OOAK Table Tennis Forum

You know what YouTube is like - you watch one video, a whole bunch more related ones will pop up. Nojima T-League is a professional table tennis league in Japan, the players are international class and most have international rankings. One thing I like is no gimmicks - no Golden Point, no time-limited sets, etc. that you find in the new-fangled leagues like T2. I suspect this is where professional players in Japan make a living - there is precious little prize money in table tennis (unlike, say, tennis) - I surmise that players get paid a salary for being part of a team. The teams are sponsored by corporations (Nippon Paint, Japan Life. etc.) and/or local governments, and they get smaller sponsorship fees from other companies, which get advertising.



This match-up is between the Japan Life Red Elves and Kyushu Asteeda. Kyushu is heavy on "Kattoman" - Sato Hitomi (WR#23 at the time) and Hashimoto Honoka. The first match is doubles, involving this "Kattoman Peya". The Red Elves are pretty strong - they have Hayata Hina (currently WR#5), Hirano Miu (WR#17) and Nagasaki Miyu (WR#25). The Red Elves also have really natty togs.

There's a link to where you can buy tickets, if you visit Japan. Looks like tickets are in the 5,000-10,000 yen range - about USD35-75 more or less. Haven't checked to see where they actually play (I suspect it moves around).

I will be posting more under here over time.

Iskandar

Kattoman vs. kattoman. Chopping and pinch-hitting. Ojio Haruna (Nagoya) vs. Ushijima Seira (Kyushu)

This was in 2022, I think Ojio plays for the Mallets (Nippon Paint) these days, so they seem to move around from team to team.

Looks like there are gimmicks after all - the last deciding game started at 6-6 - probably in lieu of the match going into expedite.

Iskandar

Wow, some very long rallies! Attacks are very sudden too.

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Men for once. No one famous here:



Eida Rishi (Saitama) vs. Yoshiyama Ryoichi (Okayama). Eida looks like a long distance lobber/looper. Points are short.. wish I could do those backhand off-the-serve attacks. Hot out of the oven - posted 3 hours ago. It doesn't seem to be the whole game - in the description it says Eida won 3-2, here he loses the first two games. There's someone called Hao Shuai playing for the Okayama Rivets - wasn't there a blade being sold under that name years ago? Probably a CNT player who moved to Japan. If so he must be at least in his late 30s to 40s.

Iskandar

Are there non-Japanese playing in the T-League? Yes. Adriana Diaz is from Puerto Rico and is currently World #11 (Adult women's singles), one behind Ito Mima. She's playing for Kyoto. I guess everyone knows about Harimoto Miwa (playing for Kanagawa) by now, in this game she's taking a more nuanced approach, with a mixture of hard and soft topspin drives. She's made up a lot of ground in the rankings, she's now #15 among adult women (from over 100 just a month or two ago). They're only showing the last game of three, for some reason. Watch the serves - in particular, Diaz's serve at 6:00, and the replay at 6:13.

Another bit of vocabulary - apparently a "touchover" is a shot that hits the net and then goes out..

By the way, Kanagawa is the prefecture south west of Tokyo, in which you find Yokohama, Kamakura and Fujisawa, while the city of KanaZawa is in central Honsu, and is where the recent earthquake took place.

Iskandar