Late Japanese Sporting Drama!

On Saturday night I was honestly in tears as a late winner provided a fantastic climax to a Japanese sporting event. That’s enough about the Cherry Blossoms last gasp victory against South Africa in the Rugby World Cup in England though! Instead, I am talking about matchday 11 of the J-League game I was at over in the city of Yokohama!

With five different J-League grounds under my belt this season I thought I would try and add a few more before the end of the J-League seasons in November. Although I’ve been on a tour of the stadium which hosted the 2002 World Cup final, I’ve never seen an actual game there so I decided to pop along to see home team Yokohama F. Marinos in action.

IMG_2551  IMG_2552 

Beforehand there was some debate in one of my lessons as to what the “F” in the team name stands for. My ten year old student reckoned it must be for “Football” but I joked that it was for “Fishermen” as Yokohama is a Port city. She believed it! It actually stands for Flügels following the merge of Yokohama Flügels and Yokohama Marinos in 1999. Personally, that “F” is just crying out for some wisecrack like myself to insert the f-word into the gap and (outside of lessons) that’s what I usually do!

The Marinos captain Shunsuke Nakamura is perhaps the most celebrated player to have graced the shores of Great Britain following a very successful stint up in Scotland with Celtic between 2005-2009. The 2006-2007 season was undoubtedly his most memorable season as his free-kick beat Manchester United (Watch it here)  in the Champions League, another free-kick (in injury time) against Kilmarnock clinched the title (Watch it here) and then he won the Player of the Season award.

IMG_2542  IMG_2576

Following a disappointing spell in Spain with Espanol, he returned to play for Yokohama F. Marinos with backers Nissan paying his wages. His appearances this season have been limited but he was thankfully playing in this game where FC Tokyo were the visitors. Of course, it wasn’t just about him though but in a game limited on action and highlights, he did provide a moment of inspiration right at the end as his superb pinpoint cross was decisively headed home.

IMG_2557  IMG_2562

The 88th minute has been an unlucky one for my Kashiwa Reysol boys the last few times I’ve seen them and unbelievably it happened yet again as debut boy Cayman Togashi’s headed winner at the near post just a couple of minutes from the end settled this closely fought bout against a resolute FC Tokyo.

IMG_2559  IMG_2578

Lateness was indeed the order of the day and I’m not just talking about on the field activity. I got out of work very swiftly but, with a few connections to make, I was still racing against time to make the 7pm kick off. A bad start though as my first train was delayed and then I missed my next connection. I was getting very frustrated with everything but all-in-all, I probably did quite well to get from Gotanda to Shin-Yokohama by 7pm but then I needed to get to the stadium which was 15-20 minutes away on foot and where my school manager Shinobu was waiting with our tickets.

Finding the Nissan Stadium was one thing but locating the right exit was another! The game was well under way by the time we entered and then their was the nightmare scenario of trying to find a couple of free seats. We finally found some high up in the stadium with about 25 minutes already on the clock.

It really was a poor game and when it was settled right at the death there wasn’t much time left for FC Tokyo to get an unlikely reply. A sea of umbrellas followed at the final whistle which was quite a spectacle and one that I’ve never seen in over three decades of watching live football.

IMG_2583  IMG_2588

Click here to see my Yokohama World Cup Final Stadium Tour 

About tokyofox

A Leicester City fan teaching English in Japan
This entry was posted in Sport and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

14 Responses to Late Japanese Sporting Drama!

  1. TonyJ2 says:

    Ah the memories. Yes, great Stadium and the reason for almost annual travel back to Japan. February 2009 and the World Cup qualifier between Australia and Japan.
    With around 1500 away fans including many expats. Too many fans to fit into the pre-game bar someplace near Shin-Yokohama station, some hundreds of us we on the street.
    Then the march to the stadium. A great night.
    Going back next April for my seventh trip. Four have been specifically around games – two for Aus v Jap and two ACL games. Plus some J1 and a J2 game for extras.

    • tokyofox says:

      Great story Tony. Thanks for sharing! I’m still yet to see a Japan national game but the one against you guys (presuming you are an aussie!) is the big one to see these days. Sadly they always fall on the evenings I work and when they don’t they never seem to be in yokohama, tokyo or saitama!

  2. Pingback: Tokyo Daytripper: Ohara Training Ground In Saitama | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  3. Pingback: Back To J-League Action In Kawasaki | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  4. Pingback: Away Day Travel To Ibaraki Prefecture | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  5. Pingback: Golden Week J-League Football In Kobe | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  6. Pingback: Attending Two J-League Matches In One Day Pt I | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  7. Pingback: Attending Two J-League Matches In One Day Pt II | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  8. Pingback: July J-League Jaunts Taking-In Two Chiba Teams | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  9. Pingback: Fourth Tier Football Frolics | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  10. Pingback: 3rd and 5th Tier Japanese Football | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  11. Pingback: The Best Of The Rest Of Our Time In Izu | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  12. Pingback: An English Team Playing A Friendly In Japan! It’s Been A While… | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

  13. Pingback: TF Top 10…… J1 League Stadiums You Should Visit This Season | Tokyo Fox (東京狐)

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.