Nihito Arakawa Nihito Arakawa Arakawa was born in Musashino, Tokyo, Japan, and move to Fussa soon after. Fussa is the city well known by U.S. Air Force Base and Ryū Murakami's novel "Almost Transparent Blue". He enjoyed basketball with fellow kids while living there from the age of two to thirteen, then relocated to Minamiizu, Shizuoka. He became involved in middle-distance running and tennis during junior high school, and served as the captain and pitcher for the high school's baseball team. It was also during high school that he watched the Félix Trinidad fights on WOWOW and was inclined into boxing. He
Shizuka Arakawa a disappointment which she later credited as a motivation to stay in the sport and regain top form. She felt she could not quit on such a down note. In November 2005, Arakawa changed coaches to Nikolai Morozov. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, Arakawa skated in the short program to Fantaisie-Impromptu by Chopin. She went into the long program in third place, behind pre-event favorites Sasha Cohen and Irina Slutskaya. Less than a point separated the top three skaters. In the long program, Cohen was the first of the three leaders to skate, followed by Arakawa and