FUKUSHIMA -- The J-Village national soccer center has resumed operations for the first time since it was shuttered following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
The center was reopened on Saturday, seven years and four months after it closed. In addition to a reopening ceremony, a friendly match between junior high school players and a local club team was held at the center, which straddles the towns of Naraha and Hirono in Fukushima Prefecture.
Before the friendly, new national soccer team coach Hajime Moriyasu and other present offered silent prayers for the victims of the 2011 disaster and the recent torrential rains in western Japan.
The match between selected junior high soccer players from Fukushima Prefecture and the local club team kicked off at 2:46 p.m., the exact time the earthquake occurred.
About 1,000 spectators, including local residents, cheered on the players.
J-Village opened in 1997 as Japan's first national training center for soccer, with about 500,000 people using the facility annually until the disaster.
Located about 20 kilometers south of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the soccer training center was used as an operational base for decommissioning the power plant.
The natural turf pitches were covered by gravel and used as parking lots, and temporary housing for decommissioning workers was also erected on the pitches.
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