It was a sad day for the Samurai Blue and the motherland today, as they lost to Paraguay after the score remained a sterile stalemate at 0-0 throughout the match and through the extra time, leading to a penalty kick shootout to determine who would advance to the Final 8.
The world stood still as they watched this World Cup’s first shootout. Japan lost in the PKs, as they missed a goal while Paraguay nailed all five of theirs.
It was definitely a difficult loss to swallow, both for the Japanese national teams and all of their fans, since it is such a frustrating way to get taken out of the World Cup.
Ultimately, though, I think that Japan performed much better than what the world had expected of them, and they were able to show other countries that they are a force to be reckoned with. They seem to have won a lot of  non-Japanese fans over in the course of the past couple weeks as well! 🙂
Four years is a long wait, but I can’t wait to see the Samurai Blue take on the field on the world stage once again in 2014 in Brazil.
In the meantime, it’ll be fun to sit back and watch which team will rise up to become the champions this year.