The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin
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On the US side you're missing Hall, Meb, Ritz, Abdi, Sell. All of whom would I think at the least, give the last placed guy a good run for his money and in some cases be well clear.
Unfortunately I'm a Brit and with the possible exception of Dan Robinson and maybe Andi Jones I doubt we'd have many beating the last American finisher...
I hear what you're saying about priorities, although at least two of the bigger-name Americans you mention would be hard-pressed to crack the Japanese squad. For what it's worth, there are two other guys who ran 2:08 and four other guys who ran 2:09 within the Berlin qualification window but didn't make the Japanese team.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Canada is actually sending some marathoners this time. From the looks of it they might be able to give the U.S. a go in the Marathon World Cup team competition.