Naming a bunch of nobodies doesn't really prove anything.
    56AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:33
    Re: #48
    Guess we've reached the era where people bring up Hanshin salaries, red-faced and desperate, just to compete with J.League player salaries.
    In 10 years, every player on Machida Zelvia and Vissel Kobe will probably be making ¥300 million lol
    57AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:39
    Does this mean they don't need the guy who poured water on the penalty ball anymore?
    59AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:41
    Re: #57
    He was copying Ryunosuke's move.
    Not exactly a great example for kids.
    67AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:51
    He got frozen out at Nijmegen and waited for offers in Europe, but none came, probably.
    72AnonymousAug 24, 2026 02:59
    Re: #67
    Depends how you spin it.
    He fled Iwata, where the tactical demands were heavy, and produced results at Yokohama FC where he was let off the hook.
    But once he went to the Netherlands, he faced the same kind of demands as Iwata again and couldn't deliver — that's basically what happened.
    73AnonymousAug 24, 2026 03:00
    Why did Machida suddenly get famous?
    I hadn't even heard of them until around 2024.
    Surprised they're stronger than Urawa, Kawasaki, and Kashima now.
    75AnonymousAug 24, 2026 03:12
    Re: #73
    Because a wealthy owner took over management and went all in on reinforcements —
    coach, staff, players, everything.

    Background and Key Points

    Machida Zelvia only reached J1 in 2024, three years after a takeover by CyberAgent chairman Susumu Fujita, and their subsequent spending spree — reportedly a dozen-plus players now on eight-figure-yen deals — has made them the league’s most talked-about (and, to many older fans, most resented) club, associated as much with direct, set-piece-heavy football and gamesmanship controversies as with results. Koki Ogawa’s path is separate: he broke out at Yokohama FC in 2022 after struggling under Jubilo Iwata’s tactical demands, moved to Eredivisie side NEC Nijmegen in 2023, and became a fringe player there before appearing off the bench for Japan at the 2026 World Cup, where he was credited with setting up an equalizer against the Netherlands.

    The thread’s real disagreement isn’t about the transfer itself but about what that one World Cup contribution should be worth — several posters argue a squad player at a mid-table Dutch club shouldn’t command Machida’s reported ¥300 million-plus salary, while others treat the number as simply what a rich J1 club can now pay.

    What’s easy to miss from outside Japan is how unusual this figure still is: J.League salaries remain far below NPB baseball or Europe’s top divisions, so a ¥300 million deal is newsworthy precisely because it’s concentrated in one club’s ownership-driven spending rather than a league-wide trend. Also unstated in the thread is that national-team manager Hajime Moriyasu has reportedly used Ogawa sparingly since that World Cup moment, undercutting the idea that the goal contribution secured his international future.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread「[Football] J1 Machida’s signing of Japan national team striker Koki Ogawa now all but decided — official announcement coming soon… Offered over ¥300 million a year, persistent courtship pays off, first domestic return in 3 years」.

  • Daizen Maeda: “The Intensity Is on a Completely Different Level” — His Verdict After Premier League Debut

    Japan national team forward Daizen Maeda started for new club Ipswich Town in their Premier League season opener, as the team edged out Sunderland 2-1. After the match, Maeda’s comments — “The intensity is on a completely different level” and “So this is the standard” — sparked a wide-ranging discussion on 5ch, from debates over what “intensity” actually means to comparisons of the Premier League’s quality against other leagues.

    ◆England Premier League ▽ Matchday 1: Ipswich 2-1 Sunderland (Aug 22)

    [Ipswich, England, Aug 22 — Masatoshi Mori] Japan national team forward Daizen Maeda, who joined Ipswich, started in the home match against Sunderland and played until the 35th minute of the second half. The team won a hard-fought 2-1 battle.

