Walking to Izumi Chuo I noticed that in one yard someone had placed a bas-relief carving of an Indian looking god? playing a sitar? It was just sitting there peacefully among the bonsai trees.
They are getting ready to do some major construction along the river bank near my apartment. This picture illustrates a big difference between Japan and other countries. Every construction project, large or miniscule, will have a 'guardman' to direct traffic to insure that no one is injured. The major difference is that this person, almost always an elderly male, when there is no need to direct traffic will sweep the road and sidewalk and generally help keep the site clean. This sign announces the coming work and the guardman has used it to store his broom.
I went to my final Vegalta game. Here a group of men and some kids were having the pictures taken on the field. A few of the men looked like retired players and the rest were probably team backers, but I don't really know.
Our seats gave us a good view of the action at one end of the pitch, but we could barely see what was happening at the other end. Vegalta, the Sendai team, are wearing their traditional yellow shirts with blue shorts. The Vegalta goaltender is wear red.
At half time the team mascot went over and
helped out the TV announcer.
Here some of the action during the second period. The ball is in the middle of the picture, lost in the sea of supporters' faces.
This is the star player on the team, Ryan. He is North Korean but was born and raised in Japan. because of the strange situation with Korean nationals here, even though they carry North or South Korean passports, they count as Japanese when counting the number of foreign players on the team, three are allowed. They ended in a draw and a few games later they ended the season in second place, the highest ever. This means that they qualified to play in the Asian Champions League next year. The extra money this will bring in will allow them to recruit some new high level players.
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