Among the many popular cultural exports of America in Japan, which are so vast and include things from Pizza Hut to Mustang convertibles, I found it odd that American Football hadn't quite been popularized yet. The differences between a big 10 school to a private foreign language university are stark and revealing when it comes to intercollegiate athletics.
At school, I would see the "American Football Club" practicing on the dirt field behind the student services center almost every day after class, but I never once heard if or when they were playing a game.
So I asked my host mother, seemingly unaware of Kansai Gaidai's football club, who speculated that maybe they weren't very good and they didn't want anyone coming to their games.
This puzzled me. Who wouldn't want to go and cheer on their school's football team? Maybe Penn State Football culture and being at a division 1 school had made me unwaware to the fact that there are some people in this world to whom football is not life.
So, I never did find out if the Kansai Gaidai American Football Club ever played games with other schools. Being a "club" I assumed that they did compete, but on their own time and money. It was refreshing to be at a school that actually had a non-existent athletic program, but instead, a large body of self-supporting student organized clubs and circles, that benefited the students academically and socially.
I really kind of ended up enjoying life minus big-time collegiate athletics, and I learned way more Japanese without football hoopla getting in the way.