    — A dramatic late winner clinches victory in the season opener

    Source: hochi.news / Original article here

    3AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:43
    What even is "intensity"?
    48AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:15
    Re: #3
    Sprinting flat-out to close down the opponent in every phase of play, the physical weight and speed you put into challenges, never giving an inch of space when marking tight — that's what makes up the difference in "intensity."
    The J.League is way more relaxed, so its intensity is lower.
    51AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:25
    Re: #3
    Heard it's just a handy buzzword that idiots love to throw around lol
    5AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:44
    It's like transferring straight from a junior college into Tokyo University.
    50AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:22
    Re: #5
    There are geniuses who come out of junior colleges too. To a genius, it doesn't matter whether it's a junior college or Tokyo University.
    60AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:43
    Re: #5
    But you're just a high school grad though
    6AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:45
    Enciso looked exasperated with him, but this is only the beginning.
    7AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    Sounds like saying "Premier League > Scotland," basically.
    103AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:03
    Re: #7
    Even back in Shunsuke [Nakamura]'s day, the Scottish league's MVP couldn't cut it in what's effectively England's second division.
    9AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    You never know — he might end up with a bigger career than Furuhashi or Hatate.
    11AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    Furuhashi, where's he even playing these days?
    14AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:50
    Re: #11
    He's in the US, on the same team as Yoshida.
    12AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:49
    Joining the Premier League at 28 — isn't he just going to get wrecked?
    13AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:50
    You probably need 6 or 7 out of your starting 11 to be regular Premier League players before you can become a consistent World Cup quarterfinalist.
    15AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:51
    Yeah, the Premier League just seems out of this guy's league.
    19AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:53
    Re: #15
    If anything, he played until the 35th minute of the second half and they won, so maybe the Premier League isn't such a big deal.
    17AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:51
    Um, so the way he's phrasing it means he's definitely locked in a spot on the team, right?
    18AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:52
    Ipswich are interesting — only the No. 10 plays like an actual playmaker, and everyone else just presses high.
    106AnonymousAug 23, 2026 23:06
    Re: #18
    Though the press wasn't really coordinated.
    20AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:54
    Still, that was just Sunderland's level of intensity.
    27AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:56
    Re: #20
    Sunderland finished 7th in the Premier League last season — above Brighton, Chelsea, and Newcastle.
    26AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:56
    Everyone keeps saying the Premier League is amazing, but then I think — if that's true, why doesn't England win every tournament? That part bugs me.
    34AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:00
    Re: #26
    It's just that a ton of great foreign players come play in the Premier League.
    35AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:02
    Re: #26
    For big clubs in leagues like Spain, Germany, and France, the domestic league is basically just tune-up practice for the Champions League — they coast through it. Premier League big clubs can't win unless they go full effort in every single league game.
    41AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:08
    Re: #26
    Are you serious? Just because a league buys up players from all over the world doesn't mean that country's own national team becomes the best.
    28AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:57
    He missed two clear-cut chances, and then the sub who replaced him scored the winner — that's a tough look for him.
    29AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:59
    If he'd converted even one of those two chances, things would've turned out differently. Missing both isn't a good look.
    31AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:59
    There was a point raised on "Soccer no Sono" (a soccer analysis show) about how, in the transition from defense to attack, he doesn't simply go for a long counter-attack. He wins the ball back fine, but there's nothing after that. "Soccer wa Data ga Juwari" ("Soccer Is 100% Data," a stats-focused soccer book) also stresses that what really matters is possession in the opponent's half and shot-attempt rate.

    Well, good luck to him anyway.
    82AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:19
    Premier League >>>>>> J1 > "Scot-league" (mocking nickname for the Scottish league) > J2
    88AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:28
    Re: #82
    Yeah, that's about right. The Dutch and Turkish leagues sit at about the same level as J1.

    Premier League >>> Belgium > J1 (Netherlands/Turkey) >> Scotland > J2
    92AnonymousAug 23, 2026 22:45
    Re: #82
    The "Scot-league" is below J3.

    Background and Key Points

    Daizen Maeda’s move to Ipswich Town caps a rapid rise: he left Yokohama F. Marinos in the J.League for Celtic in 2022, where he won consecutive Scottish trebles, and now arrives in the Premier League at 28 — an age and a pathway (J.League to Scotland to England) that is unusual rather than typical for Japanese exports, most of whom either stay in Japan or move to a “big five” league directly. Ipswich themselves are newly promoted, which matters for reading his quote: he is comparing top-flight England not to a mid-table club but to a side fighting to stay up, against an opponent, Sunderland, who posters note finished above Chelsea, Newcastle, and Brighton the previous season.

    The thread doesn’t split over whether Maeda struggled — most agree the Premier League is a step up — but over what “intensity” is actually measuring. One camp treats it as a real, quantifiable gap (pressing speed, duel physicality, lack of space when marking); another dismisses it as a vague buzzword. A second, more substantive split emerges around the “Premier League is the best, so why doesn’t England win tournaments” question, which posters resolve by distinguishing league quality (driven by imported talent) from national-team quality.

    What the thread never engages with is Ipswich’s own situation: as a newly promoted club they are more likely to play a higher-intensity, transition-heavy style out of necessity than an established mid-table team would, so Maeda’s early impression may reflect his specific club’s tactics as much as the league as a whole.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Soccer] FW Daizen Maeda on his emotional English Premier League debut: “The intensity is on a completely different level,” “So this is the standard,” “We’ll be defending more, but…”“.

  • Haaland Chops Off His Long Hair — 5ch: “It Actually Suits Him”

    Norway striker Erling Haaland updated his Instagram to reveal he’s cut off his trademark long hair. Following his “Short hair don’t care” post, a thread on 5ch’s Geinosupo Sokuho+ board lit up with reactions to the new look, including “It suits him” and “He’s lost that monster-like aura.”

