Note the antenna for antlers. Only in Japan do you need a mascot for format conversion.
Anywho, mid-June marked the glorious start of the World Cup. Now, sadly, I am one of those heathens who generally only watches soccer when the big tournaments roll around every two years (World Cup and Euro Cup). It’s just too difficult to follow the European leagues when you nobody broadcasts that stuff. And let’s be honest, if I'm going to watch soccer, I want to see quality higher than what the MLS is putting out. At least in Japan, they cover Euro league highlights on some of their sports shows, so I generally get to see the plays of the week (or anything related to the Japanese players in overseas leagues) at midnight after I get back from capoeira on Mondays.
The time difference worked out decently, so that none of the game time slots were during the workday, but the late games ended up being 3:30am here, so I skipped most of those, although I did stay up for the USA v. England Saturday night. And it was completely worth it to see the shock on the English players and fans faces when they ended up tying us. I caught a few of the games over at Joel’s place, and it was nice to get to watch some of the action with other soccer enthusiasts. One of Japan’s group stage games mercifully happened at the 8:30 time slot on a weekend, so I headed to Gifu with one of the foreign professors from IAMAS to watch the game at a bar with a big crowd. We met up with Naomi and headed to Bierhall, only to find that you needed to have made a reservation. Turns out almost every bar in town had a special viewing event going on that required advanced reservation. We don’t really, oh, what do you call it…? Oh yeah, plan ahead. So we wandered around without much luck before deciding to try this little bar way off the beaten path run by some Australian guy. It’s in the middle of a residential area (kind of reminded me of Oshkosh in that sense) and has irregular hours, so we figured it would still have room. And thankfully, we were right. We grabbed a table and watched the slow, methodical downfall of Japan at the hands of the Dutch Orangemen. It was certainly fun to watch the game with a huge crowd, even if one of the Australian guys behind the bar was a total assclown. Shortly into the game, a large group of Japanese people came in, including four or relatively young, potentially attractive ladies, who sat down at the bar. This stooge proceeded to try and chat them up with his minimal Japanese, but they were not having any of it. He even resorted to drunkenly belting the Japanese team’s fight song/chant to try and win them over. Too bad the chant is super repetitive and, what do ya know, gets really annoying when sung over and over by a drunkard. “Jaaapaaaaaan, Jaaaaapan, Jaapan, Jaapan, Jaapaaaaan” Yeah, that’s it. I mean, even the Packers mix it up a little more by throwing the word “Go” in there, along with a catchy little intro rhythm “Bum, ba da da da dum, GO PACK GO!!” Much easier to stomach…although I haven’t yet been to a game and had the pleasure of some drunk guy screaming it in my ear, so who knows. Anywho, the ladies left after the game, at which point the guy lamented that they went home instead of up to his bedroom. I swear I wasn’t shooting him a dirty look, but I must have been staring a bit, because he looked at me and “What?! Don’t Judge!” Too late, buddy, waaaay too late.
Clemens left after the Japan game to head back to some party students of the school were having in this space near the station that the school owns. He invited me along, but Vitor had just showed up, so I stuck around for part of the Australia game before grabbing the train to Ogaki. I decided to stop by the party see what was going on. I found Clemens, grabbed a drink and…socialized. Yeah, crazy notion, I know. Most of the students were very surprised to see me there and a number of them said “Hey you’re not wearing a suit!” Yeah, no kidding, it’s Saturday. I sometimes forget that I am part of the administration (“the man” if you will) and thus in their minds on a different social level. But seeing me in a t-shirt and khaki shorts with a drink in my hand seemed to get them to loosen up a bit. The front room had the drink table with people chatting, and in the back room was some random techno with accompanying visual being projected on a screen. It was like being in a room full of me. Nobody was dancing, and maybe a few people were nodding their heads to the beat. They had some funky iPhone app that allowed you to control objects on the projection. That was interesting for all of 30sec. Maybe I just don’t get the iPhone app thing, but I feel like a lot of them are simply a novelty, one that wears off very quickly. I suppose they are like that by design, being for a portable device and all. Oh well, maybe I'm just get old and crotchety.
One of the highlights of the evening had to be the drag performance by one of the students. Not exactly something I had expected, but it was nice to see some outgoingness from a normally rather reserved bunch of students.
DIVA! The feather boa was a nice touch.
Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
At some point, we went back to Pastel for their all you can eat pizza deal. I think the wait staff remembered us, and I’m glad, as this time there was an understanding-just keep bringing us pizza, don’t try to slow the pace and wait us out. After dinner, there was more soccer viewing…noticing a trend?
Group play finished, with the USA moving on at the head of its group, despite some rubbish calls by laymen masquerading around as world class soccer refs. The weekend of USA’s round of 16 match also happened to be Vitor’s birthday party, so a bunch of us met up in Nagoya for dinner (with all you can drink, of course) and karaoke.
Poor Vitor was coming off of a break-up, so he wanted to stay out all night and have a good time. So after a number of Lady Gaga songs at karaoke, half the group left to go to the clubs. Vitor wanted something a bit quieter. When I mentioned that I wanted to catch the US soccer game at 3:30am, we began in search of a quiet bar that might be showing it. Then Vitor came up with the brilliant idea of staying at a love hotel to watch the game. Although I think the name explains itself, these are hotels where you can rent a room for just an hour or two if you want. If you can’t put the rest together, well, you’re beyond my help. Some of these places are known for turning down foreigners, so after the first couple we went to were full, we decided to have Naomi inquire at the next ones we went to, instead of Vitor. Another place would have possibly accommodated us, but only at an exorbitant price.
After trying our luck at 10 or so of these establishment, and getting to know the seedier side of Nagoya a bit better, we decided to try walking to a somewhat nearby Hub (a chain of bars that is relatively popular with foreigners). Thankfully this place was staying open pretty much all night to show the games, and even better, there was hardly anyone in there, so we got seats as well as some relative peace and quiet. The US game was tragic, although we deserved to lose after giving up an early goal in regulation, and then giving up another early goal some 2 minutes into overtime. We were all super tired and headed out immediately after the game ended, grabbing our respective first trains back home. More world cup viewing followed in the next week, but the semifinals and finals had to take a back seat, since I was to have a visitor in July! (Heyo, now only 2.5 months behind, I’m making headway!)
"It was like being in a room full of me." Why does this scare the crap out of me?
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