The World Champions

I wrote this post about the Women’s Soccer World Cup championship game being played by Japan against the USA today.

As you probably already know, Japan won the game in penalty kicks.

Here’s a video I found on Youtube that shows the penalty kick attempts by both the USA and Japan.
The announcers in the video sound English. I don’t often watch TV in English anymore…so what mostly got my attention when I watched this video was the way the announcers butchered the Japanese players’ names! 😉

The video ends before it has a chance to show Japan’s team celebrating their win as the 2011 Women’s World Cup Champions.
But here’s what it looked like:

Did you watch the game?
It started at 3:45AM Japan time so I didn’t stay up to watch it. I saw the highlights on the news this morning.
On the news here, they also had a Japanese reporter and cameraman in a sports-bar in New York during the game to get the American fans’ reactions.
Each time the U.S. team scored a goal, the Americans in the bar erupted into a “USA! USA! USA!” chant.  I guess I’ve been living in Japan so long that I was taken by surprise a bit by that. It was like a culture shock! 😉

This Sunday’s showdown: Japan vs USA

From 2011 June 26 until this Sunday (July 17th), the Women’s World Cup international soccer championship games is being held in Germany.

On Wednesday (July 13th), two semi-final matches were held.
America played against France and Japan played against Sweden.

The U.S. and Japan each won their games with a score of 3-1.

So, now the final match for the 2011 Women’s World Cup Championship will be held on this Sunday, 2011 July 17th.
Japan will play against the U.S.

I’m not sure which country to support!
I’m American. I was born and raised in America. But I’ve been living in Japan since 1990…most of my life now. Japan has become my home.

Well, I’ll support both teams. 😉

Have you watched any of the 2011 Women’s World Cup matches? Will you watch the championship game on Sunday?
Did you watch the Japan vs Sweden game last Wednesday? After Japan won that game, the team members held up a banner thanking the world for supporting Japan after the 2011 March 11 disaster.

Their banner said:

“To Our Friends Around The World
Thank You For Your Support“.

The Japanese Womens soccer team holding their banner