Saturday I returned to the Oita “Big Eye” Stadium to join the blue maniacs and wildly cheer on the Oita Trinita for another two hours. This time Satoshi, Jane, and Jessica had other things to attend to – or simply just didn’t want to sit next to a screaming idiot for that long again so they were scratched. However, I did manage to talk Michelle (my RA / buddy) into going and the adventure was on!

Today’s adversary was the(were the?) Kyoto Purple Sanga. I have absolutely no idea what a “sanga” is, and I most certainly didn’t know they came in the color purple, but they immediately won my eternal respect and admiration when I sighted *their* fan club’s motto.

You may remember me triumphantly declaring the Trinita’s “Oita Till We Die!” possibly the greatest motto ever… well it still is. But the Purple Sanga get +1,000,000 points for outright ridiculosity (yes, I realize that’s not a word).

Now, wouldn’t you agree that that is just an absolutely, positively, unbelievable ridiculous team slogan? As far as I could tell from my side of the stadium, everyone was appropriately attired. So I’m not sure when the “naked” comes into play… or the “hardcore” for that matter… but I’m damn curious! Perhaps if they had won?

Aww, and now I’ve gone and ruined the suspense for you. Yes indeed the Trinita won, 2-1 in fact. The Purple Sanga almost snuck away with a draw though, despite playing one man down for nearly 30 minutes after a defender was issued a red card and summarily ejected for, shall we say… “vigorously hindering” the approach to goal of one of the Trinita forwards.

You might recall that in the previous game the Trinita went down 3-0. Not only was that pretty disappointing, it also left me still waiting for my first opportunity to deliriously cheer a Trinita goal. The boys in blue made all 22,827 of us wait until the second half before they finally put one in the back of the net… when they did though, hoo boy, the Big Eye went bananas!

All in all it was a great Saturday – Oita Till We Die baby, Oita Till We Die…