Category Archives: World Cup 2010

Sunday 4th December 2022 pre match

Yep, it’s December, it’s nearly Christmas, it’s nearly 30 degrees again and England play their first knock out game at 10pm local time tonight. Fortunately, my gamble of buying tickets for this last 16 game paid off, so no sweating about tickets, at least for today. But those old nerves always kick in at times like these. Years and years of watching England teach you to never allow yourself to get carried away with hope. It almost always ends badly.

For once we had some time on our hands, so I decided to use it to get my Saturday blog up to date, which always takes a lot longer than it should do. Once that was done, we recorded the Beesotted With Brentford podcast hosted by fellow England veteran, Billy TheBee Grant which was great fun. Billy had been to all the England group games and had popped home, confident that he could get a flight back out for the quarter final to see England. You can find that podcast here https://pod.fo/e/1544d9 . We love Billy’s optimism.

Kirsty announced that she wanted to head up to The Bay Area in Doha and eat at somewhere called ‘The Spice Market’. I think I was only half listening when she shared her plan, but I assumed this would be something super local and properly authentic. We took the Metro again and marveled at how brand spanking new and highly efficient it is. Another example of what happens when money is seemingly no object. Anything and everything gets built, everywhere.

If you are here in Qatar for the football, you have to register for what is called a Hayya Card. It is basically photo ID and it is needed in order to actually get into the country as a foreign national. It is also needed to get into every game, alongside your match ticket of course. Furthermore, you also get asked for it when you go into hotel bars and clubs, which are pretty much the only places that serve alcohol, which is always very, very expensive. The upside of the Hayya Card is you get free travel on public transport, the Metro and the buses. And all of those buses look and ride like they were delivered at the end of November they are so new. The downside of the Hayya Card is that your movements are literally being tracked.

We found our way to ‘The Spice Market’, and as soon as I realise where and what it is, my heart sinks. We are only walking into the W Hotel, which for anyone who has ever been to E3 and GDC (videogames shows for non videogames readers), it is achingly cool and comes with an equally aching price tag.

We walked into said ‘Spice Market’ and were immediately asked ‘did we have a reservation?’. Given we were literally the only people in there apart from the staff, I said ‘is there a chance you could squeeze us in?’. And yes, surprise surprise, there was space and we were duly shown to our table. The menu had no prices on it, which is always a bad sign and I could feel Kirsty sensing my irritation that we had ended up here, when we could have eaten in an amazing, genuine, Middle Eastern restaurant back round our way. But as ever, you have to take a deep breath, think of England and put this one down to experience. The food was amazing, of course. What was also predictable was that as fellow diners arrived, they reinforced my prejudices about these sorts of places. I couldn’t wait to get out.

With our bill duly paid via an extension to the Payne’s mortgage, we began our retreat, as fast as possible. There seemed to be loads of people buzzing around the W all looking and sounding frantically busy, all of them dressed in red and white. My immediate thought was it must have been a hub for the Croatian fans. It wasn’t. It was an ‘activation’ for Budweiser, who are the official beer partner of FIFA. Except of course, alcoholic beer is not on sale anywhere, least of all the stadia and the ‘Fan Zones’ (more on those later).

It was obvious that the beer brand was trying to do something for their ‘partners’ involving Tik Tok and Instagram influencers other ‘talent’, preening and prancing around reception, so engrossed in themselves, that they constantly walked across me trying to take a picture of Kirsty in front of the giant World Cup. The quicker we could get out of this nightmare the better for all of us.

One of ‘these ‘brand activation gurus’ must have thought it would be a great idea to put a national anthem karaoke machine in the lift. Needless to say, Kirsty could not resist.

I wanted to check out the FIFA ‘Official Ticketing Centre’ to see how the land lies if we were lucky enough to beat Senegal later and get into the quarter finals. First up, though we had to watch another horse race, this time at Huntingdon. Hansard, one of the Noel Fehily Racing Syndicate team, trained by Gary Moore and ridden by his son, and brilliant jockey, Jamie was having his maiden race over hurdles. We sat down outside the centre and huddled around Kirsty’s phone. Hansard really looked like a rookie and it seemed like he wanted to do everything to make his trip as a hard as possible. Jamie duly performed an act of incredible horsemanship and brought Hansard home as the winner. Could that be an omen for the game later?

