This karaoke singing session apparently took place during the Penhold VS Shakehand Charity Challenge tournament last week. Here you have Wang Liqin, Wang Hao, Ma Lin, and Ma Long of the Chinese national team singing sheepishly. These guys are such superstars in their home country, but seem a little shy singing here.

A few weeks before Christmas, our family got a Wii. We bought it specifically because we had heard that the Wii Sports Resort Table Tennis game (all links go to the product pages on Amazon) was the most realistic table tennis video game on the market.

I’ll write the good followed by the bad followed by a little more opinion and observation about the game and Wii Resort as a whole. Some of the good and bad come together as you’ll see.

The good:

• As soon as kids can get the ball timing down, they can play the game with some success. My 3 year old can do it OK, but my 5 year old can actually play a game.
• With practice, you can put a little spin on the ball.
• My wife, who is the best player in the family also does best on the Wii. I think this is a sign that the play is relatively realistic.
• The Mii characters are cute, and one of my opponent was playing with a slipper instead of a racket. Reminiscent of being at an onsen (hot spring) resort.
• It comes with one Wii MotionPlus although you will need to buy another if you want to play two player.
• It’s also a great motivator for kids. Having a little success in this game while getting a feel for the rules, sounds, and movements is definitely a big plus… especially if you are a parent that wants to give kids a very fun, positive initial experience with table tennis.

The bad:

• The character automatically does the footwork for you. There doesn’t seem to be any way around this problem, but it would also be a great advance in the technology if there were a way to move at your own pace.
• Sometimes when I switch from forehand to backhand or vice-versa, the Wii seems to think I’m trying to make a shot and as a result,  I lose a point.
• I haven’t figured out a good way to control the direction of the shots… it could be something in the timing, but this is one part of the game that is actually harder on the Wii (if it’s indeed possible) than in real life. I will update this post if I figure out how to do it.
• The same things that make it easy for kids to play also make the shots a little unrealistically good sometimes… it’s a video game so, again, that’s to be expected, but you definitely would not want to rely on this as your primary training method. You still need to get out there (if you, like me, don’t yet have a table tennis table in your home) and get some real life playing experience.

Overall, Wii Sports Resort is a great game to have. There are lots of games that kids as young as 3 can do fairly well at after mastering some simple controls. The sword fighting game, Frisbee games, and bowling games are very easy to master. The Wii MotionPlus improves the game sensitivity and brings Resort to a level above Wii Sports.

Another great game for kids is the skydiving one because it’s just a matter of how you hold it. Kids as young as two could probably enjoy holding the Wii Remote Control at various angles and watching the character skydive safely down to Wuhu Island.

It’s good for the family, good for getting in shape, and has a wide variety of games for all members of the family. I highly recommend Wii Sports Resort not just for the table tennis game, but for all the games and family fun.

Truth be told, the bowling and swordfighting games are almost as popular as the table tennis game in our household.

This is a short directed by Eli Craig whose feature film Tucker & Dale vs Evil is about to be released (and which has gotten great reviews at the Sundance Film Festival).

I would still love to see a really well done and realistic movie about table tennis and the intricacies of the sport, especially if said movie helped increase the popularity of table tennis in the United States.

Japan has the advantage of plenty of anime and manga based on the sport because of its popularity. Maybe I need to post more of that here and try to give table tennis a little push into American pop culture.

The short video is embedded in two parts below, and can also be easily found on YouTube. It stars a few recognizable actors including Paolo Costanzo (who starred in the Friends spinoff “Joey” on NBC), and Jake Busey.

This is some fine film making and I’m really looking forward to seeing Tucker & Dale vs Evil as well. (I’ll embed a trailer from that film after Tao of Pong as well.)

I wish Balls of Fury had been as good as this.

Here is the trailer for Tucker & Dale vs Evil (which may be a little scary in parts if really little kids are watching).

He Zhi Wen was born and raised in China, currently playing for Spain’s Caja Granada Table Tennis Club. You can enjoy this video and watch a highly skilled, very athletic player… but keep in mind that he’s 47 years old now and still highly ranked. This guy is a monster, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Enjoy the foot work in this video. No wasted motion or energy. Then it’s funny because as soon as he steps away from the table he’s looks like just another average old guy.[ad#inpost bigbox]

Still not living in a place where having a table tennis is an option, we have turned to our faithful iPod for our table tennis fix. There are a few table tennis games for iPod, but our favorite is World Ping-Pong Champion by Skyworks. Despite the name, it provides a pretty fun and “as-realistic-as-can-be-expected” table tennis experience.

