“I was thinking for a long time — like, two or three months,” Tomoyo Tanaka-Ito, 64, said when I asked about the custom Senegalese-flag shirts she and her husband were wearing at Senegal’s World Cup match against France last month. “And then when I started to sew, it took maybe three or four days.”
Her affinity for the country dates to her teenage years, when her father was a judo instructor and had young Senegalese students in his dojo. She found the children to be quite friendly, she said, and later forged connections with the Senegalese community in New York. Her husband, Yujin Ito, 41, added that Senegal was at the top of his list of places he wanted to visit. When the World Cup schedule was released, they were pleased to see that the Senegalese team would be playing two early matches at MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, N.J. “I just bought tickets for this location,” he said. “Luckily we got the two Senegal games, so of course we go.”
The couple met at a Japanese club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where they now live. “I was 27; she was 50-something,” Ito said. “So yeah, there was an age difference.”
“I thought, Oh, some cutie just came in,” Tanaka-Ito said.
“We’ve been together for 13 years now,” her husband added.
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