For sports fans, when the Japanese women’s volleyball team played their Chinese rivals for the bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics, it culminated in an amazing Olympics for volleyball in Asia. However, for language fans like myself, the one thing that was as exciting as the game was the outfit worn by the Japanese athletes: their outfits said ‘Nippon’ instead of ‘Japan’. The choice to wear Nippon shirts resulted in an influx of queries to the Japanese volleyball association about why Japan had chosen this name. However, for people living in Japan, this may seem strange. After all, Japan is an An…