    Norway’s “monster striker” Erling Haaland (25), who helped his country reach the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time at the FIFA World Cup in North/Central America, updated his Instagram on the 23rd to reveal he’d chopped off his trademark long hair.

    Haaland captioned the post “Short hair don’t care,” showing off his new close-cropped style, trimmed short with clippers.

    Fans reacted with comments like “Nice!” and “It suits him,” while others expressed regret, saying “I can’t believe this day actually came.”

    Source: sponichi.co.jp / Original article here

    3AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:47
    Maybe it's the nose and lips
    Fixing those up would probably make things better
    6AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:48
    He's getting closer to looking like Biff from Back to the Future
    7AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:49
    Re: #1
    That's an awkward in-between length, like a botched attempt at going bald
    A bit longer would look better
    13AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:50
    With long hair, when strands fall out it just feels like way more is falling out than it actually is
    18AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:52
    Now that it's short he just looks… normal
    That unique vibe is gone
    22AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:53
    He looks like Kindo-chan from Macaroni Hourensou (a classic retro Japanese manga character)
    23AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:54
    Glad it's gone, the long hair always grossed me out a bit —
    but wait, didn't he have a stake in a hair-tie company?
    26AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:54
    He always has that face like he's had hyaluronic acid filler shots
    Guys with faces like his are probably why idiots go get filler injections lol
    30AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:55
    So even Haaland is bad at taking selfies
    36AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:58
    Finally back to his Salzburg-era look
    That topknot he had was as bad as Bale's
    37AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:58
    Overall this look is cleaner and it does suit him more, so it's probably for the best, but it's lost that monstrous aura he had with the long hair
    63AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:12
    Re: #37
    Yeah, he's lost that medieval-fantasy-knight look too
    39AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:58
    Years of pulling it back too tight and now he's going bald
    42AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:59
    The football world lately
    hair transplants and plastic surgery are all the rage, which is a bit much
    but this one's actually funny
    43AnonymousAug 23, 2026 20:59
    I wonder what shampoo he uses
    44AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:00
    He's definitely got some Neanderthal blood in him
    48AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:01
    Long hair gets tangled. I get it, honestly
    49AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:02
    Well, if Haaland had actually been good-looking, he probably wouldn't have turned into "Haaland" in the first place
    51AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:03
    Lame…
    Can't believe he got rid of his trademark look
    56AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:06
    He was juuust about to land a hair-product sponsorship too
    Did his deal with the hair-tie company fall through?
    57AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:06
    Figured I wouldn't recognize him without the long hair, but nope — still unmistakably Haaland
    60AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:10
    Might as well grow it out while you still can
    62AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:11
    The long hair suited him though, kind of a Pulp Fiction vibe
    64AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:12
    I want him to grow out a beard and braid it next
    65AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:12
    Doing something different can either scare your luck away
    or turn things around for the better
    68AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:13
    The sheer presence of that face lol, kind of cute though
    72AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:15
    He split the cut-off hair into several bundles and put them in Ziploc bags — is he planning to donate it to charity or something?
    73AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:15
    It suits him

    Unrelated, but I kind of want Kubo (Takefusa Kubo, the Japanese footballer) to switch things up too — go skinhead with a beard or something
    76AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:16
    That Korean hair-tie company must be gutted
    80AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:18
    Long hair is nothing but a hindrance when you're playing sports
    81AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:18
    Hurry up and get out of that sorry excuse for a club already
    He's wasting his career there
    83AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:19
    That said, the long blond hair on that jacked-up body gave him this eerie, intimidating presence, so while the clean-cut look isn't bad,
    it just doesn't quite feel like "Haaland," if that makes sense
    88AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:22
    This reminds me of Home Alone
    112AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:37
    Re: #88
    Lol it kind of does look like him
    93AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:25
    Is he part Mongolian?
    96AnonymousAug 23, 2026 21:27
    Re: #93
    Nordic people have some Sami ancestry mixed in

    Background and Key Points

    Erling Haaland’s nickname among Japanese fans, “kaibutsu” (monster), long predates this thread — it stuck because his combination of size, speed, and finishing looked physically abnormal even by elite-striker standards, and the long blond hair became part of that visual myth-making, giving him a Viking-warrior silhouette that Norwegian and international media leaned into for years. The board here, Geinosupo Sokuho+, is 5ch’s celebrity/entertainment-news board, which explains why a haircut alone generated 90-plus replies: it’s a board built around image and persona, not football tactics, so reactions default to appearance and vibes rather than performance analysis. The Norway detail in the lead — a first-ever World Cup quarterfinal — is worth flagging as background context: Norway has one of the more famously unfulfilled fanbases in European football, having missed multiple tournaments outright over the past two decades despite Haaland’s individual dominance, so this run is a genuine national milestone, even though the thread barely touches it.

