In this mirror of ours existences and of ours problems unresolved which is the distant World Cup in Qatar, stories that fill the heart are reflected. Iran has been talked about for a long time and rightly so, but much less has been said about what the Japanese fans did at the end of the opening match between Qatar and Ecuador: they cleaned the stadium!
In the videos circulating on social networks, groups of fans roam the stands to collect plastic bottles and other waste. “And it wasn’t even their match!” commented one Arab fan posting the story. Which is incredible and yet it’s not new: the Japanese fans they had done the same at the previous World Cup, in Russia, and the players, after a searing defeat to Belgium which cost them their elimination, left the dressing room spotless and clean with a thank you note written in Russian. behind these behaviors there is a culture, which is not ours.
Explained a fan: “We never leave the rubbish behind us, we collect it, we respect the places”. I thought back to our lives, to the neighbors who sometimes carelessly leave in the evening piles of rubbish next to full bins not to walk another hundred meters. But also to those who wash their plates after a meal and just think they have done their duty. And to the fact that When I take my dog to the park, I don’t pick up other dogs’ feces, only those of mine. As if that park wasn’t mine too. Cultural changes are the most difficult to obtain, they cost effort and it takes time, the time to raise new generations with new values, but think what world we would live in if we all took care of the planet like those Japanese fans. If faced with a problem we didn’t always think “it’s not up to me” but we felt proud to try to fix it.