Our Home! Our Field! Our Litter!

Not many people are crazy enough to wake up early on a cold Saturday morning to pick up litter but, when it comes to doing something for the sake of our beautiful city, there’s very little we won’t do! Yesterday marked the 6th G3000 Yokohama Clean-up campaign, an increasingly popular activity which is organized by the friendly people at the Hamatra SNS community. The aim of the campaign is to bring together as many like-minded F.Marinos supporters as possible and clean up the streets of Minato Mirai from Sakuragicho station all the way to our hallowed training ground, Marinos Town.

This was actually my second outing and this time when I arrived at Sakuragicho station, I was almost immediately approached by none other than the Club President, Mr Akira Kaetsu! He was very friendly and spoke to me in perfect English as we chatted about Japanese and English Football and he even told me about the time he saw Tottenham Hotspur play in Japan some 35 years ago! I must admit, I was somewhat impressed by his knowledge of football!

We were all soon split into groups and sent on our way with gloves, tongs and plastic bags in tow. This time my group took the route around the back of the Amusement park and alongside the famous Intercontinental hotel. The streets on our route were surprisingly clean with the majority of the trash being mainly empty plastic bags, cans and cigarette butts. After an hour or so we stopped for lunch at a nearby park which offered an impressive view of the harbor, before heading back to work for the final stretch.

When our group met up with the other groups at Marinos Town, we dumped all the combined trash we collected behind the main parking lot before finishing up and heading to the bar for refreshment!

After taking part in this event twice now, I can honestly say that it’s a lot more fun than you’d think! It’s not only an ideal way to give something back to the city that we call home but it’s also an excellent way to meet new people and make friends with the many people that we cheer along with at the games. I’ll finish up by saying that if any readers of this site that live in Yokohama fancy taking part in the next clean-up, please don’t hesitate to drop us an email at tricolorepride@gmail.com and we’ll keep you posted on all the future dates!