Oré, Oré, Oré, Oré!!

Well folks, I have been meaning to start this blog for a while now, if only to remind myself of all the random things that I have experienced since moving to Numazu, Japan, and I figured that today was as good a day as any. Because today is the first day that I came into work with a stinking hangover. Yes, after FOUR MONTHS of responsibly ensuring that I am sober and in good shape to teach English to my lovely high school kids, I have finally stumbled in to work with a bottle of the Japanese equivalent of Lucozade (it’s called Pocari Sweat – dodgy name I know), a nasty headache, and a hatred for all living things. I had forgotten what it felt like to have to work through a hangover – now I wish I hadn’t reminded myself. Anyway, in the spirit of alcoholic excess and irresponsible conduct in general, I have decided to spend the day doing as little as possible. Cue: my first blog entry.

The reason for my disheveled appearance and barely functioning brain is Shimizu S-Pulse. They’re a soccer (or football to all English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh people) team in Japan’s J-League, and hail from Shimizu in Shizuoka, the prefecture that I live in. I had been meaning to go to see them play for a while now with the other foreigners who are hardcore fans, but for some reason or other I always had something else to do on the days of their home games. But not yesterday, oh no. Yesterday was Labour Thanksgiving Day, which meant no school, no work, no worries. We headed out to Shimizu pretty early to get half decent seats at the stadium, and ended up sitting next to a massive array of mental S-Pulse fans. We had only got there a few minutes when some guy behind us tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to a big pile of cloth on the ground and shouted ‘Assist! Assist!’ over and over again. From the general gestures we got the gist that he wanted us to help haul this cloth monstrosity down over the rest of the crowd every time S-Pulse scored. Which they did – 4 times!!! Twas a magic game, and even though I spilled half my beer over the big banner (was gutted that I had wasted the grog, and mortified that the Japanese owner of said banner might now hate me and all foreigners like me, but no matter…), everyone stayed in high spirits and the banner owners stayed friends with us.

To be honest, I think they were just really excited to see gaijin (that’s ‘foreigners’ in Japanese) supporting a J-team. Some of the group I was with even became minor celebrities, with Jake the Amazing Strawberry Blonde Wonderboy being worshipped by the people sitting next to us (and being given a box of hard-boiled eggs to share with the rest of us. Apparently if you’re a fan of S-Pulse and you don’t eat a hard boiled egg just before the match, S-Pulse will lose. Random…) The match was fantastic anyway, and S-Pulse won 4-3, so we celebrated by going for yakitori (that’s chicken on a stick to all the non-Japanese speakers out there) and continuing to drink ourselves stupid in a bar called the Hippy Shake. The owner, whose name I think is Taka, is a bit of a legend and is always lovely and accommodating to us gaijin drinkers after the matches. If you’re ever in Shimizu, go have a beer and make friends with him. The drink continued to flow, anyway, and I even managed to teach the barman how to construct a good White Russian. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Thursday.

Emily, Sean, Jake, me, Aine, Sarah, Melissa and Katie enjoying a fine day of family fun at the S-Pulse match. Excuse the peace sign, but I live in Japan, I do it almost compulsively for all photos now...

And I learned some useful insights into Japanese culture and The Way of the World while I was at the footie, so I guess I’ll have to share my wisdom with you. So, in no particular order of importance or interest, here goes:

1: Japanese soccer fans do not behave the same way as gaijin soccer fans. Especially not Irish and British ones anyway. First of all, there doesn’t seem to be as much aggression in the way the supporters act both during and after the games. Everyone just seemed so smiley and happy. Now, granted, we won the match at home so of course the atmosphere was going to be pretty positive, and last week when the ref made some really bad decisions against S-Pulse at home the police had to be called to escort him off the pitch cos the crowd got so hostile. But from what I hear there was no trouble in the end – no tearing up of seats, no fights in the street between team supporters, no drunken rioting. They just went home after the game. Very weird.

2: Team support at Japanese footie matches is co-ordinated. And I don’t just mean they can manage a few verses of You’ll Never Walk Alone without falling to pieces. Each team and its supporters have cheerleaders at the matches to conduct and direct the cheering. Now, a few things to note before you conjure up images in your mind of overly bubbly blonde American girls with short skirts and pom-poms. Firstly, the cheerleaders are Japanese so the odds of them having blonde hair are minimal. Secondly, and most importantly, cheerleading in Japan is done by men. It is called ouendan and usually involves a group of men dressed in black suits with armbands (causing them to look like tiny Japanese Nazis) shouting chants. In the school that I work in, there is an ouendan group, with one kid from each homeroom making up the membership. They walk around like some kind of militia in the school and the younger ones in the group have to greet the more senior members by bowing and shouting “konnichiwa!” at them in their most war-like voice in the corridors. Except that it doesn’t sound like konnichiwa, it sounds like “chwa!!!” But I digress. So at the footie match there was nothing as elaborate as uniformed kiddies shouting death chants. Instead, normally dressed men stood at the bottom of each terrace, literally conducting the audience. They would show us when to raise our arms, when to clap, which chants to sing, and when to stop in unison, in a bid to terrify the opposition with our sheer force of co-ordination. The best thing about being an S-Pulse fan is that there are a few Brazilian team members, so most of our chants are half in Portuguese and the songs have a samba rhythm to them. This is, of course, aided greatly by some of the cheerleader guys who play big fuck off drums to keep us all in time. All in all, I wasn’t sure whether I was at a football match or at Carnivale. Either way, it was a great laugh. And in case you're wondering, yes, they do say "Oré" instead of "Olé" when they're chanting. Bloody marvellous.

3: If I go to the toilet during play, the other team will score. It happened twice, once in the first half and once in the second. I had to go cos the call of nature was too strong after flatlining 4 pints of Sapporo in the first 35 minutes of play, but after seeing the destructive power that my dunny-hopping has, I’m holdin it in till half time from now on. Seriously though lads, both fecking times! What are the odds of that???

Anyway, if you're still reading, your stamina is commendable. Because it is now Saturday and this has turned into a really long and rambly post. I'll try to keep it shorter and sweeter next time. If I manage to be organised enough to write another one. Who knows.