saka geemu

Turns out people from Hong Kong love KFC.

This is one of the many edifying things I learned this weekend at Ajinomoto Stadium, as the Reconnaissance Japan students battled the labyrinthine and complex Japanese train network to go on a lovely outing to see Tokyo Verdy play the Yamagata Eagles. I figured out about an hour into our train journey that this, apparently, was a soccer game we were going to. I don’t know, I just wanted to ride the trains.

In the US I have gone to only a few sporting events; a handful of Red Sox games at Fenway, a Revolution game and a Patriots game at Foxboro Stadium, and strangely, a Twins-Expos game in Montreal once. All of these games, with the exception of the oddly-quiet Expos game, were full of raucous, charmingly obnoxious fans chanting “Yankees Suck” or other booze-fueled epithets. From what I had heard about Japan, I expected this not to be the case. I remember reading “Dave Barry Does Japan”, a book written in the 1980s during Japan’s stellar economic growth, about 7 years ago and hearing Barry describe how at a Japanese baseball game, the entire crowd (made entirely of men) were all dressed in suits and ties and merely clapped politely after their home team hitter blasted a grand slam out of the park. Going to the soccer game, I expected a Montrealesque, creepily-subdued sense of respect and restraint.

This was not the case at all. These fans were some of the loudest and creatively raucous I’ve ever witnessed. They cheered, screamed, waved enormous green banners with the Verdy Eagle logo on them, chanted, and carried on to a much stronger degree than I ever expected. I was happy to see this, since it dispelled to some degree the notion that the Japanese are completely reserved and devoid of emotion.

About a quarter of the way through the game, myself and my friends Iris and Karie, both of whom are from Hong Kong, decided to go get some food from one of the concessions stands. Upon seeing that the stadium sold KFC chicken, Karie and Iris absolutely tweaked out, frightening me in the process. “KFC! KFC!” they shouted. What followed was a monstrous display, with shards of bone and 11 original herbs and spices flying every which way. Meanwhile, I purchased some ramen and ate that silently as I watched these two tiny girls eat their own weight in chicken.

All in all an excellent day, despite soccer being the most boring sport in the world. The end score was 1-0.