Go Ventforet!

Last night a group of us headed down to the sports facility in Kofu to watch a Japanese professional soccer match. My supervisor volunteers for the game and got us some free tickets. That would have been awesome enough right there, but then she brought everybody some sandwiches, chips, beer and sake. When was the last time your boss did that for you?!

Anyways, the big team here in Yamanashi is Ventforet Kofu. Nobody is quite sure how to pronounce the word, especially not the Japanese (they have trouble with v's and words ending with t, show the name just comes out as a garbled beeenfooe). Everybody in Kofu is really excited because this is the first year Ventforet became J1, which is essentially the Japanese professional level. I'm not sure how long Ventforet was wasting away down in J2, but now it's their turn to shine!

...Unfortunately Ventforet is apparently not a very good team. They have one of the worse records and are in danger of being demoted back to J2. They were heavy underdogs to win the game last night against and much better team from somewhere in Japan (I'll never know). Nonetheless, a packed crowd (including 5 foreigners) attended the game in high spirits. My spirits steadily increased throughout the night as I went through the carton of sake the supervisor had generously provided.

The game started off slow. There were no goals in the first period and maybe only one or two scoring chances. Ventforet was looking sloppy with a lot of turnovers and bad passes (I know this is basketball terminology, but I don't watch soccer so to hell with you!). Through the came the Japanese fans cheered in unison, often chanting very catch and well rehearsed fight songs. The came picked up in the second half when Ventforet's star player (some foreigner they call Bare) scored off a corner kick. Things were looking good for Ventforet until there was about 1 minute left in the game. A bad pass took a high bounce and went over the goalie's head for a fluke goal. This seemed to kill the spirits of the Japanese crowd as now the game would have to be decided in 3 minutes of stoppage time. I'm not sure how overtime rules work in Japanese league, but fortunately no extra time was needed. With about 30 seconds left in stoppage time a Ventforet player intercepted and pass which lead to the game winning goal. The crowd cheered, the players celebrated and I was drunk.

I passed out in the car ride home. The carton of sake was surprisingly easy to drink which probably was my downfall for the night. Thankfully I didn't have to be at work until 10:00 today. I hope they didn't notice that I was feeling hungover...