Skip to main content

Graduating Seniors Head to the Corporate Running World

by Brett Larner

As the Japanese academic year comes to a close this month, many of this year's talented group of graduating university seniors prepare to enter the corporate team world of jitsugyodan running while others bid goodbye to their days of serious running. Below is a listing of some of the best runners in this year's graduating class and their destinations next month.

Tsuguya Asahi (Waseda Univ.) - Team Kyudenko
Soji Ikeda (Komazawa Univ.) - Team Yakult
Kenta Kawasaki (Kokushikan Univ.) - Team Suzuki
Yuki Kawauchi (Gakushuin Univ.) - Saitama Prefectural Government
Masato Kihara (Chuo Gakuin Univ.) - Team Kanebo
Mekubo Mogusu (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) - Team Aidem
Kazuki Onishi (Toyo Univ.) - Team Kanebo
Tomoya Onishi (Toyo Univ.) - Team Asahi Kasei
Hiroyuki Ono (Juntendo Univ.) - Team Nissin Shokuhin
Yukinori Ota (Komazawa Univ.) - Team Mazda
Takuma Sasaya (Nihon Univ.) - Team JR Higashi Nihon
Yuki Sato (Tokai Univ.) - Team Nissin Shokuhin / Tokai Graduate School
Tsuyoshi Takeda (Juntendo Univ.) - Team Suzuki
Kensuke Takezawa (Waseda Univ.) - Team S&B / Waseda Graduate School
Atsuyoshi Tobisaka (Toyo Univ.) - Team NTN
Shigeki Tsuji (Chuo Gakuin Univ.) - Team Tokyo Denryoku
Hiroyuki Yamamoto (Toyo Univ.) - Team Konica-Minolta
Atsushi Yamazaki (Juntendo Univ.) - Team Subaru

(c) 2009 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

Nat'l University Ekiden Updates Here

Looks like I just went over my update limit on Twitter - sorry, it's the first time I've tried to use it for this. I'll look for another option next time. In the meantime I'll add updates to the comments below. Not sure if that has a max too but I guess we'll find out. Update: Part one of the Nationals commentary can be found here .

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...