Happy Birthday, America (and S-Pulse).

A group of us foreigners gathered on the 4th of July in a park behind my house, to grill and eat and drink American beer and eat and light fireworks and eat and play a Japan-inspired game of Frisbee cups, with custom bamboo poles.After making a spectacle of ourselves with the snaps and bangs of bottle rockets, and puzzling passersby with our strange fixation on throwing a Frisbee at plastic cups hanging upside-down atop poles stuck into the ground, I was ready to call it a day. But Mark from England, who works at a Shizuoka high school, had scored a bunch of free tickets to the Shimizu S-Pulse’s evening game—this is our local J-League soccer team—and so we hopped a bus for the Nihondaira area, to “OutSourcing Stadium” (for real), home of the S-Pulse.It happened to be a special game; after we’d finished celebrating America’s birthday, we ended up celebrating the 17th birthday of the Shimizu S-Pulse team. Before the match, the S-Pulse mascots (bright orange creatures…possibly dogs with wings for ears) danced at midfield as the crowd sang, “Happy Besu-dei dear Esu-Poolse,” then the S-Pulse and Kyoto Sanga took the field.The crowd was chock-full of super-fans…nonstop organized cheers (motions included)…and the concession stands served up an interesting mix of snacks, from miso soup to baked potatoes to popcorn. The S-Pulse was ahead from the start and still leading 3-2 at halftime, I recall. In the last few minutes of the match, however, Kyoto tied it up to end the game 3-3. I wanted to see a shootout, but apparently J-League games just end in ties and that’s that.

Altogether, quite the festive 4th!