You can play in several modes including tournament, arcade, practice, or tournament mode against 8 different opponents. One very interesting mode however is head to head mode which allows you to compete against another live person on the same iPhone or iPod Touch! It is surpisingly easy to do, even with the limited screen space. It’s also a lot of fun, and feels somewhat real.

You hit the ball sliding your finger (the racket) along the screen. It allows you to put spin on the ball, smash, and do a lot the things you’d normally do when playing. You can even choose among three different tennis rackets allowing different styles of play.

When you play, you can choose between two different background tracks, and even choose which country you want to represent! The USA, the UK, Finland, Sweden, Canada, China, Germany, and Russia are all represented. Needless to say, we wish Japan were in there, but let’s hope an update introduces some more countries.

We really enjoy it. It will never replace an actual game on an actual table tennis table with a real opponent, but if you need a quick fix, it suffices. The full version is $.99, but there is a lite version as well which is free and will give you a taste of the game. It may even be enough for people who just want to break out the iPod Touch or iPhone and play a few rounds of video table tennis.

Personally, I enjoyed it enough to buy the full version, and it was worth it just for the head-to-head feature which is fun and simple enough that even kids can play.

I wrote previously about the enormous IDEAL size for a table tennis table room. I know it’s a kind of unrealistic size (except for some basements), but it’s only the ideal. There’s plenty of family fun and training that can be done in smaller rooms, but there are some other factors one should also consider when preparing the room.

One thing is lighting. Shadows and bad lighting could easily impact upon the quality of a training session or game. Needless to say a low hanging light above the table tennis could end up hindering some high shots, or become an unnecessary obstacle to play. If you can’t have very high ceilings, you at least need lighting that won’t interfere with the game, but still help players keep a sharp eye on the ball.

The floor is also something to consider. Although I don’t think it is as important as lighting, you want flooring that will be easy to move on, and be close to the kind of floor you find in competitions here. For Japan, that means wooden flooring, but a lot of people may not have much choice about the flooring they have to work with. I don’t think that this is an important enough factor for people to make any big moves or spend a lot of money, but the floor should at least be flat and allow freedom of movement. (I guess shag rugs could really affect a game, right?)

[ad]For me, the most important factor may be ventilation. As readers of this blog know, table tennis is a tough sport. People training are going to sweat. People who sweat tend to start to stink. Now if you have a couple of people going at it hard in a basement with poor ventilation, people are not going to want to spend a lot of time down there. If I invested money in anything else after finding the buying the right table tennis table, I would put money into making sure that the room is well lit, but most of all well ventilated, smelling good, and a pleasant place to be!

[ad]When looking for a table tennis table to buy and set up at your home, there are several things you have to consider. Before even getting discussing whether you are going to buy a butterfly table, killerspin, or stiga, you have to think hard about several other factors.

One important thing to consider is whether the table will be moved. Will it have a fixed location in the home, never to be folded, rolled, pushed, pulled, slid, converted, or otherwise? Will you have a special room only for the table, or will you need a folding table, or one that converts into something else.

How often will the table be used? Are you going to be practicing your serves for three hours every night, or playing as a family every day after school.

The level of play of the people using it at home can also be a big factor. If you regularly play at tournaments, it may be best to get the kind of table you most often play on, or with similar features. The more comfortable and experienced you are with a certain table’s design and feel the better, Although this is not a huge consideration, if you have a preference, you can consider that as well.

If you are serious abut competing, you will want an indoor table (and a table tennis table room) so that you don’t have to sacrifice any features of the table for the sake of it being good for use in all weather conditions. An indoor table will have a surface and design closest to those you’d use in competition.

Whether you have a room set aside for you playing, or will be using a multi-purpose room, coupled with how much space you have to store your table may help you decide what kind of undercarriage you need. Is a folding table right for you, a permanent construction, or one that breaks down into two pieces and can be stored with less space.

