J-League Soccer

About two weeks ago John and I went to a J-League soccer game with a Japanese friend of ours (Kazytoshi). I had been wanting to see a baseball game with him but he informed me that the Urawa Reds were playing and that they were one of the best soccer teams in Asia. I jumped at the chance, as soccer in Japan was also one of the things I wanted to see.


I've also heard of the Urawa team as they also competed in the Asian Champions League that Australian soccer clubs are part of. Urawa actually won the Asian Champions League in 2007, in which both Adelaide and Sydney competed in. The 2008 Asian Champions League contain the Melbourne Victory and Gamba Osaka from Japan. The Victory however, failed miserably.


Anyway, brimming with excitement, off we went to Saitama, the home of Soccer in Japan. We went to the largest soccer stadium in Japan, called the Saitama Stadium 2002 (not really an original name, I know). The 2002 stands for the stadium being built in that year for the World Cup co-hosted by Japan and Sth Korea. I was told that the stadium could hold 80,000 people. Hehe, still smaller than the MCG. Non the less, still an impressive stadium.

The Stadium from the outside.

We rocked up to the stadium without booking any seats and just to buy them from the gate. About 30mins from kick-off, the only seats we could get were not the greatest. For 3000 yen ($30) we were sent to the top of the blechers, one row from the very back.

The view from our seats. It wasn't too bad in the end. It was high but not too far back so that we could see anything. On this night the Urawa Red Diamonds were playing FC Tokyo.

The Reds boys warming up!

A section of the Urawa fans waving all sorts of flags. It seemed that it wasn't just Urawa flags they were waving but anything that contained red was waved including the England flag, Iraq flag, some Che Guvara flags ... anything goes I guess!

Giant screens hung at both ends to show highlights and at this particular point to introduce the home team. This is Ponte, one of Urawa's brazillian imports. He played really well in the first half with deft back heels and touches. Unfortunately, he pulled a hamstring early in the seocnd half and was taken off.

Look how excited John is! Think he wanted some beer girls to walk by but it never happened.

A pan of Saitama 2002 Stadium and the fans warming up their voices.

On this particular, 50,000 fans packed the stadium of which most were the home team Urawa fans. There was a section of the crowd that was there for FC Tokyo and you can actually see them in the photo above. You'll see a section of the crowd dressed in dark blue. You'll also notice that to either side of the Tokyo fans are rows of empty seats. There were actually police standing in between the fans. I wouldn't have thought hooligan behaviour was prevalent in Japan but Kazu said that opposing fans has clashed in the past.


I now know that whereever you are in the world, soccer fans are all the same. The Japanese fans were every bit as loud and vocal as what the Victory fans would be. And while I'm sure they wouldn't have chanted anything like "Tokyo are wankers!" in Japanese. They were indeed chanting something about FC Tokyo. Their chants were loud and in unison, usually started by a small section and then the whole stadium would get involved.




The match under way ... Urawa scored in the first 5mins and went up 1-0. The goal was scored by one of their other brazillians, Edmilson. They dominated for the rest of the half, coming close to scoring a 2nd on several occasions. Tokyo were unlikely not to equalize just before half time when one of their headers hit Urawa's post.




Being a Urawa home game, I had to support the home team by buying a Urawa scarf/towel (eventhough it was about 30 degrees and a scarf was the last accesory that I needed). I followed the trend of wearing anything red and donned my fake Barcelona top for the match (I could have also gone with my AC Milan top). I was not the only one not in a Urawa top, I also saw Arsenal, Mancester United and Liverpool tops.

Me and John rocking it!

The momentum of the game changed in the second half, with FC Tokyo dominating possession and sending wave after wave of attack towards the Urawa goals. It seem that Urawa were just content to hold on to their 1-0 lead. With about 5mins to go, as happens in soccer when one team is pushing all their players up to get an equalizer, Urawa got a long ball off to one of their striker Nagai, who beat one defender and then the goalie to score a 2nd for Urawa. Game over, Urawa Red Diamonds 2, FC Tokyo 0.


I just happened to get my camera on quick enough to capture the last goal. The goal is in the first second of the clip, but you can see the fans reaction.

The video is really bad on youtube, so you may not see the goal, but you'll see the fan reaction.

Natto!!!

I've been wanting to write a post about our school lunch for quite some time. So nearing the end of my journey now, I thought I'd better get onto it. Lunch at Junior high schools is quite a treat here in Japan. In elementary school (primary) and Junior high schools lunch is provided by the city of Ashikaga. It's not free but the amount we have to pay for it almost makes it free. It's about $2 a day ... pretty dirt cheap for the amount of food you get really. Lunch is set this way so that the students get a maximum balanced and healthy diet. Not a bad incentive considering the obesity rates of kids all over the world.

