Somebody at work today actually got all teary-eyed when he was told Japan is now out of the world cup. He turned to me and said, “Well, America’s out of it, too!”
To which I replied, “You know what the difference is? Americans don’t GIVE A FUCK!”
Okay, maybe that was the point at which he got teary-eyed.
I really don’t give a fuck.
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Hahahahaha, what a little wussie.
Until I came to Japan, I did not know that the “World Cup” existed. It had to take place a couple fo times before I learned that America even had a team that participated in the event. I guess my mother’s non-love of sports and my geeky music activities kept me away from sports throughout my life…not that I think that is bad, or anything.
Well, getting teary eyed over much of anything is lame. I wanted to slap this idiot liberal housewife lady when she was all upset about Bush’s reelection when I worked at a Quaker school in Bethesda. I thought: Sure, I didn’t vote for him either, but if it bugs you that much then maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.
As the saying goes, soccer has been, is, and always will be the sport of the future in America.
I was told that the U.S. lost to Ghana by a guy in my office who is from Ghana. All good-natured, he knew I’d get a kick out of that. And frankly, I think it’s all cool–Ghanians undoubtedly want it more and are more excited about than Americans ever could be.
But here in Japan, the Japan loss has taken the wind out of the populatity sails for the WC. Toho theaters have been setting aside two screens each time a game with Japan comes up, and they all sold out, even the one in the middle of the night. There are three more that the theaters committed to, the semifinals and the finals. Lots of tickets left for those.
I’ve always noticed Japan has had a thing for stuff overseas–but mostly just if Japan or Japanese are excelling at it. They put a huge amount of stock in making it big in someone else’s backyard (and can be nasty if others make it big in theirs–witness baseball and sumo). Maybe this comes from the whole cultural thing of measuring yourself relative to others. We Americans don’t tend to look upon that kind of thing too highly, though.
Mr. Nugget was mentioning this to me today… how he can’t imagine countries where the world cup is all they have to hang on for… hang their national pride etc… crazy. And oh yeah… most Americans could give a shit less about it.