Captain Tsubasa is a manga/anime that has been influential for soccer loving kids around the world for years. I was not aware of how big the title was until I came to Japan because soccer just isn't very big in Canada. You probably have or have not heard of the title depending on where you're from but such soccer greats as Zinedine Zidane, Francesco Totti and Fernando Torres credit Captain Tsubasa as an influence in their love of soccer.

It is the story of Aosora Tsubasa, a gifted young soccer player and follows the story of his rise to greatness through the assistance and rivalries with the characters around him. It first appeared in the early 80s in Shonen Jump, a weekly manga comic that has been around since the 70s and has featured such titles as Dragonball, One Piece and Death Note. There have been a number of Captain Tsubasa series and it quickly became a TV anime after it gained popularity in manga form.

Soccer was gaining popularity in Japan in the 1980's and Captain Tsubasa has been a part of that rise. It has been used as a vehicle in creating popular support for the Fifa World Cup in Japan and Korea during 2002 and has been in the news recently in Japan again. The image of Captain Tsubasa is presently emblazoned on the sides of water delivery trucks in soccer crazy Iraq. He is known as Captain Majed in the Arabic version of the anime and a series was also donated to the Iraq Media Network.

(Image: Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

For me, the first Brother product I encountered was the word processor that I wrote my college reports on in the early 90s. At that time I didn't even know that Brother was a Japanese company. When I came to Japan I learned that it was in fact not an American company but actually originated in the central Japan area. Right now I have a Brother fax/printer/scanner/copy machine, it is super handy. Do you have any products around you?

Last year when we visited Brother head office in Nagoya there were some items that Brother has on the market now that got a lot of attention from the WCS participants; I will introduce a few of them to you here.

The sewing machine is an essential item for anyone making cosplay costumes. Machines like the one above attracted great interest. We were given a demonstration of how you can input a pattern (like the Winnie the Pooh image above the machine) and the machine will create it automatically.


The little machine above was very popular as well. You may have seen items like this at an office or company, it is a labeler. You can make any label you want, for a lunch box to pencil case. This product is different however, it is a Hello Kitty labeler.

If you don't like Hello Kitty, there are Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh labelers too.

This is an example of the type of labels that can be made. It says:

"Brother Kindergarden"
"ABC Kumi (Class)"
"Yamasaki Nao"

Pretty cool huh?

March is the season of transition in Japan. Schools have graduation ceremonies, companies have goodbye parties for staff being transfered, even TV shows and commercials go through changes during this time. The blooming of the cherry blossoms makes it all more special. Most school grounds have cherry trees on them and you can imagine they make great backdrops for pictures.
If March is the end then April is the beginning and the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom in most of Japan by next week. I did see some blossoms starting to open and snapped a picture I thought I would share with you.

I should apologize for the blog pause earlier this month and explain why, maybe there are people out there wondering if I was OK. (probably not but, you know, let me pretend there are) I got a PS3 and it sucked the life out of me for a period of time. I have set it aside now and I feel much better.

Just to let you know whats coming up, I have been talking with organizers from Connichi in Germany over the last couple days and I may have a very interesting interview for you sometime soon! Connichi usually comes about a month after the WCS event every year so once a year goes by everyone forgets about it. I hope to look back on it and get you some information on the event and the WCS preliminaries. I don't want to say anything more but do stay tuned, I promise not to touch my PS3, well for a couple weeks anyway;)