Monday 17th June 2002
 Went with Ken-san, my
Japanese brother-in-law (can't beat footy for a bit of male
bonding) to the Ecuador v Croatia match. It was held at
Yokohama, a great stadium, but with some room for improvement.
Either they should make the pitch bigger, or shift all the
seats forward 25 yards! Of course there's a place in the world
for athletics tracks, but games played by "men" called
Sebastian don't deserve to share a stage with the World
Cup!
Who would've thought my adopted Ecuador would
actually win the World Cup? Well, a good few thousand
Ecuadorians thought they had! The Ecuador crowd was fantastic
throughout their tournament, and fully deserved their winning
fiesta. Being such a big venue, a high proportion of the
supporters were neutrals, so outside of the Ecuadorian and
Mexican enclaves, the atmosphere was pretty
thin.
Did the earth move for you too? It did on
Friday morning in Tokyo. No, it wasn't the Moonies on a mass
honeymoon, but a bona fide earthquake (5.2 on the Richter
scale). It's a fantastic souvenir of Japan, a bit like eating
fugu fish, something everyone should experience once, but that
could be fatal!
 Went to the pub to see
Japan continue their World Cup crusade. It was a sea (OK,
large but very full pond) of blue. It seemed the whole
country had left work early to watch the match - extremely
un-Japanese behaviour! The crowd were not disappointed, they
are as shocked as we are about their success so far in this
competition.
 After the game I went
to Shibuya, a very young and lively district, for a few more
jars. When my mate Marlon and I left the bar at about 11:30,
the streets were even crazier than earlier, thousands of
alcohol-filled Japanese (that's about three pints), climbing
all over the local buildings and street furniture. The police
were straining to keep order, but failing miserably. Maybe out
of frustration, maybe to provoke a reaction, a policeman
punched Marlon in the stomach! If we'd been a little more
wasted and if it had been less of a girlie blow, it could have
been more effective, but as we were still within our senses
(and remember, they have guns), that was the end of
it.
 Watched the two
Saturday matches with a group of friends at my flat. I have a
projector and huge screen, so the view was guaranteed to be
better than the pub, and of course, there was stacks of beer
on hand.What a party, even the official World Cup wine
tasted good! After annoying the hell out of the neighbours
with 90 minutes of yelling, we went out on the town. Bumped
into some young Japanese lads, out of their faces celebrating
in Roppongi. Lacking a perfect grasp of football culture, one
of them offered to swap his red England shirt for my white
one. Having established that it would fit, I duly obliged -
another fine result, I'd upgraded my England T-shirt to a more
expensive replica shirt!
Bring on
Brazil!
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