japan running news

Stephen Mayaka was the first Kenyan high school runner in Japan and the first to go the complete route from high school to university and on into the corporate running world. Now a Japanese citizen, married to a former World Championships-level Japanese marathoner and head coach of Obirin University’s ekiden team, Mayaka is a mentor to Kenyan athletes both across Japan and back in Kenya. JRN interviewed Mayaka just before New Year, 2010 for an article for Running Times magazine. This is part two of his interview.  Click here for part one . Part Two: The Corporate Life, Pros and Cons At the professional level, in your day-to-day life in the corporate teams how is it for Kenyan runners or other foreign athletes? I think every company has its own schedule. I support some companies, and I don’t support some other companies, the way they are using us. There are different understandings. I think there are companies that need a Kenyan just to run in the ekiden championships and...

JRN interviewed Stephen Mayaka , the first Kenyan high school runner in Japanese history, for an article in the May issue of Running Times magazine . This month we present the complete interview in serialized form in our subscription series JRNPremium . In part one of the interview Mayaka talked about being recruited and his experience as a student runner. In part two he talks about life on Japan's corporate teams and the difficulties Kenyans and other foreign runners face in fitting into the shifting demands of the system. Highlights from part two are included below. To read the full interview along with others in the JRNPremium series, click here to subscribe . Part Two: The Corporate Life, Pros and Cons We had some South Africans, Kalamori, I know him, we raced together, from Burundi, and Morocco. Some Ethiopians are coming but they are difficult because of the Ethiopian language and their culture. But it became to happen that the companies mostly prefer the Kenyans very much ...

http://www.runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=19571 photo: Kenyan Mekubo Mogusu of Yamanashi Gakuin Univ. on the way to a 57:01 course record at the 2007 Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai 20 km. An article I wrote for the May issue of Running Times magazine looking at the role of African runners in Japan is now available online. The article includes quotes and material from interviews with Stephen Mayaka , the first Kenyan high school runner in Japan, Tsutomu Akiyama , one of the people responsible for beginning the recruitment of Kenyan student runners including Samuel Wanjiru , and Ethiopian Biruk Bekele , winner of the 1996 Hokkaido Marathon and now an agent for other Ethiopians within the Japanese system. The complete interview with Mayaka appears in serialized form in this month's issue of JRNPremium , and next month's issue will feature the complete Akiyama interview. To read these and other JRNPremium interviews, click here to subscribe .

Spring is here. With it comes the April issue of our new subscription series JRNPremium . This month's issues features an interview with Kiyoko Shimahara, the 2009 Hokkaido Marathon winner who broke 2:30 three times in just over 100 days last fall. Shimahara is running Sunday's Nagano Marathon and was just named to the Japanese national team for November's Asian Games. We talked to her about what happened last fall, her training this spring, and her views on national teams, racing overseas, and what's wrong with the corporate team system. Look for Shimahara's interview tomorrow. Also out now, as a companion piece to editor-in-chief Jonathan Beverley's interview with Kenya's Samuel Wanjiru, the May, 2010 issue of Running Times magazine includes my article "Teaching the Masters" which looks at the history of African distance runners in Japan. For the article I interviewed Tsutomu Akiyama, one of the men responsible for bringing Samuel Wanjiru to the...