Needless to say the ‘ticketing centre’ wasn’t really doing anything to do with tickets, but outside was a sea of light blue and white as hundreds of Argentinians were on the hunt for tickets for their quarter final. We will be involved in that hunt if we beat Senegal.

There are plenty of opportunities to line up, or queue as we say in the UK, when using public transport. There is a vast variety of helpers in an array of different uniforms complete with big foam hands and megaphones. Qatar being Qatar, the megaphones seem to only broadcast pre-recorded messages though. It must be a control thing.

We still had a bit of time to kill before the France vs Poland game so felt we owed it to ourselves to check out the official ‘Fan Festival’ which was the largest of the ‘Fan Zones’ in the city. We had heard mixed reports, varying from fellow experienced England fan Billy’s, ‘well, it’s definitely an interesting experience’, to the multitudes of Tweets crashing into my Twitter timeline from FIFA sharing the news that ‘fans from all over the world were flocking there to celebrate with the global football family….’

From our first ‘entry’ into the ‘Fan Festival’ we saw more staff than ‘fans’. Something of a recurring theme out here. We had to walk for about 20 minutes going through what seemed to be endless security checks, before we entered ‘the zone’.

To say that the ‘Fan Festival’ in the ‘Fan Zone’ was anything other than a mix of the highest quality installations would be to do it injustice. There was a main stage with a screen that would rival The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury with a sound system to match. A DJ was on stage banging out dance classics from Faithless, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Chase & Status plus more. The only people dancing were a father with his very young child on his shoulders. We actually felt sorry for the organisers. This was more ‘Zone’ than ‘Fan’ with the staff outnumbering the visitors by a factor of about 100 to 1. Cities and towns around the world would kill for a place like this. Without any shadow of a doubt, the lack of bars selling beer will have definitely contributed to the poor attendances.

With the French game coming up fast, we had to get our skates on, walk for a few miles to get out of the ‘Fan Zone’, all the time saying about a hundred hellos to the endless supply of staff helpers along the way.

In a few hours, we would be headed to England’s biggest game since the Euros final in July 2021. Excited and anxious in equal measure, as always when England play.

As that saying goes it really isn’t the winning that matters, it really is the taking part. Well for Kirsty and I at least, if ever there was a statement more apt to this Rugby World Cup then we don’t know of it. It’s been amazing, it’s been the best and we are a little sad to get back to reality.

We came back from Japan too early really, and so when the chance came to return we had to take it. Despite all the rumours and nonsense around about the costs of match tickets and flights, we managed to get our return to Japan all in for a really reasonable price.

We arrived back in Tokyo on Friday just in time to catch the New Zealand vs Wales ‘bronze final’ on TV. The All Blacks returned to winning ways and two great coaches, Messrs Hansen and Gatland, waved goodbye for now. It looked emotional from where we were sitting.

We then headed out from our hotel in Kyobashi over to Shinjuku and the famous Golden Già district. The Golden Già is a unique place. In half a dozen narrow streets lays about 80 of the smallest and wackiest little bars anywhere in the world. There are strict rules of engagement so to speak, noise and loitering on the streets is frowned up, loudness inside the bars is also not widely appreciated and all littering including smoking and drinking on the street is definitely verboten.

We met up with our friends Simon, David and Josh and visited a number of bars some at street level and some up the narrowest of staircases. Each bar is owner operated and has its own particular idiosyncrasies. It’s as if you are drinking in someone’s front room, decked out with all of their own ephemera, which can reflect pop culture, music, videogames, films and retro toys. All in all each bar is it’s own place and each owner is their own person. If you are ever in Tokyo you must visit the district.

It was a very late night and we had a very big day. It was the final of the World Cup and we didn’t want to waste any of it. We had our very good friends at Special Effect’s flag to take and get some pictures to share for this wonderful charity.

We headed back to Yokohama on the Shinkansen and headed to the street party which is was the mashup of The Hub pub and the Lawson. We met more mates there who had flown in for the final and drank, ate and made merry.

We had a very stressful hour or so trying to hook up with friends who had our tickets. The plus side was bumping into old friends who we had not seen for ages, Mark and later Tim. Small world! And we got some great pictures for Special Effect.