Anyway, lunch is delivered to the schools by lunch ladies and then the students have the task of dishing out the proportions to all the classmates in their home room. Over the last few years, they have implemented a system where ALT's (me) also have lunch with the students to help encourage them to communicate in English while eating. I rotate to a different class everyday. While I initially tried to strike conversation and really promote the speaking of English, it was like hitting your head against a brick wall sometimes. Lately I have stopped trying and just sat there and ate my lunch. There are certain kids, that will try to speak with me and that's cool when it happens.

The actual lunches them self can vary over the week. Some days the lunches are really good and others, they are really bad. There will be traditional Japanese lunches, Chinese types lunches and western type lunches. The western ones are when we have bread, pasta, frankfurts or hamburg (hamburger pattie drizzled in a sweet sauce). We get an outline of what we will be eating for the month. Initially, I could not read anything, so I had to quickly learned the kanji for beef, pork, beef and fish (which also helped me in the supermarkets). I can read most of the menu now but on days where I see lots of kanji and can't read it, then I know its a traditional Japanese lunch which involves fish and miso soup most of the time.

One particular Japanese lunch involves NATTO! Most Japanese love natto and eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I say most as even some Japanese can't eat it. Natto is basically fermented soybean ... yep, rotten soybean! The smell is pretty excruciating, especially when a whole classroom is mixing the stuff. The fermentation process gives the beans this sticky sappy texture, imagine any of those alien movies where after their insides are blown apart, there's that sappy thing going on. You need to mix the natto with soy and some mustard and then into your rice. I have tried it and so I am speaking from experience. I obviously did not like it. The Japanese keep telling me that it's really healthy for you. Think I'll stick to my fruit and veg!

Hey, but don't just take my word for it. I've prepared a little clip of me mixing up the natto for you all to see.

On occasions, they give us these little snack bags. This one contains little dried fish and wasabi peas ... mmm. They also come in little dried shrimp as well. Are these really any healthier than chips????

So the natto can come in little square polystyrene containers (not the most environmentally friendly), or little polystyrene cups.

Here's the contents inside with all the ingredients at the ready to start mixing. Natto however, is not hated by all foreigners, some of them actually like it. I've even heard stories of some of them eating it actually for breakfast, lunch and dinner when they are really poor. Wow!!!

Here's me showing you the natto phenomenom.

Natto is so uniquely Japanese and famous that it has also made it as a special challenge ingredient on Iron Chef! Watch the hilarious episode on youtube here (this is only 10mins of the episode, but you can find the rest of the episode on the youtube page).


The next couple of shots of some of the things served up for school lunch.

This is curry rice day. One of the few days I actually eat my whole tin of rice. I would struggle to get through it otherwise. It's Japanese curry, so not really hot, but does have veggies and either pork or chicken. You'll also find there's milk, which we have everyday. On this day we also got an egg and seaweed, corn and dikon (some root veggie) salad.

On this day we got some crumbed fish, miso soup, jelly, and some broccoli and cauliflower. Oh incidentally, another bad lunch day is pregnant fish day ... uuurrrggghhh!. It's a whole little fish, battered, crumbed and deep fried, head and all. I accidentally bit into one, one day and had a mouth full of fish eggs ... not great. I give these to my kids now ... they seem to love it!

On the left bowl here is some bacon and cabbage, in right bowl is what the Japanese call Oden. It's basically different vegetables and fish cake in a broth. They sell Oden in most 7 elevens in Japan, so it's basically big vats of hot water with stuff floating in them ... no covered ... Wow!

This would be a western style lunch, bread, frankfurt, little bit of cheese on the top, soup of some sort and a mandarine.

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While we're still on food, I thought I'd provide you with evidence as to how expensive fruit in Japan really is.

Here's a normal sized mango, price 398yen ... that's about $4 .... for one mango!!!

Cherries ... 398yen for about 25 cherries ... that works out to be about 15cents a cherry!!!

$4 for 1/6 of a slice of watermelon. Let's just say, I'll be happy to be buying fruit back home again.

On another note, still to do with food. I bought what I thought was a normal watermelon one week, when to my utter surprise ... the flesh was yellow when I cut into it!!!!

I've never had a yellow watermelon before and didn't even know they existed ... until now!

Anyway, I tried it ... and if you closed your eyes and not looked at the colour, then you'd think that you were eating a normal watermelon. The texture is the same but it wasn't as sweet as a red watermelon.