Tokyo Marathon 2011 and Joseph Tame

Tokyo Marathon 2011 has come and gone. I was awake early this morning and ready to watch with a fresh pot of coffee brewed. It was a sunny and warm day in Tokyo. The runners were lucky to have such wonderful weather. The previous two years at the Tokyo Marathon, the conditions were wet and very cold.

The men’s race was won by Hailu Mekonnen of Ethiopia and the women’s race by Tatiana Aryasova of Russia.

The coolest story of the day for me was that of Joseph Tame. He is a Tokyo based Englishmen who was covering the race live via UStream, Runkeeper and some other means. He had created a device he dubbed the “iRun” using four iPhones, an Android handset and an iPad. He was ran the entire marathon carrying his contraption and interviewing people along the way.


here is a story about TameGoesWild, Joseph Tame in one of the biggest tech blogs out there, Engadget.

Joseph was also covered by CNN and many other news organizations. He fit the novelty/tech story bill!

I met Joseph in person very briefly last year while I was running the Tokyo Marathon. He then had an iPhone 3GS strapped to a headband. I ran over and chatted with him. Later over twitter, I learned that while we chatted, his audio was actually set to mute!


Here is Joseph on Japanese TV:


here is Joseph Tame's Tokyo Marathon 2011 site.

iPads for Sumo Wrestlers

I thought this was great. Two things I love....tech and Japan.



iPad the right fit for giant sumo wrestlers
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's ancient sport of sumo is embracing the latest high-tech, with its governing body set to distribute Apple's iPad to wrestlers who often struggle with smaller cellphone keypads due to their giant hands.

The sumo association said it will hand out iPads to Japan's 51 "stables," or the clubs the wrestlers belong to, with the aim of improving communication among the roly-poly grapplers after some in the past had missed information sent by fax or telephone.

"We will hand out the newest iPads to all the sumo stables to swiftly communicate what we need to," association vice chairman Hiroyoshi Murayama said.

The iPad tablet PC, which starts at 48,800 yen ($570) in Japan, was likely chosen because many stablemasters do not use computers and wrestlers are not good at punching in messages on their mobile phones with their big hands, Jiji news agency said.

Sumo is trying to overhaul its image after being rocked by a series of scandals including an illegal baseball gambling racket, assault and drug use. See original here