After much rerouting we finally managed to get to the right entrance to meet our friends. Yokohama stadium has a very big footprint and is not the easiest place to get around. We found out later that the England team had underestimated their journey to the stadium and had arrived late too. Perhaps that was a bad omen!

We managed to get in for the kick off and anthems and it was an absolute pleasure to find ourselves bang in the middle of the main South African support in the ground. I also bumped into an old school mate Bruce and another games industry friend Alex in the ground.

The game was the game. The South African gentlemen we sat next two were more nervous than we were. After ten minutes I was convinced England were nowhere near the pace and I feared it was not our day. England had a good chance to score a try deep into the first half but the South African defence were too strong. Definitively a ‘what if moment’. At the end of the game the South African gentleman said to me ‘you should be a sports commentator ‘, which I found both flattering and a bit baffling. Pretty much everyone around us was as happy as they could be. Strangely enough Kirsty and I were both pretty circumspect and joined in the fun. In amongst the revelry, Kirsty borrowed one of the gentleman’s hats which was a rather wonderful customised yellow hard hat.

In all the confusion and admittedly with an air of hazy inebriation, Kirsty ended up with the hat and by the time I went back to the owner he had left the stadium. I was not happy and it felt like bad karma.

The evening was fantastic and we enjoyed the sights and sounds of Roppongi and more idiosyncratic bars including a bar on the 8th floor of a derelict feeling tower block where the lift only went to the 7th floor!

Somehow we got that hat back to our hotel at 5am. We woke up late, looked at the hat and I said to Kirsty we have to find the owner and get that hat back to him.

So we took to Facebook , Twitter and Instagram tagging all our South African friends, asking if anyone knew this man who owned the hat.

We headed back to the Golden Gai again, this time to meet up with another friend called Simon (I know so many Simons). By the time we were safely ensconced in the 5 Gallons bar, named presumably because it could hold five gallons and no more, we got a message that the owner of the hat had been identified by an old mate of mine from school who now lives in South Africa, Dom. Dom only knew one South African in the stadium and it was the owner of the hat! Now that really is a small world!

This put us in fine fettle and closed the loop of guilt we were feeling. Thank you to Mark, Simon, James, H, Vikki, Laura, Harriet, Emma, John and the two Micks, one from Australia and one from South Africa for a pretty amazing 12 hours or so.

Monday morning we laid plans to meet up with our friends at the old Tsukiji Market, which is a legendary fish market, for lunch. It was great to meet Angela and James who had been in Japan since the England vs Argentina game, where we had last met up,. They, like us, had had the time of their lives and would never forget Japan. We hugged and kissed after another fine Sushi lunch and remembered we would all be meeting at Cheltenham in ten days or so for racing.

We then headed off to see the hat owner, Solly and his friends Tim, who I had sat next to at the match, and Anthony. They were staying in The Square in Ginza the same hotel we had stayed in for that England vs Argentina game. Coincidences just keep happening. We shared a few drinks with the boys, many laughs and felt good that that hat had been returned to its rightful owner. The Karma police could take the day off. And we felt good that South Africa had won the Rugby World Cup held up by one of the nicest men on the planet right now, Siya Kolisi. As I say, Karma.

And that’s about it. As I write these words we are headed to Osaka to then fly to Munich and back to a cold and wet London. The sun is out here, it’s autumn and everything is calm. Calm is a great feeling and Japan has given Kirsty and I so many fantastic memories, we simply can’t wait to come back. To all the Japanese people, the families old and young and especially to the children all of you just threw yourselves into the spirit of rugby and being very active, welcoming hosts, we cannot thank you enough, you all made this World Cup so, so special. Sayonara Nippon. You have been the absolute best.

Sayonara Japan. We love you. Until the next time

Footnote – aside from the friends mentioned in this post, I would like to thank Gary, Milly, Joe, Tom, Ian, David, Darren, Alec, Lizzie, Lewys, Paula, Victor, Jim, Andrew, David, Carl, Ian, Ryan, Tim, Solly, Anthony and Maria all of whom made this trip exceptionally special.

