This was the first time for the Heartful Club to visit Cambodia. With “peace” as its theme, the Club observed land mine clearing activities in the vicinity of the venue in Cambodia. Just like the events held in Japan, this was not a one-time event but will be part of the grass-roots international exchange programmes, through soccer, to communicate the philosophy of the Urawa Reds Heartful Club: Consideration, trust and perseverance.

We observed how blind shells and land mines are exploded. Although we had some information of Cambodia beforehand, it was quite shocking to see the mines actually explode. Yet, after the visit to the minefield, we turned our thoughts to playing soccer with the children and conveying, as usual, what we had in mind. Although we did not know how much we could impress the Cambodian children, we also held a soccer workshop mentioning the keyword of “consideration” many times. The children played soccer against us, which was a different setting for us, too. We plan to talk about the experience to the Japanese children at our soccer school so that we can rediscover the significance of the experience.