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.

Nagano Soccer Tournament

About 3 weeks ago, I participated in the Biannual Nagano Soccer/Football tournament. I had previously attended the same tournament in October last year and had lots of fun, so thought I'd give it another go. Plus, it was a chance to catch up with some of the boys in the Tochigi prefecture that I had not seen in a while.


I was of course part of the Tochigi team, which is one of the teams that run middle of the pack, not absolutely crap but also not the best team out there. I guess the reason is some of us only play twice a year (i.e. at this tournament) and we have some pretty decent players from the Queen's country.


In the last tournament we managed to rank about 9th or 10th. Pretty decent showing, we had a large squad with plenty of subs. We made the top half of the draw for the knockout tournament on the Sunday but unfortunately lost. The Tochigi team has been strong in the past, even managing to make the finals one year. However, the squad this time was not going to repeat that effort.


This time round, we were missing a few of our English boys and we didn't have as many subs. But hey, we tried. The weather for the weekend was looking great ... sunshine abound on top of the Nagano mountains. Unlike the previous event, where it was cold and then rained on the Sunday.


The basic structure is that we play 4 games on the Saturday. The top 10 teams from the 18 teams make the top half of the draw for the following knock-out tournament on Sunday and the right to be crown Nagano champions. The other 8 teams, qualify for the bottom half knock-out tournament for a shield and a case of beer. Not bad, really.


So we played, first up loss ... through an unfortunate goal where we were caught napping, 0-1. Our next was a bit better, a 2-0 win. The third was another loss, 0-2. And the last game was a 3-1 win. So we had 2 wins and 2 losses and would wait to see where we were headed next.

The lads gathering and oozing confidence before the game!

A bit of stretching to loosen those muscles that you never use.

Allen, our goal keeper getting in some stretches.

Yep, that's me getting in some stretches too. And there were many muscles I had to stretch due to my inactivity recently.

Some warm up laps. I was buggered after the warm-up actually!

We were pretty high in the mountains. High enough, that we could almost touch the clouds.

Unfortunately, this was the theme of my tournament ... many times too slow to chase the opposition forward. Yep, that's me in the number 15. Luckily, I think that guy missed this one.

Discussing tactics. Maybe on moving me onto someone that I can keep up with!!!

We all were staying at a Ryokan nearby and had 6 boys to a traditional Japanese room. Tight fit and lots of loud snoring ... not only by me either. We found out that we had make the top of the bottom group for the next day. Some of us were grateful for this as it meant that we had competition more to our level and the potential to win a case of beer!!! And plus some teams take the tournament way too seriously ... like skipping the party that is put on in the evening just to be ready for the following day.



To the Sunday, where most of the lads felt muscles we never knew we had. Let me tell you, it was pretty painful. But we got our game faces on competed. We won our first game 3-0. Then the semi-final where we were up early, but the opposition pulled one back to 1-1 and the game had to be decided by a penalty shootout. Our keeper gave us a great start but saving the first shot. We then slammed home all of ours to make it to the final.

Our last penalty taken by the strike machine, Rob!

Unfortunately we ran out of steam in the final. Injuries to key players caught up with us and some of the boys were trying to recover from sunstroke. We lost 2-0, but gave it a good run. We finished off with a bowl of Curry and rice for lunch and then headed home.

Team Tochigi!!!

Taiku Sai

A few weeks ago my school held it's Taiku sai (Sports festival). I've been pretty fortunate to be able to see both a bunka sai (school cultural festival) and a taiku sai in the space of 12mths. That's mainly because, the school festival is only held once every 3 years. And seeing as how I was part of that, I thought I would miss out on the sports festival which occurs in the years between.


I first had an inkling something was happening at my school, when one afternoon, all the classes ventured outside to practice jump rope. Of course, I was not told of the taiku sai until 2 days out from the event and that it was being held on a Saturday. The tone in my teachers voice, didn't make it seem like it was an option either. Anyway, all was forgiven when my teacher also said that we would be having the following Monday off as compensation.

The sunny afternoon in question, where the kids ventured out to practice jump rope.

The kids is hard training!

Now, a Japanese taiku sai is not like any sports day that we would have back at home. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of physical exertion involved. However, if you were expecting to see traditional track and fields events like; sprinting, hurdles, shot put, long jump, discuss, distance running then you would have been sorely disappointed. No, a Japanese taiku sai involves events such as throwing balls into a very high basket (no, not basketball!), tug of war, relays with obstacles other than passing a baton, jump rope ... and dancing the new yagi bushi.

