The Language Of Football
When I was a kid, I had a penpal from Japan. If you're not familiar with penpals, well, this is going to be very difficult to describe in the digital age. Before you could grab your iPhone and FaceTime with someone in Japan with just a few taps on a screen, you could write letters to someone in another country and then they'd write you back.
For me, this happened because my aunt had a childhood penpal from Japan and she had kept in touch with her over the years. That penpal had two daughters, and so the oldest daughter, Akane (pronounced ah-kuh-nay), became my sister's penpal and the youngest daughter, Chika, became my penpal.
As a kid, it never really occurred to me that we were communicating in my language. I didn't realize that they were learning to read and write in English in school and that's how Chika could write me back. I just... wrote down (in cursive!) what I was learning in school and then someone halfway around the world would read it and write back in the same cursive.
The biggest hassle? Figuring out how many stamps we needed to mail something to Japan, especially with the necessary postage changing every six months. I'm not sure if you young kids are aware of this, but you couldn't just Google "how much postage is needed to mail a letter to Japan?" back then. You had to, like, go to the Post Office and ask someone.
I can't recall how many years I wrote back and forth with Chika. I think it ended around junior high? I remember that they (Akane and Chika) sent my sister and I a cassette tape once where they had recorded themselves talking to us. And I distinctly remember them asking their father (in Japanese) if he would say any words he knew in English and him saying "I like sake. I drink sake every day."
I also remember, as an adult, coming to the realization that Chika learned English and I never even thought about learning Japanese. I was so fascinated by the fact that I could take a letter to the post office, get it stamped with some "first class - international" stamp, and then trust that the letter would travel all the way to a specific building in Japan that I never stopped to think "maybe I should also make a recording where I'm saying words in their language." I couldn't even be bothered to record one single kon'nichiwa?
The reason I'm telling you this: Bret Bielema has a penpal from Japan (of sorts). His name is Atsushi Saijo and he's a football coach in Japan. They met in the early 1990's when Saijo was visiting Iowa and have remained friends throughout the years (unlike my sister & I and Akane & Chika). Let's take a quick journey through some photos of Coach Bielema and Coach Saijo throughout the years:
Iowa:
Wisconsin:
Arkansas:
Illinois:
(A quick side note. Look in the background of the Arkansas photo. See how they added the new endzone seats as two levels with one section that wraps around above the existing stands and connects right at the end of their upper deck suite level? That's a concept that would work for the horseshoe replacement and would get those fans right on top of the game. They had a brick stairtower as well and here's how they wrapped around in front of it.)
(We now return you to your regularly scheduled article.)
The media was given an opportunity to interview Atsushi Saijo on Monday evening. He does not speak English, so he had an interpreter with him. The interpreter, obviously, was the niece of Yoko Ono. No, really, she was Yoko Ono's niece, Reiko Ono-Fullard.
I'm going to share snippets from that interview as audio clips so if you're in a meeting and reading this under the conference table you'll need headphones for this next part. Pro tip: one AirPod in the ear opposite your boss. To put it in, go for the opposite hand neck scratch with your elbow on the table and then reach up and put the AirPod in. Works every time.
I'm going to every part of the clip here - my question, the interpreter, his answer, and then the interpreter's answer. I know there are at least two IlliniBoard subscribers who live in Japan so perhaps those two will enjoy hearing the answers in Japanese. Here's the first clip:
We'll come back to Coach Saijo in a bit, but we also got to talk to one of his players on Monday. His name is Hiroki Yasuda and he plays tight end for Coach Siajo. When I first approached him, I asked him if he spoke English. "A little - not very good" he said. He then spoke better English than some of my son's friends from rural Missouri.
I was fascinated by that. 4th grade flag football in Japan! I don't know why I'm so surprised by that, but I am. He went on to explain that baseball is by far the most popular sport with his friends, but because his dad played football, it's always been American football for him.
I also asked him what he was looking forward to the most at practice (we were doing this interview just before practice started for the Illini) and he said "the tight ends." Makes total sense for me. I'd want to watch the players at my position as well.
Once practice began, some of the visiting players actually participated in stretching and warmups alongside the Illini players. I had hoped to catch some video of Hiroki warming up with them, but he wasn't participating during this drill. I did catch one of his teammates going through some of the warmup sprints and such and he seemed to be loving it. He even had Saboor Karriem teaching him a double-tap high five:
You can't see his face in that video, but when they turned around and came back the other direction, he had a big, wide smile. When Gabe Jacas is a star in the NFL, this kid will get to tell his friends he warmed up right next to him on the field.
The most interesting thing about the entire evening, for me, was how Coach Saijo and Coach Bielema could discuss football. It probably should have been obvious to me, but I didn't realize that there's no word for "defensive end" in Japanese. It's just "defensive end." Here's the part of the interview where I talk to Coach Saijo and his interpreter about how they've communicated with Coach Bielema over the years. And you can hear me land on my post title at the very end:
Reiko was obviously very knowledgeable about all of this. She has sat in the middle of conversations between Coach Bielema and Coach Saijo for literal decades. So you can hear that he trusts her to answer some questions that she already knows the answer to.
Near the end of the interview, I was reminded of seeing this tweet earlier that day...
Pic I took of Shota arriving at a cold Wrigley Field today. pic.twitter.com/nohae2GOcu
— Sam Bernero (@sambernero) April 7, 2025
...so when one of Coach Saijo's answers referenced the Illinois football facility being better than some of the professional baseball facilities in Japan, I decided to scroll through my phone and ask them about it the photo:
I love that. Reiko still lives in Iowa, and the Illini shirt she was wearing that day might cause a disturbance back home, but if Shota Imanaga is wearing Illini gear...
I really enjoyed both conversations on Monday night. You can hear me being awkward while saying "thank you" at the end of the clip above because when Coach Saijo finished with the interview he gave me a respectful bow and I wanted to make sure I bowed in return (while thinking "I really hope I'm doing this right"). The players couldn't have been more wide-eyed in the building, referencing the food and the weight room and all of the other amenities in the Smith Center. I kind of wanted to write to Chika and tell her about it.
And at the very end of the evening, after Coach Bielema finished his post-practice media session, I solved another mystery as well. I had asked him about their reference to him knowing the words "sake" and "Sapporo" during the media scrum. And so as I was headed for the door and he was headed for the elevator back up to his office, he said something like "sake and Sapporo, huh?". I told him that their first reference was "ichiban" (number one) so it wasn't all sake and Sapporo.
And then I showed him the photo of Shota Imanaga wearing Illini gear. "He got that from them!" he said, noting that their traveling party (the coaches and players from the Japanese football team) had visited Wrigley Field on Sunday and someone from that party had given Imanaga the Illini sweatshirt.
So that brings this whole thing full circle. Why was Shota Imanaga wearing Illini gear on Monday? Because Bret Bielema befriended a Japanese coach nearly 35 years ago and they remain friends to this day.
Illini football. Ichiban.
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