    The actual split in the thread is narrower than “like it or hate it”: most posters agree the short cut is objectively “cleaner” or more flattering, but disagree on whether that’s a compliment, since several (37, 63, 83) argue it costs him the intimidating, almost mythical aura the long hair provided — flattering and diminished aren’t treated as contradictions here.

    What outside readers will likely miss is the running joke about a hair-tie company (23, 56, 76): several posters are ribbing him for reportedly having a business or sponsorship stake in hair accessories, treating the haircut as comedic bad timing for that deal rather than anything Instagram-caption-worthy.

    *This article is an excerpt and summary based on the 5ch (Geinosupo Sokuho+) thread “[Football] “Monster” Haaland chops off his trademark long hair! Fans flood in over his new look.”

  • J.League Attendance Surges by 5.73 Million — 5ch Reacts: ‘Tax Money Beggars?’

    The J.League and the Japan Football Association (JFA) announced that their largest-ever joint promotional campaign, timed to coincide with the 2026 World Cup, expanded soccer’s overall spectator base by roughly 5.73 million people. Reactions on 5ch were largely positive, but the thread also saw criticism of municipal subsidies (‘tax money beggars?’), along with attendance comparisons between Tokyo Verdy and the Yakult Swallows’ same-day, same-time games — sparking a back-and-forth with baseball fans.

    The Japan Professional Football League (J.League) and the Japan Football Association (JFA), a public interest incorporated foundation, carried out their largest-ever joint promotional campaign centered on the FIFA World Cup 2026 period, under the concept ‘Bringing Local Pride to the World.’

    The campaign aimed to re-communicate the connection between the J.League and the national team and to generate excitement across Japanese soccer as a whole, rolling out a range of initiatives including transit advertising, TV and web commercials, and promotions at J.League match venues. National team matches and the FIFA World Cup draw broad, high interest not just from soccer fans but from society at large, and organizers felt there was still room to grow the overlap between national team fans and J.League fans in order to expand soccer’s overall fan base — hence the campaign.

    The press release stated: “Many of the players currently active on the national team grew up with clubs in their hometowns, gained experience in the J.League, and then took flight onto the world stage. Players nurtured by community-rooted clubs go on to challenge the world as members of the national team. To help more people understand this connection between the J.League and the national team, the J.League and JFA developed a joint campaign under the concept ‘Bringing Local Pride to the World,’ timed to the World Cup — a moment when interest in the national team surges — to present the J.League and the national team as one unified story.”

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    6AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:08
    Ugh, here come the 'Easy Smartphone' geezer baseball pigs again (a jab at elderly baseball fans still using dumbed-down 'easy' smartphones for seniors)
    7AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:10
    Looks like every bit of promotion the J.League does directly translates into more fans.
    They're rolling in it.
    8AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:11
    Four years from now, after getting knocked out in the round of 64:

    'Well done! Thanks for the memories! You gave us courage!'

    Way too much leaning into the entertainment angle.
    74AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:46
    Re: #8
    Japanese soccer should lean harder into the 'oshi-katsu' route (fan-idol-style devotion to individual players/clubs).
    There's not much more room to grow beyond that.
    9AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:13
    Off topic, but the scale of that survey is insane.
    10AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:13
    This thread's just gonna turn into the baseball pigs oinking anyway, right?
    11AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:16
    Yakiton Sentai Taxmoneyger!

    Yakiton Sentai Freeticketger!

    Yakiton Sentai TwiceAMonthger!
    (a Power-Rangers-style parody mocking baseball fans — 'yakiton' is derogatory slang for them — over tax subsidies, freebie tickets, and sparse home schedules)
    13AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:18
    Mmm, tasty tax money.
    16AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:20
    Re: #13
    Every municipality's investment in the J.League gets decided by majority vote among elected officials, though.
    14AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:19
    J.League's got serious momentum lately.
    With new stadiums popping up all over the country going forward, total attendance is only going to keep climbing.
    19AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:26
    Before you know it, there are 60 clubs nationwide.
    The business is already more than double the scale of baseball, and as spectator infrastructure keeps improving, that gap's only going to widen.
    23AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:30
    Re: #19
    > Before you know it, there are 60 clubs nationwide

    That's just mass-producing broke clubs.
    A burden on their communities.
    29AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:44
    Then how about building sports facilities without relying on tax money?
    31AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:52
    Re: #29
    Politics is a numbers game.
    Potential attendance demand grew from 10 million to 15 million people.
    I'll go ahead and predict this actually builds momentum for public stadium development.
    33AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:55
    And yet they're 'tax money beggars'???
    When are they finally gonna stand on their own?
    71AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:41
    Re: #33
    What 'standing on your own' are you talking about, when you've had your parent company covering your losses for 80 years?
    34AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:57
    And on top of that, baseball can't even copy this — there's no 'world' for it lol

