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25 Years in Japan



Today's the 25th anniversary of when I first moved to Japan. It's been interesting. If I had to pick one highlight, this pic was probably it. Glad as always I decided to move somewhere guns aren't part of day-to-day life.

Re: the pic, it's of Barcelona '92 Olympic silver medalist Koichi Morishita, me, and Spanish '92 Olympian Jose Esteban Montiel running the 2017 Barcelona Marathon. I started running marathons in '93 after watching Morishita vs. Hwang Young-cho at the Barcelona Olympics. Somehow, 25 years later Barcelona hired me to bring Morishita, Hwang and Yuko Arimori to the marathon for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Olympic marathon with the other three medalists.

I was going to run, and Morishita, who doesn't really run any more, decided the night before to jump in and run the first 11.5 km with me. I tend to be a pretty lucky person and have had a lot of good things happen these 25 years, and some not so good, but of all of them this one was the most inexplicable in how it came about and meant the most.

© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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CK said…
Any inexplicable positive like getting hired to bring a Korean Champ (how did you find him?!) and others to an Anniversary Race is well-deserved Brett for somebody who has contributed so much and stuck at it through those 25 years (and maybe more before too?). Barcelona '92 ? I went there in early 1990 (while contracted to work in Madrid) to explore the possibility of working with OG. Turned out that my working visa/status for Spain was wrong and it would likely take me 6 months to see if it could even be changed, and I didn't have the determination to pursue. However used the time to check out the marathon course and it became clear that the race would be won on the long drag up to the stadium. Ended up watching Morishta and Arimori on a TV in Hong Kong - both truly inspirational performances. Here's to the next 25 years...
August 25, 2022 at 8:40 AM
Brett Larner said…
Thanks very much. A contact at ASICS helped with contacting Hwang. I ended up walking around town with him and his family and taking them up to Park Guell. Life is funny, huh. The taxi driver on the way back to the hotel recognized him and went on enthusiastically about having watched the race and how much the Olympics helped transform the city.
August 27, 2022 at 12:30 PM
Rigajags said…
25 years, wow! I Wish i can visita the country at some point!
I Hope you will do some Q&A sessions at some point, there would be so much to ask you and you could talk about with 25 years being there.
Happy anniversary :)
August 29, 2022 at 5:17 AM
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