France v Japan Semifinals!

Yesterday was the big day!  At around three me and a friend named Martin headed out the door to go to Wembley, a town inside Greater London just a bit to the north of where I live.  It was only two tube stations, thankfully, because the tubes were already getting crowded as people headed to the stadium!

I decided to root for France, simply because if anybody is going to beat the US (again) it's going to be Japan.  I also, correctly, assumed that nobody from England with the tickets would be supporting France, so I helped cheer for the underdog.

Here's the stadium!

So many people!!!

There was a building to the right that looked like it was housing some sort of racquet sport...maybe table tennis?  It had decals on the side sort of like the Nebraska State Fair used to when it was in Lincoln.

My first glimpse of Wembley Stadium!

On the screen, I thought the red made it look like Memorial Stadium!

France warming up

Japan warming up

The sprinkler and turf fix-it people warming up

The flags!  I don't know why I'm adding captions at this point, haha

I liked Japan's national anthem a lot.  Very pretty compared to the French march.

After Japan scored their first goal it became pretty clear that the majority of the stadium was supporting Japan.  There were so many flags!  You can kind of see them if you look closely in this photo.

Japan was leading France 2 - 0 until the second half, when suddenly France kicked it up a notch.  I don't know what happened, they had been playing so sloppily the first half, and then suddenly wham, they were back!  They pressed Japan super hard the whole second half.  Shot after shot after shot.  They finally got one goal in, so it was 2 - 1, and then Japan fouled somebody in the box, so there was a penalty kick.  I can't believe it missed.  Everyone thought it had gone in for a good 30 seconds!

Seriously though, how did it miss?!!!

After the game, Serene and I tried to meet up, but it was impossible.  Supposedly there were 61,000 some people there, but basically only one tube station, so you can imagine what a mad house it was.

I think the horses made the crowd control worse, because people kept bunching up to pet them, etc instead of moving quickly past towards the station.  I took this shot while walking, so I am not being entirely hypocritical by commenting on people slowing down.  It took twice as much time to get past the horses as it did to walk normally.

After the game, Serene, me, and Serene's friend Adelle went to a Korean place near campus for dinner.  I don't think I'd had Korean before, I liked everything except the fishy parts.  Never been a big fan of squid, and yesterday proved to be no exception.
We had a free tube pass because of the Olympic ticket, so we rode down to Westminster to see a light show on the side of Parliament.  My camera was out of batteries, so once Serene posts them I will stick them up.  They had seven or eight projectors pointing at the side of Parliament playing different scenes from the 1904 (?) Olympics and 1968 or whichever ones were in London back in the day.  They had little sound clips and things playing too, it was a very neat show.  It's supposed to run every night during the Olympics and Paralympics, but I had only heard of it recently.  I can't believe it isn't getting more publicity.

Anyway, the Olympics were pretty fun, but now I have nothing to distract me from writing until the Paralympics!  Alas.  Go Team GB and USA!