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Nip-Pon

and clapping and singing. The crowd’s energy was VERY high. We saw the Tunisia cheering group walk by with a drum, some Japanese fans ganged up after and kinda drowned them out with their Nippon clap, clap.

We arrived in the stadium and there were SO many people thre already. We arrived about 45min before kick off. The players were on the field warming up and the crowd was CHEERING! Cheering during the practice… I didn’t remember that in the England game. Japanese fans are very supportive. The players went off and the player introductions came on…

Woah, hearing Japanese fans booing the player introductions for Tunisia just seemed a little rude. This game is important for Japan but…come on! While for the Japanese player introductions, the crowd went WILD!!! Cheering, screaming, drumming, clapping, almost anything to make noise. After that, I saw something incredible. The crowd started the wave… it went around… and around… and came back… and around again… and back again… this went on not a few times…but for almost 15 whole minutes!!! The crowd was pumped! They wanted to see some football!

Before the game started, the other end of the stadium had a HUGE surprise… like REALLY huge!!! They put up a HUGE version of the Japanese jersey across the WHOLE crowd!!! Wow… it was SIMPLY amazing. Next they did the Japan National flag… Some pictures below.

The game was televised. The first half was not very impressive at all. Japan was not playing very well and not many good chances for goals were setup as they couldn’t control passes received. Tunisia looked ok as well, as it looked like they had a chance but Japan’s defence was well. The second half is when Japan really took over. Much better passing and connected on key plays. I missed the first Japan goal (I left the camera off) but I got the 2nd one, I think. I still have to review the tape. The next thing that was amazing was the war drum. The war drum didn’t start in our section but the section across us… about across the football field! When people heard that, EVERYONE started to sing and sing and sing.

After the game, it was absolutely NUTS in Namba section of Osaka. Dotonbori river is there and my coworker told me people would jump in the river if Japan won. Well, they did and I went to see if people would be. The problem is once we arrived, we could not get NEAR the river. The crowd was HUGE. (We left the stadium late.) The police barricaded the bridge off (I guess they only want people that were REALLY serious about jumping off on the bridge. We showed them Khern, but I guess he wasn’t wearing enough pro-Japan wear. ) We walked down dotonbori street parallel to the river to find another bridge to see people jumping off, but that was packed too! Further down, we can see people on the 2nd bridge looking but no people jumping. We doubled back (as we were looking for a restaurant but only found umm…alternative meal places instead) and made it back to the 2nd bridge. Yup, it was like 7pm and people were jumping off still. That bridge was just nuts. We were more hungry than nuts so we headed for food.

After dinner, walking back to the station, the fans were STILL chanting and singing. High-5s all over the place from strangers (thanks to the pro-Japan wear) and everyone was in a very high mood.

One of the best moments was when leaving the stadium, fans were waiting for the Japan bus to come by and see them off. Then the crowd started screaming and everyone thought it was the Japan team. BUT, they were met with a HUGE Tunisia flag and the Tunisia team bus. Hahaha.

This game was amazing. The feeling afterwards with the crowd, wow, it was like Japan won the world cup! Korea was also going crazy too. I wonder if I can see Japan in the Quarterfinals game. There is a chance, as long as they beat Turkey on the 18th.