The Most Popular Sport in Japan

Hi. I missed a day of school last week and in order to make up my participation grade in physical education I have to write a report on a sport. Picking a sport was really hard because I do not have a favorite! The first thing that popped into my head was JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN!! So I went onto Google and I typed in “sports in Japan” and I found a Wikipedia site. It said some popular Japanese sports include football, baseball, kendo, and figure skating. Right away I clicked on the link to figure skating, and so I guess if I thought harder, I would have come up with that sooner or later!!!

The reason I like figure skating is because it’s a favorite sport in Japan. It’s also a world wide sport so it a sport that can be found in almost every country. I’ve only been ice skating a few times and it’s pretty hard to do. I thought to do a good job with this report I would have to answer a few questions about ice skating. These are some of the questions I thought about to answer in this report.

Who is the best figure skater alive? Who invented figure skating?
What is the point of figure skating? What is figure skating?
When was figure skating invented? When are the World Championships held?
Where are the World Championships? Where is figure skating most popular?

Now I’ll answer all of my questions! So, who is the best figure skater alive? Currently, and most recently, the best skater is either Daisuke Takahashi in men’s figure skating or in Mao Asada in women’s figure skating. And guess what? They are both from Japan. They were both awarded gold medals at this year’s world championships held in Turin Italy. I did not know that before I started this report. So who invented figure skating? We don’t know exactly who invented figure skating but a man named Jackson Haines, an American, is considered to be the father of the modern sport. So when was figure skating invented? Jackson Haines started the sport in the 1860’s with the first competitions being held about twenty years later. Figure skating can be for fun, but it is mostly used as a competitive sport! It is an athletic event that is both physically hard but beautiful at the same time. Figure skating requires someone to wears shoes with very thin blades on the bottoms that slide on the ice for sport and for fun. I guess that’s in my own words!

Besides the World Championships that are held every year figure skating is an event in the Winter Olympics that are held every four years. But the World Championships are held annually so each year we know who the best skaters in the world are. Guess what? In March, 2011 the next World Championships will be held in Tokyo, Japan!!!! I guess I picked the right sport and that helps me answer my final question. Without a doubt with both men’s and women’s world championship gold metals belonging to Japan and with the world championships to be held in Tokyo, Japan, next year, while figure skating is popular all over the world, currently the most popular place for figure skating has to be Japan!!!