On Thursday night I got home from work and Natsuko screamed "GUESS WHAT HAPPENED !?!?!"
I soon learned that Canada had been defeated by Japan and that Japan was going to play for the Gold Medal in Sledge Hockey. I was obviously a bit disappointed, but when I realized what this meant for Natsuko (The chance to see Japan play in a gold medal game) I got pretty excited too ! We jumped onto craigslist and the price of tickets for the game had gone from $400 a seat to $100 a seat. We decided to take a chance and try to buy tickets out front of the stadium on the day of the event.
Flash forward to Saturday at 10am. It's 2 hours before the game is about to begin. Natsuko and I look for someone that might be selling tickets. A guy selling flags outside of the stadium says that he heard a few more tickets were released at the official ticket booth. Sure enough they had a few tickets left. We were lucky enough to get two side by side. And the best part is we only paid face value ! $50 bucks each for 7th row seats !!!
We got the tickets and headed through the ticket checkpoint. Standing in front of the entrance, we met a Japanese superhero who goes by the name NIPPON MAN. He flew to Vancouver all the way from Hokkaido to cheer on the Paralympians. He'd been to almost every event. He handed us his business card and gave us some instructions on how to cheer at the game:
GO JAPAN GO !
NIPPON CHA CHA CHA ! NIPPON CHA CHA CHA !
Check out NIPPON MAN in action:
After our brief encounter with NIPPON MAN, the NHK news team grabbed Natsuko and I and pulled us aside for an interview (no joke). We waved our Japan Flag and shouted "Ganbatte Nippon". They asked me who I thought was going to win, and I told them Japan of course. More on this later.
Once inside the stadium, we grabbed a beer and headed to our seats to watch the Japan team warm up. The team Captain Endo was amazing.
The crowd was full of Japanese supporters. We were surprised not to see many American Flags since we're so close to the border. It seemed like everyone that had supported Canada had now flipped over to supporting Japan. The energy was amazing. Everyone in our section became instant friends as we routed for TEAM NIPPON and helped each other take photos. We had a number of Volunteers sitting near us that told us about some of the other events they were lucky enough to attend.
Team Japan put up an amazing fight, but in the end lost 2-0 to the USA. Japan made it to the third period with only one point scored on them, but the USA managed to score again near the middle of the third period and Japan couldn't recover. It would have been unbelievable to see Japan take the Gold medal... but when you lose Gold, you win Silver. So both teams won !
Natsuko was crying tears of joy by the end of the game, and both of us had lost our voices. I woke up Sunday morning with a sore throat and thought I might be getting sick, until I remembered screaming my lungs out the day before :)
After the game we were approached again by some press that wondered if they could use some pictures they took of us. We have no idea where they might end up.
The Medal ceremony had all three teams present. Team USA took the Gold, Team Japan took the Silver, and Team Norway took the Bronze.
When we stepped outside Natsuko's phone rang. Her parents had just turned on the NHK morning news to watch a program called GOOD MORNING JAPAN. The headline was that Japan had won the silver medal and they cut to a clip of Natsuko and I screaming about how Japan was going to win. We've been searching everywhere to see the clip, but so far we haven't found it. If we do find it, I'll definitely post it here.
It was an amazing event. We still can't believe we got to see it.
Check out the rest of our photos and videos HERE.
your pal,
Beadle
1 comment:
I almost went blind from the pure awesomeness of this post!
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