    Plus it's not even officially recognized by the US lol
    It's just treated as some minor-league knockoff ripping off MLB lol
    36AnonymousAug 20, 2026 21:59
    Re: #34
    That's something 'tax money beggars' could never pull off.
    43AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:17
    That '5.7 million increase' — isn't that basically just people who never watch normally but tuned in only for the World Cup games?
    Pretty much exactly that, right?
    I mean, that's literally me too.
    48AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:26
    Re: #43
    All that effort, and none of it's real — just to secure tax funding lol
    51AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:33
    Why is baseball's popularity crashing so hard?
    52AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:35
    Re: #51
    That's gotta be because old media's influence is declining.
    57AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:39
    J.League, where only the advertising keeps getting more over-the-top.
    62AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:48
    Re: #57
    Meanwhile the ads for 'buta-sugoroku' (a mocking nickname for pro baseball, literally 'pig board-game') are all adult diapers and denture cleaner.
    64AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:51
    Under the same conditions, the J.League can already draw bigger crowds than pro baseball.

    *Last week, same location (Jingu Gaien), same kickoff/first-pitch time:

    J.League: Tokyo Verdy vs. Kashiwa Reysol — 44,690
    Pro Baseball: Yakult vs. DeNA — 28,969

    Note that the J.League figure is actual attendance, while the baseball figure is tickets issued, so the real gap is even bigger.
    67AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:56
    Re: #64
    Average ticket price × annual attendance is what a team actually pulls in from gate revenue.

    J.League clubs only play 19 home games a year, so against baseball's 70+ home games a year, you'd need more than triple the attendance per game just to break even with them.
    65AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:53
    J.League's been pretty aggressive with promotion lately.
    Still, I think the best move would be broadcasting matches on local TV.
    68AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:03
    Re: #65
    If you said that without knowing, that's good instincts.
    J.League has actually been increasing local broadcasts recently — apparently 60% of new fans discover the J.League through TV.
    66AnonymousAug 20, 2026 22:56
    The J.League is a professional sport, after all.
    They're not counting on 'Easy Smartphone' old guys who won't watch anything unless it's free.
    Baseball and the TV industry, which relied entirely on that crowd, are in rough shape now, aren't they?
    72AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:43
    Re: #66
    Pro baseball, handing out free tickets to city hall employees with tax money — must be wonderful, huh lol
    73AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:46
    The real 'tax league' is:

    a bunch of guys who've spent 80 years being carried on the backs of parent companies, municipalities, and the media, getting tax money spent on pro-grade dedicated stadiums they might use once a year, not lifting a finger to volunteer even after disasters, smoking not just regular cigarettes but illegal 'zombie' cigarettes during games (slang for adulterated/counterfeit tobacco), and packing on more blubber than a sumo wrestler.

    That's what it means.
    75AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:46
    Re: #73
    'Tax-Suck-ball' (a pun on 'yakyu,' the Japanese word for baseball — 'zei-suu,' or tax-sucking, sounds almost the same).
    76AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:48
    The J.League is popular and profitable!
    Therefore,
    the J.League can build its own stadiums without relying on tax money!
    77AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:51
    Re: #76
    80 years of sponging off the country, and still playing to garagara (empty, sparsely-filled) stands.
    79AnonymousAug 20, 2026 23:54
    Re: #76
    Tax money isn't spent purely for citizens' sake — it's an investment in the region's future.

    Tax money spent on soccer generates increased tourism revenue from visiting away fans, and dedicated stadiums become an emotional anchor for local residents, creating real potential for regional revitalization.

    'Mr. Pig-Sugoroku' (baseball), on the other hand, might not even show up once a year, so it can't even become an emotional anchor for the community. Toda, Kamagaya, and Saitama all generously hosted farm teams, only to get abandoned.

    And high-school baseball only revitalizes anything for one brief moment in August — the so-called 'whirlwind' effect.
    No wonder baseball's losing fans all across the country lolololol
    81AnonymousAug 21, 2026 00:03
    At least cover your own stadium maintenance costs, tax league.
    83AnonymousAug 21, 2026 00:04
    Re: #81
    At least build your own stadium train station, buta-sugoroku (pig board-game, i.e. pro baseball).

    Background and Key Points

    The J.League was founded in 1993 explicitly as a community-based alternative to Nippon Professional Baseball’s decades-old model, in which teams are corporate subsidiaries carrying their parent company’s name (the Yomiuri Giants, the SoftBank Hawks) rather than a place name. J.League clubs, by contrast, are licensed only if they commit to local ownership ties, youth academies, and community programming, and many of their stadiums were built or upgraded with municipal backing under that “100-year vision” framework — which is the real target of the thread’s “tax money beggars” jab, not some unique scandal. Japan has qualified for every World Cup since 1998, and the 2026 tournament is the first 48-team edition, held across the US, Mexico, and Canada, which is part of why organizers expected crossover interest between national-team fans and domestic-league fans to convert.

