My Japanese “American” Football Game Experience

Being American, whenever I hear the term “football” I always think of “American football,” like the NFL. While it’s not my favorite sport to watch, that title belongs to baseball (go Dodgers!) I will admit I do enjoy an exciting, loud, energetic football game once in a while. Whether it be attending my old high school's football game, my college’s football games or even a Pittsburgh Steelers game (thanks to my cousins playing for the team), I know that the game will be exciting and fun. 

Coming to Japan, I knew I wasn’t going to go to many sports games, let alone a football game. Japan, like most other countries, uses the term “football” as the name of the sport that we Americans deem “soccer,” but even with that I knew I wasn’t going to go to many of those games. I went to a baseball game but other than that, all of my sports intake has been through watching sports games on the TV with my host family. So, when one of my friends invited me to go to Nanzan University’s “American Football” game this past week, who was I to say no.

Nanzan University has an “American Football” team called the Nanzan University Crusaders. They’re part of the Tokai American Football Association, an American football league made up of different colleges in the Tokai region of Japan. Surprisingly to me, they allow study abroad students to join the team, even if they’ll only be able to play one game which is why my friend was able to play and invite us. When I was invited to come to the game, I didn’t really have high expectations of how the game would go. I knew an “American football” game in Japan would be much different than a football game in the USA. Especially with how “American football” isn’t even that popular as a watched sport in Japan, I sort of imagined this game to be more similar to a high school football game. However, I would be very surprised with how this game would go.

As expected, the football game had a similar amount of students attending that a high school football game would. I didn’t expect there to be hundreds of students there like some bigger USA college football games so I wasn’t surprised. However, I was extremely surprised at how quiet the field and seats were. Everyone, including the team and the students watching, were silent. My friends and I felt like we were being extremely loud just from talking to each other and one of my friends said it felt like we were at a golf tournament. Even during the kick off it felt like everyone was just on mute. Another surprising thing was seeing how cordial the teams were to each other. Before the game started, each team sent three of their players to meet the referee, presumably for the coin toss. But before they even did the coin toss, each player that was sent bowed to each member of the opposite team and the referee. I don’t know about you but I personally have never seen that occur at an American football game. 

The actual game felt normal, despite how quiet everything seemed to be. We later would find out that loud cheering was actually discouraged to “not distract the players.” That idea was foreign to all of us because what do you mean we can’t cheer for our team? If that was a rule in America, I am sure it would’ve been met with a ton of backlash. The team did have a cheerleading team to cheer them on instead of us though so maybe the “don’t cheer loud,” discouragement was only for us students. Despite this, as the game went on, more people started to let loose and began to cheer. I will admit, it may have been because we were losing to the other team so any good thing that happened got everyone excited, but either way it slowly began to feel like an actual “American Football Game.” 

After the game finished, there was one last thing that intrigued me. Like before kick off, each team sent three players to the middle of the field and bowed to each other. After that, they proceeded to run to the rival team and bow to them, thanking them for a good game. When the players went back to their respective teams, each team proceeded to bow to the other and thank them once more before turning and bowing to us watching and thanked us for coming and supporting. This final act of sportsmanship was very sweet in my opinion, even if we lost and my friends and I seemed more angry at us losing than the actual team. I knew as soon as this game finished that I would write a blog about this experience. It was strange, I will admit, but it was also interesting seeing the difference of such a common “American” sport being done in another country.