I suppose that Japan would fight four matches in total during this FIFA's World Cup 2010 but would win only two games, which means Japan will be forced to leave this quadrennial football event at the first stage of the final tournament like in 2002.
The winner of this series in South Africa will be Argentina or the Neatherlands, in my individual opinion, which means soccer cannot change the world.
After this globally televised sports event, we will have the midterm election in the U.S. and the Upper-House election in Japan, which will influence future mutual engagement in solving financial problems of both the countries. Depending on results, each might find that a chance of success in such cooperation is so slim, making the global situations more complex.
So for the time being, it is a happy moment for soccer fans now, if they are Japanese politicians or American ones.
In addition, I do not think BP will completely fail in August, though, with only two new wells for such a potentially unmeasurable disaster.
Likewise, if foot-and-mouth diseases ended with 200,000 pigs and cows executed in Japan, inexperienceness of the DPJ Cabinet might be tested again with another large-scale crisis.
Put extremely, in 2013, we may have a very different political landscape both in the U.S. and Japan.