    The thread’s real fault line wasn’t soccer-vs-baseball tribalism for its own sake, but whether the 5.73 million figure represents durable growth or a one-off World Cup bump — post #43’s point that it may just be lapsed viewers tuning in for the tournament went largely unanswered.

    What the thread glosses over is that NPB clubs also play in publicly funded venues in many cities (farm-team stadiums, prefectural stadiums), so the “tax league” framing overstates a clean funding divide between the two sports. It also never clarifies that the 5.73M is a projected/surveyed audience-reach figure, not verified ticketed attendance, which matters for how much weight the number should carry.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisoku+) thread ‘[Soccer] J.League and JFA Run Largest-Ever Joint Promotion, Boosting Overall Soccer Spectator Base by Approx. 5.73 Million’.

  • Pachinko and Horse Racing, but Not Stocks? 5ch Weighs In: ‘Poor People Should Stick to Poor People’s Gambling’

    A simple question — “Why don’t people who play pachinko and bet on horse races just invest in stocks instead?” — touched off a heated debate between the investing camp and the gambling camp on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G (“Live News”) board. Some pushed stocks, pointing to the Nikkei’s 26% and 31% annual gains and the gulf between pachinko’s roughly 20% house cut and the near-zero fees of online brokerages. Others shot back with lines like “poor people should stick to poor people’s gambling” and “I’m not trying to climb the social ladder,” revealing that for them gambling was never about profit but the thrill of play itself — leaving the two sides talking past each other.

    1AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:31
    Are you stupid?
    Why would you deliberately do something with such a low expected value?
    7AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:33
    Found the genius who thinks investing and gambling are the same thing.
    Anyone with real money obviously already invests, this comes up every single time.
    10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:34
    Re: #7
    Investing is gambling too, dude.
    Only the expected value is different.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:34
    Because hitting a 1.1x payout on a place bet (fukushō, betting a horse to finish top 3) is faster than waiting for a stock to climb 10%.
    16AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:36
    Re: #11
    Even large-cap stocks have been popping 10% easily lately.
    Miss a place bet and your ticket's worthless paper.
    With stocks, even if you're wrong, waiting it out can turn things around into a profit.
    13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:34
    Well, obviously — don't knock it, be grateful for the government's tax revenue.
    17AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:38
    Re: #13
    So idiots end up paying both the "pachinko tax" and an "inflation tax" for not investing in stocks?
    14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:35
    If you try to win and lose at the same rate you would gambling,
    stocks actually leave you worse off than horse racing or pachinko.
    20AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:38
    Re: #14
    Huh? No they don't.
    19AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:38
    A real gambler bets on the shot at turning 10,000 yen into 15x in two minutes, even if that same 10,000 yen is guaranteed to double in a year some other way. Wimps (the poster used a crude anti-gay slur) can go do stocks instead.
    26AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:41
    Re: #19
    Day-trade on full margin and stocks can multiply many times over in one shot too, you know.
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:38
    The fun is picking it yourself, playing it yourself, and feeling the win or the loss.
    That's just a different thing from stocks.
    28AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:42
    Re: #21
    You can pick your own individual stocks too, though.
    32AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:43
    Re: #20
    Stocks' edge basically comes down to the fact that share prices keep going up over the long run.
    In pachinko terms, it's like the payout rate being set above 4 yen per ball —
    actually sitting there racking up balls is a whole separate issue.
    39AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:47
    Re: #32
    For starters, the house cut is totally different.
    Pachinko parlors skim about 20%, so bet 100 yen and you only get 80 back on average.

