hahah, my pleasure.

am I the only one who finds mass birthday celebrations hilarious? It's a phenomenon constrained to corporate settings, right?

i find them totally hillarious. it's the whole "team attitude" applied to celebrating individual things (such as a person's birth) that make them so conflicting and funny in my mind. it's so efficient too, i bet it comes from the japanese. i wish it weren't contained only among corporate settings. i would love to send one card to all of my friends and family that says, simply, "happy bday everyone!" and that would take care of that. actually, i'd be content with one celebration to celebrate all things.

is tomity in the blue in that race?

i don't know. did you hear or read something that makes you think it might be?

they say "tomity" as his name when they introduce him. maybe there are more than one keirin racers named tomity though.

ah. i've completely missed a lot of obvious things this week. but damn, if that is him in blue, we should send him an Are You Okay?/Get Better Soon ecard or something. was a quality spill.

okay, so i babelfished the thing...but, ummm...the times. when it's, say, 11:20 in japan, what time is it on the west coast of the u.s.? i may find this pretty quickly. but i'm not sure.

if 11:20AM, i think 6:20PM.

thanks, that gives me the answer to that and any and all future questions about japan to west coast U.S. times.

yeah, nice spill...3 riders sliding across the finish line!

it would be cool to find out when tomity competes and see if there is a stream of the races. we could watch and cheer him via the interweb...well, at least he could read the thread. :D

i was not around the computer today...

here are the race digests:
ito - http://www.itokeirin.com/ondemand/kako_1.html
otsu - http://www.otsu-live.com/digest.html

okay...so now i know the site in english and i've got the times straight, but every time i try to click the "as for live feed from this" link, realplayer opens and tells me the link is outdated or some ****.....

god, i just wanna watch some keirin racing....

hehe cool! i watched some replays. I don't know much about keirin but how far are the riders allowed to ride inside the track? Some of them had to make evasive manouvers meters inside the track.

I think that you're "allowed" to ride as far inside (well, probably not to the grass) as you are forced. Someone want to chime in with a definitive answer?

Oh, more questions...
When should the pace rider pull off? It doesn't seem to be the same point on the track each time, but sometimes just whenever someone rides up from behind and passes.

Is there a bonus for "winning" the second to last lap? Some guys will always spring like hell as soon as the pace rider pulls off, but I can't remember ever seeing one of these guys win a race. Of course they're going to get drafted and passed half a lap later.

a whole lotta keirin...10 tracks are streaming today.

http://www.dataplaza.keirininfo.or.j...ts/kdptop.Top1 (click any of the TV icons and, usually, look for ライブ -- "live" -- to find streams or just poke around...there are too many to list individually).

the above link is updated daily? some of the streams wont connect, and other just give me spiffy japanese modernist music. All of those tv links are either racing or between races? Is this THE link to bookmark?

yeah, that is THE link for current races...check it out for the daily schedule.

i also find some links are wonky...the ones with funky music are in between races.

highest quality stream at 700k: http://www.chalionkun.com/bbstudio/bblive.html

i clicked on adam's link... we gonna get any more races?

yea, i think race 7 should be on soon.

how is it that Japan can be 2 years ahead of us in cell phone and computer network technology, but have cardboard keirin race .... things? and dry erase board and markers to discuss the next race?

Go yellow!

my money is on pink!

bumped for bigbikerbrian.

race in 2 mins. http://www.matsudokeirin.com/movie.html

and here http://jl019.hypernets-jp.com/als/maebashi.asx