We spent an amazing time in Thailand starting in Bangkok and finishing up in Krabbi. All the time we were there, I kept looking for tickets for the England vs Australia. Bingo, I finally got a basket with two tickets. All we needed to do was find flights back to Oita!

Kirsty didn’t appreciate the panic buying under time pressure of the RWC2019 site where the clock was ticking. It got hugely expensive very quickly and we ended up agreeing to stay in Thailand and maybe think about the final if that was ever to happen.

We watched Scotland play Japan in a bar in the Japanese quarter in Bangkok with our long lost friend Maria, thanks again to Facebook for making that happen. That was another incredible night of emotion and passion. Typhoon Hagibis was a bad as predicted and at the time of writing this blog over 80 people had lost their lives. The Japanese beat the Scots to win their group and dedicated their win to the victims of Hagibis.

We ended up watching the England vs Australia quarter final at Bagkok airport. What a game and what a performance by England. We also watched the All Blacks sweep aside the Irish to set up a semi final against England. Surely England would be up against all the odds in the semi final?

Well the rest is history. We watched the semi final before we went racing at Cheltenham last Saturday. Kirsty has gone with our friend Mary to see some horses and by the time she got back to our friend Mick’s house, I had booked flights to Tokyo and was on the case to get final tickets. Our friends Mick, Jack, Sinead, Drew, Beth, Alex, Rosie and Ruth all enjoyed the game and it was fantastic when Ruth persuaded her parents James and Angela who we had met up with for the Argentina to stay for the final.

And here we are now. At Heathrow ready to fly back to visit our old friend Japan. So many idiosyncratic and contradictory ways and yet my favourite country on the planet bar none. A country with the best people who make me laugh and cry with their humility and politeness. A country of order and yet one where cycling on pavements without any protocols seems to be mandatory. A country where you hear crazy cover versions of computerized Beatles songs in shops everywhere you go. A country where smoking is allowed in bars and restaurants but never in the street. A country where vending machines are ubiquitous but there are no litter bins because the Japanese take their little home with them. A country where you hear synthesized bird song on escalators, in lifts and at traffic lights. And above all a country that has once again made sports fans so welcome it makes grown men cry. Japan we have missed you and we can’t wait to see you again.

Another early start in Beppu given we wanted to make sure we experienced the hot sand bath. A short bus ride and we were there. Along with many other mainly Welsh fans. Basically you register, pay and take your place in the queue or go off and come back at your allotted time.

Once in, you separate into male and female changing rooms which were small to say the least. In there you strip down naked and then clean yourself via the Onsen style bucket and water and then put on your Yakata. You emerge from the changing room to be ushered into a long hole dug in the grey volcanic, hot sand. Our resting places resembled shallow graves. Once you are on your back the female team set about covering you in this incredibly hot sand until your head and neck are only visible. 15 minutes in there and you completely relax, get warm and feel incredibly peaceful. And 15 minutes is about all I could handle. Once you have been dug out of the sand, you head back to the changing room, shower off and discover that your skin feels like.you are two years old again, a rather wonderful feeling.

But we had no time to mess around. We swung by ours, changed, grabbed some Sushi from the supermarket and got weaving. We needed to get to the station and take the train a short hop, skip and a jump to Oita to meet our Welshfriends Lizzie, Alex, Lewys, Paula and our South African friends Ryan and Ian at one of the fan zones.

I was very pleased to be dressed in red as an honourary Welshman for the day. The Welsh supporters were out in force and in fine spirits. Today was going to be a real test for the team, but beat the Fijians and Wales were on track to win their group.

We found a great fan zone just the other side of the station and managed to talk ourselves into the ‘sold out’ big fop to watch the Argentina vs USA game. The layout was typically Japanese and idiosyncratic feeling like a mix of a big darts tournament and a family crèche. As usual there were all ages of Japanese there to experience the atmosphere. We met some lovely families all of whom seemed to enjoy the fact that we were visiting their home town, which we found out was not really on the tourist circuit so to speak, and this World Cup had definitely brought more foreign tourists than ever before. And that was positively welcomed by the locals.