    With stocks, online brokerages barely charge fees, so the "house" takes almost nothing.
    38AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:46
    Because horse racing's annual return rate is positive.
    45AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:50
    Re: #38
    Of course it's positive.
    The Nikkei was up 26% last year and 31% this year.
    Just buying a boring old ETF gets you gains like that.
    People who bought Kioxia made dozens of times their money.
    88AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:23
    Re: #45
    The return rate on the spring G1 races is over 1000%, though.
    47AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:51
    Re: #44
    What, got a problem with that?
    Then bring an actual counterargument.
    49AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:53
    Re: #47
    Well sure, if you want to believe stocks aren't skimming a cut off you, go right ahead.
    They work hard to make you think that.
    48AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:52
    With horse racing you never know how much you could lose.
    With pachinko, even on a brutal day you're only out a bit over 100,000 yen, so it's still playable.
    50AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:53
    Re: #48
    You already know this — neither horse racing nor stocks can cost you more than what you staked.
    52AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:55
    "Expected value" lol.
    Spoken like someone who's never actually traded stocks (a classic "airprei," 5ch slang for talking big about something you've never actually done).
    56AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:56
    Re: #52
    The only gambling where you can actually pin down a fixed number like that is slots, since there's no chaos factor involved.
    57AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:56
    Re: #52
    Expected value is the basic foundation of every kind of gambling.
    Not understanding that just makes you an idiot and easy prey 🦆
    54AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:55
    Anyway, there's no point fighting at the same table as filthy-rich people you can't even fathom.
    Poor people should just stick to poor people's gambling.
    Acting rich doesn't make you rich.
    61AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:58
    Re: #54
    Stocks actually give poor people a better shot at climbing up in the world — so why go out of your way to play pachinko or bet on horses instead?
    64AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:58
    Re: #61
    I'm not climbing anywhere.
    That was never the goal to begin with.
    67AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:00
    Re: #61
    Even with stocks you're not climbing up in the world.
    55AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:55
    The whole process is way too much of a hassle.
    You can't just pop in and be done in two minutes like at the pachinko parlor.
    63AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:58
    Re: #55
    Once you've got an account set up, buying and selling is easy.
    58AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:57
    If there were a place like a pachinko parlor or a betting shop where I could just walk in with cash, buy some stock, see the result, and walk right back out, I'd go every single day.
    68AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:00
    Re: #58
    With stocks you don't even need to go anywhere — you can do it from home, or honestly anywhere, anytime, right on your phone.
    59AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:57
    Looks to me like you're just riding high because the market happens to be good right now.
    No different from a pachinko addict (pachinkasu, mocking slang for pachinko junkies) celebrating after hitting a lucky trigger.
    65AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:59
    Re: #59
    Nope.
    This is a major bull run that's going to last for decades.
    Japan has entered an era of inflation, so skip stocks and you'll just get hit with an inflation tax.
    69AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:01
    Probably because just watching a number go up and down isn't any fun.
    71AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:02
    Re: #69
    It's incredibly fun, actually.
    The dopamine hits are insane.
    75AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:05
    Re: #69
    Maybe someone should build a dedicated trading app with flashy pachinko-style animations for people like that.
    90AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:24
    You shouldn't go around recommending investing to people.
    Let's just sit back and enjoy watching what happens to the people who stubbornly refuse to touch stocks.
    92AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:27
    Re: #90
    But isn't investing something the government itself recommends?
    97AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:31
    Re: #92
    That's beside the point.

    A true gambler owns everything that happens to them.
    98AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:31
    Re: #92
    If you don't invest, you're finished.
    Which is exactly why it's more fun not to recommend it.

    Background and Key Points

    Pachinko occupies a strange legal space in Japan: outright gambling for cash is illegal, so parlors pay out steel balls that players exchange for prizes at a separate counter, a loophole that lets an industry estimated to move tens of trillions of yen a year operate openly. Horse racing, by contrast, is legal parimutuel betting run by the Japan Racing Association, with takeout rates (the house’s cut) typically in the 20-30% range depending on bet type. Both stand in sharp contrast to the stock market, where the Nikkei 225’s back-to-back 20%+ gains and Japan’s post-2024 shift into a mild-inflation, negative-real-rate environment have made “put your money in an index fund instead” a mainstream talking point, amplified by the government’s own tax-free NISA investment scheme aimed at exactly this kind of household saver.

    The thread didn’t actually split over math — nobody seriously disputed that stocks carry a better expected value than pachinko or horse betting. It split over what the money is for. The investing camp treated gambling as a suboptimal wealth-building tool; the gambling camp insisted they were never trying to build wealth, they were paying for two minutes of dopamine, and measuring that against a fund’s expected value misses the point entirely.

    What’s conspicuously absent is any mention of NISA by name, even though it’s the government program built precisely to nudge small-time gamblers into the market — several posters gesture at “the government wants you to invest” without naming the actual policy vehicle for it.

    *This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Why don’t people who play pachinko and bet on horse races just invest in stocks?.”

  • Yokohama F. Marinos’ 16-Year-Old Miidera Nets Volley on Home Debut — 5ch: ‘The Second Coming of Amuro’

    Yokohama F. Marinos’ Shin Miidera (16) scored a left-footed first-time volley in the 9th minute of the first half against Kobe, in what was his home debut. It was his second goal of the season, following his opener against Kashima on matchday one. On 5ch, praise poured in — “the second coming of Amuro,” “this kid’s the real deal” — alongside surprise that a player still in high school is thriving as a pro, plus discussion of the rule barring overseas transfers for players under 18.

    ◆Meiji Yasuda J1 League, Matchday 3: Yokohama F. Marinos vs. Kobe (Aug. 22, Nissan Stadium)

    Yokohama F. Marinos’ Shin Miidera (16) scored on his home debut at Nissan Stadium. It was his second goal of the season, following the opener against Kashima Antlers (at MUFG/National Stadium), where he’d scored at 16 years, 4 months, and 5 days old — the second-youngest scorer in J1 history. In the 9th minute of the first half, he met a looping ball with a left-footed volley.

