Danny ChaiUh, Sam, I think you misunderstood. This year, Major League Baseball expanded voting for the All-Star game to other countries. Here’s a brief mention of it. As the article mentions, the inclusion of Japan in the voting is likely to favor Ichiro. I’m not saying it’s responsible for all his votes, but it’s probably a factor in him being the very top vote-getter.
So when he was talking about Japanese voters, he was talking about voters in Japan. And, he’s probably somewhat right. All those Japanese voters (5 million, according to this article) sure as heck aren’t voting for Chuck Knobloch.