Before our friends joined us in the big top,Kirsty started talking to a Welsh gentleman who turned out to be called Glynn who was a lovely chap. When Alec, Lizzie, Paula and Lewys joined us, the Welsh were in full voice and the atmosphere was cracking. Much like the Irish and Scots, the Welsh know how to have a good time and many people know each other often quite randomly. So we shouldn’t have been so surprised when it turned out that Glynn had built Alec’s Mum and Dad’s house back in Wales! Small world eh?

We met up with Ryan and Ian again and then descended on the 7Eleven to get some beers for the bus journey to the stadium. As always the stadium was out of town seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Kirsty led the singing on the bus much to the amusement /astonishment of our fellow Japanese travellers.

When we got to the ground at dusk it felt like an invading army had descended, given the sheer numbers of Welsh at the game. Kirsty and I finally met up my friend Mel and her husband Gavin who were over from Australia supporting Australia and Wales. Facebook can be an amazing thing, and yet again had enabled old friends who hadn’t met for 30 years to meet up. That was a lovely moment for me, it was so lovely to see Mel after all this time.

The game was brutal, both teams really going for it and each other. Eventually the Welsh prevailed and won the game, but this had been the closest and best match we had seen thus far.

Getting back to Beppu was surprisingly easy given plenty of buses being on hand and we only had to queue for about 30 mins. If England went through to the quarter final knockout stage, either as group winners or runners up, they and Wales, if they did the same, would play in Oita and we were pleased that this relatively unknown region of Japan and that would be a win win for everyone.

We got back to ours, pretty exhausted and definitely ready to sleep. We had an early start the following day as we planned to head back to Tokyo for the next stage of our adventure. England’s next game was France in what would be the group decider.

Next day we took the bus back to Oita airport. All the talk on the news was about the impending arrival of Typhoon Hagibis which was due to be very severe and it was clearly worrying pretty much everyone in Japan. We heard that there would be a decision about some key final group games the coming weekend, most notably the group decider between England and Wales and Japan and Scotland.

By the time we arrived at the airport, it had been announced that there would be a press conference at 12.30 local time about the England, France, New Zealand and Italy matches.

We met up with Lizzie and Alex who were heading home, sadly and all heard the news that those games had been cancelled and declared 0-0 draw. The Typhoon Hagibis was due to arrive and wreak its havoc.

Kirsty and I decided to head for Thailand for some R&R and a chance to consider what to do next.

And that was that, the end of our Japanese adventure, at least for the time being. As we left Japan, I for one, had a nagging doubt that we must go back for the knock out stages. Time would tell.

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And so we headed to Oita, or more accurately Beppu which is a seaside town just outside of Oita, set in the south, or the west end of Japan, depending on how you look at these things on the island of Kyushu. For once we took a flight and sadly increased our carbon footprint, as the train journey would have wasted time we didn’t have to waste. So we duly flew out of Haneda and down to Oita. We arrived about 9.30pm on Sunday night alongside the ITV RWC crew, led by Jill Douglas. A really helpful station master helped us find the bus to Beppu, I am not really surprised that he was so helpful, as that is the way in Japan as I have written so many times before, but this guy waited by the bus and waved us off. So sweet.

We soon got talking, or more accurately Kirsty got talking to a fellow traveler who had just arrived for the rugby. His name was Paul and he was off to see his son and his friends. Paul mentioned that his son Tom, was a musician and had justfinished a long tour. It turned out his son was Tom McFarland, the founder of Jungle a band I had seen at Glastonbury earlier in the year.

We decided to get an early night and settled in to watch Inception, which had been left hanging on Netflix by the previous occupier of our hotel room, purely by chance. And then it all started to come back. When I was in Kyoto, I kept referring to Mr Saito and Kirsty would wonder what I was talking about. I also remember, when walking through the Nijo Palace, where photographs were forbidden, thinking to myself I had seen this before, somewhere. And that was it. It was in Inception, the Nijo Palace and Mr Saito. What a coincidence! Here’s a little video of our room…

Next day we laid in for a bit and I recorded some more for BBC 5 Live and got those files delivered before deadline which was a load off my mind.

We decided to explore the local area of Kitahama which was known for natural hot springs. We jumped on a bus and then walked a pretty long way and decided to visit a couple. It seemed that there were a total of seven of these hot springs all of which were known for a particular feature. The Hell one, the blue one, the live geyser one, one that had some crocodiles, one that had bubbling mud resembling a monk’s tonshure and some that we weren’t sure what the unique feature was!