Also grandeur notions of weired Japanese sports being played like children building pyramids on each other and then ramming each other til one team is standing is also sorely lacking from the events lists.

So to the big day. Unfortunately being in the middle of the Tsuyu season (rainy season), it was bucketing down with rain on the Saturday. The taiku sai, which normally occurs outdoors, had to be shifted into the gym. So the flags of the world went up and away we go!

From what I can remember of primary and high school ... we used to compete in different house colours in sporting events. This similarly occurs in Japan, so there were four teams with the colours; Midori (green), Pinku (pink), Murasaki (purple) and Shiroi (white). Each teacher also belonged to a coloured team. On the day, I was quickly recruited onto team shiro. No doubt, they saw the abundant amount of physical talent in me (stop laughing everyone!). Now for some of the events, the students competed in their coloured teams and for other events, they would compete in their homeroom classes. So that meant that some 3rd kids were pitted against some 1st year kids.

Here's a run down of the days events. It's all in Japanese, but not to fear, I will explain.

To the first event of the day, throwing the small balls into the small and incredibly high basket. Each team had about 5mins to get as many balls as they could into the baskets. Pretty simply!

As you can see, the basket is pretty high and you do get tired after a prolong period of piffing these balls up there. This was pretty much the only event that I was able to partake in!

In the end, team shiro won ... YEAH! I'm going to say that it was basketball skills that got us this win here. This is set the tone for the rest of the sports festival where team Shiro pretty much dominated.

Next was the pole relay (at this point, I'm just making up names for these events ... I don't know the Japanese names of them). This one had the kids compete in their homerooms. Basically the kids would make two lines, with the two kids at the front with the pole. The race starts with the two front kids running to the end of the gym and then back. On their way back, they must lower the pole so that their classmates can jump over them, then handed off to the last pair. The last pair then hold the pole high, so the classmates can duck under them, and to the end of the gym and back ... etc. The first team to complete this with all their class wins!

Following up was the old favourite, "Tug of war". I would have come in handy on this one, but was relegated to being a cheerleader instead. Pretty simply, the more you pull, the better chance of winning. So here are my boys getting ready. Ready ..... Set .....

Go .... pull!

Girls, you too ... pull!

Huzzah, celebrations after a victory!

The next two were two different types of relay races. The first had the students, jump over a hurdles, then grab a piece of clothing from the rack ....

Fold the clothing properly, then pick up a mystery card asking them to pick a member of the audience with a specific attribute to run to the finish line. Attributes included; anyone who was a teacher, anyone who was male, anyone who is a parent, anyone born in December ... etc.

The next relay was a little bit more difficult. In this one, they had to first stack up cans ... the number the stack was determined by the card they chose. So some students only had to stack to cans, while others had to stack 4 or 5.

Next was what caused the mostly difficulty. The kids had to put a thread through a sewing pin. Very difficult for some adults, let alone kids.

Finally, they had to only use their teeth to bite off a piece of bread that was hanging by a rope, then the finish line.

Next was performing the New yagi bushi dance. Each of the teams put their own spin on this classic Japanese folk dance. My team, added a little acrobatics ... with one of the girls doing some back flips and jumps to end it. Unfortunately another was a little more inventive and took out the top prize.

Another strength competition. Trying to win three different pieces of rope by pulling it to your end.

The jump rope was next. A little rev up for one of the teams before they begin.

And off we go. In the end, I think 1-2 class won when the had about 25 consecutive jumps for their class.

Absolutely knackered!

So the day ended with team shiro holding about 100 point lead, however, there were still to be some events that had to be completed outside. So the continuation was held during the week.

The second last event was a simply and plain relay.

And team Shiro wins again.

The final event was a relay of sorts. The first person would run around then pass the baton onto two of their classmates with their legs tied (above picture). So these two had to run in unison. This relay continued through 3, then 4 and finally 5 people tied together. I can assure you that this was no easy task for some as you will see in the video below.

Here are some of my boys attempting to complete this race. They were leading, and then it all fell apart.

The boys did eventually make it to the end.

And the final scores are in. Team shiro (C) wins by a pretty comfortable margin in the end! Yatta!!

We were awarded our little certificate, and so ended the Taiku sai!