Popularity of racquetball in Japan

I love racquetball. You get the opportunity to beat the hell out of the ball, without worries about going out of bounds. Even if you can't hit hard, you can still win since tactics are just as important. If you push yourself hard for an hour, a 150lb person may be able to burn around 800 calories. Of course, the values aren't exact, since weight and individual difference will account for some deviation from it. How can it get any better? Fun exercise thats also a great workout at the same time.

Unfortunately, racquetball is not a very popular sports in Japan. According to JARA website(Japan Racquetball Association), there are only about 200 courts, and 300,000 racquetball playing population in Japan. To give you an idea, I live in a pretty big city, but there are only few places. All of the places are a small part of the gym facilities, which usually costs at least $700 annually in membership fees. Seeing that racquetball is out of reach for me, I would love to see facilities dedicated to racquetball go up. Rather than people not wanting to play, I am assuming people just don't know about it. Maybe some promotion might make the future of racquetball brighter in Japan.