Thank you for the info.I really hope someone buys the rights to Sasuke.Hope they don't change it too much if they do.My son Alex and I really love it.

You can send stuff to Nagano through his company, Takasui. They'll forward it to him. Here's the address.

Mr. Makoto Nagano
c/o Takasui K.K.
Maguro Honmachi 1-1
Kushikno-shi, Kagoshima-Ken
896-0045

To send things to the other All-Stars, we've been sending things through Monster 9, the company that produced Sasuke. That's going to be a problem now, because Monster 9 has gone bankrupt. I don't know if they'll still be able to forward things to the All-Stars. I've been wondering about that because I was planning to send Shingo Yamamoto something for his birthday this year (July 29th; he'll be 38), but I don't know how I'm going to send it to him. There are fan pages for the All-Stars on Facebook. Those were originally run by M9, but now are run by a company called Very Life. I have no idea if Very Life will forward fanmail to the All-Stars. There's a couple of people I might be able to ask, but right now they don't know much more about this than I do. We may have to wait and see what happens with Monster 9. There are rumors (unconfirmed) that someone else now owns the rights to Sasuke. If that's true we may be able to send fanmail through them, but we don't even know if those rumors are true, so we'll just have to wait and see.

How do you send gifts and notes to the All-Stars?

Happy Birthday Akiyama-san!
Happy New Year everyone!

It's January 3rd in Japan. Kazuhiko Akiyama is 39 years old today. Happy birthday, Akiyama-san!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I certainly hope so. I think I'd even be willing to give G4 a chance with it.

I hope someone else will pick Sasuke up. Maybe M9 could sell the rights to Sasuke to some other company in Japan. I hope they DON'T sell to G4. I think I'd rather not have Sasuke at all than to have G4 in charge of it. But maybe M9 could sell to some other Japanese company.

Sad news today. Monster9 has declared bankruptcy. Yamamoto-san posted a status update on Facebook this morning indicating that Sasuke is over. :-(

It is now October 22nd in Japan. Katsumi Yamada is 46 today. Happy birthday, Yamada-san! I hope you have a great day.

Hey, Pitts. G4 is airing Sasuke 27 next March. 8 months after it taped. And without the Americans. They're being cut from the broadcast again.

Yay! Wonder when they'll show the US version of 27.

I sure hope so. And I hope Takeda competes this time!

Ratings are in for Sasuke 27. it pulled as 12.6, finishing roughly 2nd in its time slot against some pretty stiff competition. This is the best rating since 23! It's looking more likely that we'll get a Sasuke 28!!

Had fun watching 27 with you guys!

I updated the Sasuke 27 thread with the info about the Navi.

Thanks Tiger for the reminder. I really should stop by more often but I will join you for Sasuke.

Sasuke 27 info/spoilers thread is up.

It's September 13th in Japan. Bunpei is 44 today. Happy birthday, Shiratori-san! I hope you have a great day!

Awesome!

Not sure what prompted this, but I got a friend request from Shingo today on Facebook ... his person account! Way cool!

It's been confirmed. Sasuke 27 will air on October 3rd starting at 19:00 JST. That's 6 AM EST/5AM CST. I have to go to school that day to turn in an assignment, but I don't have to leave until 8:30, so I'll get to see most of the tournament. It'll end at 8:48 CST, so I'll miss the last 20 minutes, but I can catch that later. Hope we have a lot of people on here to chat while Sasuke airs.

Nice to see folks stopping by again. Tiger - classes started on Monday. Already behind :-)
Can't wait to see 27!

Thanks, Pam! I'll pass the congrats along to Mary. We'd love to have you and Neil out to the new house next time you're out this way. We haven't gotten together in SO long.

Hey, Pam. Yeah, I'm still really excited that Shingo got--and likes--the Haughton hat. He even said that he's going to wear it at the next Sasuke tournament.

Guess I need to stop by more often. Tiger that is great about the hat.

Karno great news about the wife. Tell her "way to go". And great about the house.