    Miidera has started three straight matches at left wing since the season opener. Scoring against Kobe — reigning champions of Japan’s top flight, built on the J.League’s founding “hundred-year vision” — he left a powerful impression on the home crowd.

    Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

    3AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:40
    This kid's the real deal.
    Wish we had one of these on our team.
    8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:41
    Re: #3
    Our team? lol
    Acting like you're part of the club, lol
    7AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:41
    At least while he's still in high school, overseas clubs can't poach him, right?
    128AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:37
    Re: #7
    He's safe through high school — there's a rule against clubs scouting and signing players that young.
    10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:42
    Belgium next year, calling it now.
    25AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:47
    Re: #10
    He's stuck in Japan until he's 18.
    11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:42
    Bet it's just a hot start — give it a few years and he won't even be scoring for Yokohama anymore.
    15AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:42
    Re: #11
    You mean he'll have transferred out of Yokohama by then?
    17AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:43
    Just get him called up to the Olympic squad already.
    21AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:46
    Please, not the classic pattern — stalls out in Belgium or wherever, then Urawa or Machida come calling and he's back in J1.
    27AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:48
    Re: #21
    Come on, he's going straight to one of the big five leagues.
    22AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:46
    Has there ever been a younger player who could pull off such a genuinely game-ready play?
    24AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:47
    Re: #1

    Pro soccer players from Aomori Prefecture


    Shin Miidera (Yokohama F. Marinos) — Hirosaki

    Gaku Shibasaki (Kashima Antlers and others) — Noheji
    Koji Kumagai (Kashima Antlers and others) — Towada
    Makoto Teguramori (former Olympic team manager and others) — Gonohe
    Takahiro Shimohira (Kashiwa Reysol and others) — Gonohe

    36AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:54
    Doesn't he go to school?
    47AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:57
    Re: #36
    He probably attends on weekdays like normal.

    Though it might be a correspondence (distance-learning) school.
    41AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:55
    Wait, he's in high school? The J.League is putting high schoolers to work?
    63AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:05
    Re: #41
    High school baseball practice is probably harsher than this — and unpaid, too.
    52AnonymousAug 22, 2026 20:59
    It's always a foreign manager who's willing to give kids this young a shot.
    78AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:15
    Re: #52
    Always? Ever heard of Kitahara? (a Japanese manager also known for fielding young players)
    73AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:11
    The erotic-ghost-story guy?
    115AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:34
    Re: #73
    You mean Miikura-san, the erotic-ghost-story teller? (a joke playing on the similar-sounding name)
    79AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:16
    How many more years until this guy gets free agency rights?
    85AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:17
    Re: #79
    In 1 year, 7 months, and 9 days.
    86AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:17
    Re: #79
    Once he turns 18.
    97AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:22
    He's off to the Premier League on his 17th birthday, calling it now.
    99AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:24
    Re: #97
    Unfortunately, he can't go overseas until he's past 18.
    105AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:29
    Could he join the legendary Asian lineage of Park Ji-sung, Son Heung-min, and Lee Kang-in?
    107AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:30
    Re: #105
    Don't care about foreign players.

    Background and Key Points

    Miidera’s case turns on FIFA’s Article 19, the international-transfer rule for minors: clubs cannot sign a player under 18 from a different association except in narrow cases (family relocating for non-football reasons, or intra-EU moves for 16-17-year-olds under strict conditions). That’s the rule posters are gesturing at when they say he’s “safe” until 18 — it isn’t really about high school, it’s about FIFA blocking the transfer itself, and Japan doesn’t qualify for the EU carve-out. Marinos is one of Japan’s original J.League founding clubs and now sits under City Football Group’s ownership, which has an obvious incentive to develop and eventually export academy talent like this. Kobe, the opponent, are the reigning J1 champions, built on Rakuten’s investment and the Iniesta-era rebuild — beating them as a 16-year-old carries extra weight domestically.

    The thread doesn’t actually disagree about his talent; every poster grants he’s good. The split is over trajectory: one camp assumes a clean run straight to a “big five” league at 18, while others predict the more common pattern for hyped Japanese teens — a stint in a feeder league like Belgium or Portugal, a stall, and a return to J1 via a buying club such as Urawa or Machida. That boomerang path is a real, frequently-repeated career arc in Japanese football, not just internet cynicism.

    What’s easy to miss: nobody explains “Amuro,” which is very likely a Gundam reference — Amuro Ray, the franchise’s original teenage “newtype” prodigy — not the singer Amuro Namie, a distinction non-Japanese readers would naturally get wrong.

    *This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[J.League] 16-Year-Old Shock, Again — Yokohama F. Marinos’ Miidera Scores Season’s 2nd Goal on Home Debut with a First-Time Volley, Following Kashima Opener with Another Against Kobe.”