The greatest factor in your choice of table tennis table may be the price. This is only natural, but will have an affect on the other aspects of the table. My advice is to get the best table you can for what you are willing to spend on the table.

When you look at your table tennis table top, you definitely want it made of wood, but you have a choice when it comes to thickness. In general, thicker is better so you may want the thickest wooden table top you can afford. Next comes design and brand loyalty, most of the major brands (butterfly, double happiness, stiga, killerspin, joola, yasaka, or some of the other major sports equipment brands) make great tables so it just depends on the brand and style you like.

Good luck with finding the best table tennis table for you and your family to train and play on!

In pursuing my dream of having a table tennis table in my home, I have to consider room size.

[ad]

The real honest answer to the question of how big a room for table tennis should be… is “as big as possible”. However, I know most people won’t be satisfied with that, so let’s start with this:

Table Tennis Table Size:

The good news is that this is easy to identify and serves for a great starting point.

The international standard size is about 30 inches tall, about 9 feet long, and about 5 feet wide. (This is represented in centimeters as a height of 76cm, a length of 274cm, and a width of 152.5cm.)

There are smaller table sold for recreation, but it would feel like bowling on a shortened lane. (I know it’s kind of a strange analogy, but that’s how I felt.)

I recommend the full size table even if it means sacrificing a little elbow room or furniture in the room.

Now the next thing to struggle with is how much space you need to move… I could rephrase this as how good are you, your family, and your friends (by this I mean your opponents!).

If you guys are hitting long balls or really working both sides of the table, you are going to want enough space so that you don’t have to hold back at all. (Which also brings up the question of how BIG are you? If you are 6′ 5″ with a wingspan, you may want even more space.l)

I think I’m going to want about 2 meters on either side of the table, meaning a total of about 9 meters in width on the room. (Although I’m sure people can do fine with only about 1.5 meters on each side if they have to.) 9 meters translates to about 29ft or so.

As for space around the length of the table, I would want about 4 meters on each side of the table for a total length of about 11 meters or so, that would be a room of about 36 feet long.

As it stands, we’ve come to a point where we want a room that’s about 36 feet long and 39 feet wide or more is the dream size for a table tennis room, but I’m sure you can get by with much less.

The answer then comes back to our original answer which is that you want as much room as you can get, but most of us are not going to buy a new house just to have a table tennis room… since we can go and play other places, it is not an incredible priority to have a table tennis table in the house, but if you have a large basement with a high enough ceiling that you can convert go for it. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m moving back to the United States soon, so I will certainly be looking at room and basement size when I look at houses.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Am I grossly overestimating the size I need?

[ad]Until we have a real table tennis table sitting in the house, we are hoping to get by with Wii Sports Resort which includes several fun games and has been around in Japan for a few months now. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but the videos look encouraging. The way the ball bounces seems pretty real with spin. I don’t believe that it’ll replace a real table, but if we end up living somewhere in the US that lacks space, it could be our best option. Price-wise it could be more expensive than if I tried to get a table on Craig’s list, or found something who was moving and willing to give up the table for a reasonable price, but the Nintendo Wii won’t take up a whole room in a house, so if it’s even close to the feel of a real table tennis game, it might be worth it.

For those of you who’ve never seen it, here’s a commercial that’s been on the air in Japan lately featuring Kasumi Ishikawa, one of the top young table tennis players in Japan. She’s currently 16 years old. In the commercial Ishikawa is playing against Takashi Okamura from the Japanese comedy team called “Ninety-nine”. They are quite famous and have been featured in most of the Wii Sports Resort commercials.

The video is in two parts below.

The search begins with an adventure. I know I’m being a little melodramatic here, but I wanted the first post to sort of familiarize people with the purpose of the blog and give a little information about the family behind the blog without being overly personal.

We started our adventure here in Western Japan… a simple family of four with a dream.

We moving back to the United States in September with two pre-school aged children, a wife hoping to return to the sport she loves, and a husband and father (that’d be me) hoping to keep it all fun and meaningful… by trying to make sure we have a loving, happy home with a full sized table tennis table in it.

In the meantime, I’ll try to post some information and videos to keep people interested, entertained, and hopefully well-informed about the world of table tennis tables and what kind of space and financial requirements there are to having one in the house.