Vegalta soccer match

 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.

At a Vegalta soccer game

 I met my friend Keith before the game and we went to our usual cheap Italian restaurant for a meal before the game. The restaurant is in the Izumi Chuo station building and, when we entered the lobby, we heard jazz and found this group playing. They were pretty good and we could hear them throughout our meal, even though we were on the second floor.

 Inside the stadium we found that our seats were deep in the corner behind the Vegalta goal. From our seats we could just see the players warming up as they waited to take the field. In this picture you can see a ball and on the left someone's leg.

 When the players take the field, they have a large group of kids line the route. It must be really exciting for the kids to actually touch a famous player.

 Here the players are waiting for the ball to be put in play. Vegalta wears yellow and blue uniforms at home.

I walked home along Suisen Dori (Daffodil Road). I was the only person I could see and it was much eerier than this picture indicates.

Wild weather at a Vegalta soccer match

My friend Keith and I went to another soccer match. This year we are going about once a month. This was an afternoon game with the kickoff at 1 p.m.

 As the players were warming up, the sky started getting darker and darker. Then after the kickoff it began to look like this.

 Then about 10 minutes into the game it got really dark. I do not think that I have ever seen a day that was as dark as this.

 Then it started hailing. The hailstones were between a half centimeter and a whole centimeter. There were sound and visual effects, thunder and lightning, accompanying the stone attack. The officials sent the players off the field. Keith and I were under the roof so we had no problems but the people in the front rows started moving back.

 Then the rains came. Parts of the pitch flooded. It was like standing at the base of Niagara Falls.

After about 20 minutes the rain let up and the sky clear somewhat. After about 40 minutes the officials restarted the game and Vegalta went on to lose 1 - nil, but it was an interesting game to watch. The teams below Vegalta in the standings cooperated by appropriately losing or drawing, so Vegalta remains in first place in spite of the lose.

Mostly soccer

 Here is another shot of the function that was going one downtown. The trees in the background are in the park at the Kodaikoen subway stop. The koen at the end of the name means park.

 I got tickets to a soccer game. This large banner says We're gonna move their feet. The fanatical fans bring it out just before the start of every home game.

 We had pretty good seats, right on the goal line at the south end of the pitch. Vegalta players are wearing yellow shirts and blue shorts.

After the games the players and the team mascot go around the field bowing to the fans.

My neighborhood and Vegalta

 The recent rain caused a lot of the unfinished work along the other side of Nanakita River to collapse. This year has been unusually rainy. I hope that it is not unusually snowy for my last winter of commuting to school.

 This, believe it or not, is a farm. Except for the individual plots the rest of the area across the river is completely overgrown.

 As I left my building, I found this large cardboard box in the entrance hall. It turned out to be a place to put your old telephone books. A new edition was delivered to each house or apartment and the old ones are being collected to recycle.

 Keith and I met at the game. It was a Wednesday night game and I had to work until 5 p.m. I bought a bento, a box lunch, and ate my meal at my seat.

 This our new scoreboard and the opponents waving flags before kickoff.

There were almost 20,000 people in the stadium. Vegalta won so it felt like a good night.

A busy Saturday

 Last Saturday, I went to my art class in the morning, the first since the disaster. The NHK Culture Center where we used to go is still closed, so the students got together and for the next two months we are having our classes in the teacher's private studio.

 The soccer game ended up a 3 - 3 tie. The home team, Vegalta Sendai, gave up a goal in the lost time at the end. However, in spite of doing exactly the same thing the week before, they remained in third place in the top league, which is a big change from past years when they struggled in the mid levels of the second tier league. This picture shows the people leaving the stadium and heading for the subway at Izumi Chuo, which you can see in the background. A group of my friends planned to meet that night at an Irish bar, the Ha'penny Bridge, which is our usual place to meet.

 The Ha'penny Bridge is on the first floor of this building. It is a very interesting place because the owner bought an actual Irish bar in Ireland, took it apart, sent it Sendai, and rebuilt it here. The Japanese carpenters who did the work had a terrible time with it, because much of the work had been done by eye, rather than the careful measurements that the Japanese use. The bluish green things in the road are preventing traffic from passing over the sections of the road that are over the construction work on a new east / west subway line.

 This in the Ha'penny Bridge. The woman in the front completed the paperwork to get married only a few days before. She and her husband told us that they were not going to have a traditional ceremony which consists of a wedding in a church and then a hotel dinner with 50 to 200 people. They are a huge outlay of money and these days many people fore-go them. No one in my family had one, either. We thought the money could be better used for other things. 

 This is some of my friends who were there. The man on the right is the husband of the woman in the last picture.

 This is Ian on the right. I have not seen him much this year. Our schedules do not match so we are not walking once a week like we used to. And one or the other of us seems to always be busy when the group gets together.

This shows the back page of the newspaper. They have returned the TV listings to their previous location on the last page. The middle of the paper still has special sections for news related to the disaster and special listings of people who died in the disaster and whose bodies have finally been found. There are still lots of pictures and personal stories inside.