Ratings for last night are out. Ninja Warrior on NBC finished 4th among the four major networks for 8:00-9:00 CST, and third for 9:00 - 10:00. That's pretty bad. I wonder what the target was for ratings and what the impact will be on the future of Sasuke?

LOL.

I beat you to it? Sweet! Kanzen Seiha for Karno! ;-)

Oh, and that's 7 PM Japan time--6 AM EST/5 AM CST.

You beat me to it, Karno.

In case you haven't seen this ... Sasuke 27 will reportedly air on Monday, 10/3/2011 at 7pm on TBS.

I'm hitting the gym pretty hard right now, too. I'm not in as good a shape overall as I was back when I was seriously training, but I'm a lot stronger than I was back then, also.

I'm hoping I can continue to gain strength while losing about 20-25 lbs. between now and March. That's going to be a tall order, but I'm going all out to get there. I'll be nearly 42 by the time the next ANW comes around (assuming it will be held about the same time it was this year), so my window is rapidly closing.

Thanks, Pitts. I'd definitely like to include you guys, if you're willing. That was something Carol suggested to me back when I was originally working to get accepted.

I have another angle I want to pursue as well, but I'm going to hold onto that idea for awhile. I don't want anyone coming by casually from a web search or link to steal it and run with it before I do. :-D

Hey, Pitts. Have your classes started back yet? Mine start tomorrow.

That's great news Karno. Include the website fans cheering for you in your video - they seem to like unusual angles :-)

Thanks! I was so excited when I logged onto Facebook on Monday morning and saw that. Btw, the All-Stars themselves don't update the pages, someone at M9 does. The All-Stars sometimes take pictures or short video clips and send them to M9 and someone there updates the pages.

Loved seeing Shingo in the Haughton hat, Tiger. Great job! :-)

I had pretty well given up on Sasuke and largely stopped keeping up with it back when ANW was just a big popularity contest with fan voting. I just recently became aware that it's actually a skill competition now, as it should have been from the start. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to discover that.

That said, I'm planning to go to next May's ANW tryouts. Hopefully, I'll put together a strong enough video to get an invite, but if not, I'm going to CA to try and get one of the few at-large slots. I'm not getting any younger and I've been wanting to do this since I first saw the show, so it's time to nut up and go do it.

Things have been going pretty well otherwise. My wife finished her degree this May and we're about to close on a new home in about two weeks. I hope you guys are doing well, also.

That is so coo, Tiger!! I will have to ask to be friends with them on Facebook, too!

Hi Karno,
Yes, it's been quiet, but maybe we can lure everyone back.
How are you doing? When are you going to try out for ANW?

Tiger,
I saw that post about the hat, but I didn't realize that you had sent it to him. How sweet is that?!
I'm loving these new Facebook pages - get to see great pictures and hear from the guys now and then :-)

Hey, Karno. It's been a long time. The site has become pretty quiet lately, but a few of us still post sometimes.

Haven't stopped by in a LONG time. I was watching American Ninja Warrior last weekend and it made me think of you guys and this great site. I hope everyone is doing well and still enjoying Sasuke!

Several weeks ago I sent Shingo a red "Haughton" baseball hat for his birthday (July 29th). This morning when I got on Facebook I saw that Shingo had posted (or had someone at M9 post) this message.

"Thank you very much!!
I didn't thought that the messages of celebration came from the United States.I'm going to put this on at next SASUKE competition and when playing golf!!I am looking forward to meeting fans by all means.
I'm going to work hard for advancing to SASUKE final stage.
Thank you for your supporting!"
He also included a picture of himself wearing the hat. I'm really excited!
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=1779 ... 74769

It's July 29th in Japan. Shingo Yamamoto is 37 years old today. Happy birthday, Yamamoto-san! I hope you have a great day!

Looking forward to ANW next Sunday!

TBS hasn't announced the air date yet, but it will probably be sometime in September.

Good news about the taping. Can't wait to see it!

Sasuke 27 will tape Monday, July 18th. We don't know the air date yet, but at least we know when it will tape.