Why do you want to go to Nagasaki for soccer? Are you tired of Japan's top tier tourist areas? Is there a place with plenty of sightseeing and interesting soccer, but few people have been there? Can you just break your taste for sightseeing? Yes, come to Nagasaki after October!
The club based in Nagasaki, Nagasaki Success Maru (V?ファーレン Nagasaki), is named with a very Nagasaki flavor, where ファーレン Varen is the Dutch word for "sailing". Facing the Eurasian continent, Nagasaki is located in the northwestern part of Kyushu and has the longest coastline in all of Japan, Nagasaki has become a key to foreign cultures. During the Shogunate period, Holland became the only trading partner between the Western world and Japan, living in groups on Nagasaki, and in the 19th century the Shogunate built a modern navy. King Willem III of the Netherlands presented the Edo Shogunate with a sightseeing yakuza battleship for use in Nagasaki's naval training facility. Trade, navigation and foreign cultures are intertwined and have long been in the cultural landscape of the region.
Nagasaki Success Maru's path to soccer started with Citizen's Club, gradually earning its promotion license and then upgrading after many years in the highly competitive J2. Finally, after upgrading to J1, it failed to gain a foothold and returned to J2 to continue its hard work. It should have suffered no less. It is stable and functional.
However, two highlights of such a slightly ordinary team set them apart. First, the mascots, Vivi-kun and Vivi-kun, stood out from the 304 entries in the public collection. They have big eyes. They have small mouths for the Kyushu Mergansers, and their cuteness has helped Vivi-kun amass a lot of popularity. For the past five years, the J-League has ranked in the top three mascot popularity polls, and they have their own bandwagon program on youtube. "Vivi-kun's Duel (ぶいえすヴィヴィくん)", Vivi-kun will have his own jersey unlike the sponsor on his jersey when he fights against an athlete or he fights against the mascot in the program. "Mascot Sponsor".
Another highlight was the team's owner.In 2017, Nagasaki Success Maru started the season with a business crisis. First, an investigation into alleged insurance fraud at an acupuncture clinic opened by the original management at the team's club, the team itself was short of funds and even owed wages, and began looking for a buyer in the market. For a while, some English tutoring organizations were planning to join the industry, and then the super e-commerce Japanet magnificently acquired the team.
Japanet is a true Nagasaki business. The founder, Akira Takada, was a TV shopping celebrity. During the first two years of taking over Nagasaki Success Pills, he gave the company to his son to retire. At his son's urging, he became the team's owner. Under stabilization, the team's record exploded against the odds. Nagasaki Success Yakuza went undefeated in five battles at the end of the season to be promoted to J1. However, the top division is hard to mix up and it will be back at the bottom of J2 next season.
After returning to J2, Nagasaki Success Maru disappeared from the national pages, but Japanet's dream for soccer didn't stop there. They acquired 7.5 hectares of land the size of 1.5 Tokyo Dome in Nagasaki from Mitsubishi Heavy Industry's old factory revitalization project, and carried out the "NAGASAKI STADIUM CITY" project.
The total cost of the entire project is about 90 billion yen, including a stadium with about 20,000 seats, "PEACE STADIUM," which will serve as the home of Nagasaki Koseimaru, and a 6,000-seat stadium, which will be the home of Nagasaki Velka, a professional basketball club. The project also includes hotels, office buildings and shopping centers, with the highlight being "Hotel Nagasaki," Japan's first stadium-view hotel.
The rooms have two types of views: Stadium View Rooms and Nagasaki City View Rooms. The "Stadium View Room" faces the PEACE STADIUM, and this type of room, with its large windows, can be transformed into a super VIP ROOM during the game, and you can even watch the game from the swimming pool and sauna, and the "VS STADIUM NAGASAKI", which was created in collaboration with Bandai Namco, features Nagasaki Koseimaru-themed rides, such as the first zipline in Japan from the height of the shopping floor. For example, Japan's first zip line from the shopping mall level, where adventurous players can ride through the stadium.
