[Archived] Help Needed - Rovers Fans In Japan

[wellesbourne]

Bloody gutted - 1st derby match missed since the dingle chimpanzees decided to dismantle the darwen end roof. Have had a business trip forced on me to japan that impossible to get out of.

So i will be in Nagoya, Japan dressed in Roves shirt and need help from any Nippon Rovers with somewhere to watch the game.

My objective will be to adopt some Japanese Rovers fans and film a few choruses of anti-clarets songs that i shall seek to add to youtube.

Gutted about the game but a ticket thrown back into the pot for all you guys.

Any help much appreciated.

[Guest Wen Y Hu]

Bloody gutted - 1st derby match missed since the dingle chimpanzees decided to dismantle the darwen end roof. Have had a business trip forced on me to japan that impossible to get out of.

So i will be in Nagoya, Japan dressed in Roves shirt and need help from any Nippon Rovers with somewhere to watch the game.

My objective will be to adopt some Japanese Rovers fans and film a few choruses of anti-clarets songs that i shall seek to add to youtube.

Gutted about the game but a ticket thrown back into the pot for all you guys.

Any help much appreciated.

Just found this post when searching for a thread on Japan to post in. 'Fraid I missed your post back in February by a few days, wellesbourne; I'd just left Japan on a month's business trip myself. Bit unfortunate, because I live right here in Nagoya and was here when the Dingles game was on. It wasn't on Sky here, as you probably found out, but I could have shown you around. Next time, maybe.

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For those coming to these parts and hoping to keep up with the footy, you'll be glad to know that Sky Sports has a foothold here in Japan. However, except for when we are up against the big clubs, Rovers are not on too often. Even if a match is live on Sky back in the UK, there is no guarantee that it will be broadcast here.

The bias towards the big clubs has increased over the decade or so since JSky started up here in the late '90s and introduced Sky Sports, with the live football programme essentially being the Saturday 4pm and Sunday 5:15pm live games.

Into the 2000s and the programme expanded, taking in 3pm kickoffs in addition to the lunchtime and early kickoffs and even midweek matches. FA Cup and League Cup coverage was also introduced, though Cup match coverage has varied from season to season.

For a few years the coverage was varied and the big-club bias was not too intrusive. Also, any team that had a Japanese player involved was given weekly coverage - Arsenal and Fulham (Inamoto), Bolton (Nishizawa and then Nakata), and I think Portsmouth very briefly (Kawaguchi) - and this added a bit of local flavour. Rovers were on pretty regularly and the weekend programme had plenty of choice in terms of competitive matches to watch.

In the last few years, however, the JSky Sports programme has become a kind of extension of MUTV, Chelsea TV, etc., revolving around the games involving Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and, more recently, Man City. I don't know how successful this is commercially for JSky, but it's a big turn off for me and I haven't subscribed to JSky Sports for the last two seasons since coming back to Japan. 3pm kick-offs are between 11pm and midnight here and, while watching some of the turgid stuff at the end of the Hughes era was pretty trying, at least I could get to sleep easily... Watching us get tubbed at the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool without a whimper during the Ince era and the first year of Big Sam's reign - forget it.

Big Sam seems to have got us sound defensively in the latter half of last season and we are at least competitive against the big clubs now, so I may be renewing my subscription for the coming season. The Japanese commentators tend not to denigrate unfashionable clubs and have given us very positive treatment whenever I have listened to them, so I am sure that if the Rovers are competitive and attractive to watch, we'll get the coverage here - just like Spurs and Villa have got this last season or two. We shall see.

Finally, if you are coming over to Japan and need to plan your stay around the footy, you also need to be aware that although there is Premier League coverage here via JSky Sports, finding a hotel or bar that has it on could be a little difficult outside of Tokyo. In Tokyo, I should think you will be able to find a sports bar without too much trouble - if any visitors to Tokyo could provide info on that, perhaps...? Similarly, no business hotels that I have been in have had Sky and I'm not too confident that the top "international" hotels will carry it either: does anyone have any experiences in that area...?

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Here's a link to the Premier League page of the JSky Sports website. It's entirely in Japanese, including the names of the teams in the weekly schedule, so it is only of use if you have a Japanese-speaking friend/host that you can call on: http://football.skyperfectv.co.jp/Premier/index.html