NFL at the Tokyo Dome

On August 6 at the Tokyo Dome the Atlanta Falcons were playing the Indianapolis Colts.



Liz, Lauren, and I went to the game with 2 Japanese friends, Kenechi and Yuya. Being typical Americans, we decided to go all out for the game, including face paint, hair color, and hand-made shirts.

Here is the result:


Before the game, an ESPN camera man came up and taped us. We were so excited, thinking we would be on TV back home. We talked to the guy for a few minutes and he said he couldn't promise we'd be on TV. However, he told us where he'd be during the game, and he told us to come find him and he'd put us on. Awesome, huh? Yeah, we thought so too...So, during the game, we left the boys and went to find our guy. We spotted him, but we couldn't get very close to him, so we just started yelling. Then we realized that he was wearing headphones, so he wouldn't be able to hear us. At this point, we started hanging over the edge, throwing our arms in the air and waving at him. Well, after a good 15 minutes of repeating this process, we gave up on the guy. So yeah, we didn't make it on TV, but we had fun acting like fools anyway.

This is classic...we had no idea that we were doing the 'C' backwards until we looked at the pictures later.


Now, if you didn't know it, American football is not very popular in Japan, so most of them don't know the rules. Kenechi had to ask several questions during the game and never really knew what was going on. Yuya lived in the states for college, so he actually understood the game. Anyway, throughout the game, the Japanese fans would cheer, no matter what team scored. They had no idea what was going on. I think it was one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. The Colts would score and the crowd would go wild. Then the Falcons would score, and again, the crowd would go wild. They just cheered. It was great...hilarious.

Lauren, Yuya, Liz, Kenechi, and me (left to right)


At the end of the game, in true Japan fashion, they misspelled an English word.


A couple random shots from the game



Well, in the end, the Colts lost. Of course I'm not really a Colts fan (we just picked a team to cheer for), but we looked pretty silly after the game since we were all decked out in Colts garb. One American guy walked past us at the end of the game, looked at us, and simply said, "Ouch". I suppose he was just laughing inside that we had to go out looking like that after a loss, however, in Japan it didn't matter because they didn't know what was going on anyway!

When we left, we decided to go see if we could meet some of the players. Kenechi wanted to get autographs, so we headed towards the team buses. On the way, some random drunk (American) guy came up to Lauren and I and hugged us. He told us that he 'needed to hug American girls'. Yeah, that's the way to get girls...ha.
When we were waiting on Kenechi as he was getting autographs, Lauren and I somehow got stuck talking to some dude in the Air Force. (Ok, actually it was all Liz's fault that we got stuck talking to him.) Anyway, the dude kept going on and on, and asked for our phone number. He said he wanted to hang out with us because he doesn't like any of the Japanese women he has met. (He actually used much more colorful language, but I'll just leave it at that.) He was completely wasted. Another guy came up and apologized for the guy's behavior. He told us that the guy really was a nice guy, but he had just had too much to drink...blah. Anyway, we told him sorry, but we didn't want to hang out with him in Japan and finally got out of there.
After that, we had dinner, then hopped on the train to get home.
All in all, it was a good night...Go Colts!