We visited three of the seven and decided to call it a day. It has to be said, they were pretty spectacular and well worth the effort.

We headed back to base, jumping off the bus early so we could see the sun go down on the beach. Beppu was a mix of 1960’s seaside style town with some pockets of technology and plenty of illumination at night. It was a little tired and yet very, very charming.

Beppu at night

Eventually we decided to find somewhere to eat and ended up in the equivalent of the greasy spoon, but instead of a fried breakfast, the two old guys served just two choices of dish, Ramen or Gyoza and one brand of bottled beer. Everywhere we looked the walls were pasted with old magazine pages and newspapers. In a corner I spotted pasted magazine pages featuring Thunderbirds, then I spotted The Saint, James Bond,,Godzilla and loads more 60’s pop culture icons. Anyway, given we love Gyoza, it was a no brainer. And what Gyoza it was. Probably the best I have ever eaten, so simple and so perfect.

We then went onto another bar come restaurant for a drink and ended up eating some more amazing food. This bar also had a retro vintage toy theme, this time there were cabinets full of the kind of toys I have carefully looked after since I was a child, and for those who know me well, you will know what I mean. I was literally in my idea of toy heaven.

Before we left we met an Aussie called Mick and his daughter who was half Fijian. Mick only needed a big knife and a crocodile to actually be ‘that’ Mick’, but he turned out to be a font of knowledge about all things rugby in Australia. Mick had clearly played the game, given that one look over his facial features confirmed he had seen plenty of real action. Upon further investigation we found out that Mick had played rugby league and when I asked him about Australia’s chances in this World Cup, he was pretty damning. He told us that the Aussie team was badly coached and was packed full of ‘tweed wearing public school boys’. He said categorically that if Australia played England in the quarter finals, England would win by a considerable margin. We parted as friends and shared plenty of laughs. You just new you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of Mick, ever.

And so another great day and night in this wonderfully weird and quiet town full of bizarre surprises drew to an end.

But we were on a roll now and in danger of setting a new world record of consecutive nights in the same bed! Tomorrow, Tuesday would be our record breaking third night in the same place. We decided to take the air and head to the Takasakiyama monkey sanctuary down the coast. Against all my better instincts, this place turned out to be pretty cool with two groups of monkeys numbering around 800 each taking turns to come down from the hills and get a free feed and observe us humans. The monkeys were well looked after and rules of engagement for human visitors were strict and for good reason. We spent hours there and the time did not drag. After the crazy schedule we had, we were grateful for some tranquil down time.

We just missed the famous Beppu hot sand bath by about 10 minutes, which was a shame given it was a lovely evening but we resolved to revisit the next day, which was match day. Wales vs Fiji.

We woke up bright and breezy in our hotel room in Shizuoka on Saturday morning. The hotel was old school, but lovely and the staff, as usual, simply wonderful. The breakfast was sublime with so much choice on show we could have dined for a week and not been bored. I suddenly remembered that BBC Radio 5 Live had asked if I could get some interviews with rugby fans for their show Wake Up To Money. That focused my mind, we needed to get to work.

We had to get a wriggle on as we needed to get to Tokyo, check in at yet another hotel and dump our bags off. I also wanted to get some RWC2019 merchandise, specifically a Japanese rugby shirt and one of the wonderful ‘Brave Blossoms’ T-shirts. As always, there was never any need to panic. Everything works, everything is smooth and plans are not only best laid, but best realised.

Our hotel was the first achingly cool one we had been to and it just didn’t feel right. It was in the Ginza district of Tokyo so we decided to walk with our bags from the Shinkansen station. It was another bright day, clear blue skies and a lovely warm sun on our backs. A quick turnaround and we were on our way back to Shibuya station where the official RWC2019 store was. We bumped into our mate Kevin the badge seller from Manchester who was plotted up outside with a few of his mates selling badges and match tickets. The clash of British and Japanese culture was right there!

Predictably the store was pretty much sold out of everything anyone actually wanted. Japanese kit of any sort was gone all bar female super small sizes. In fact anything medium, large or extra large was sold out. There were loads of kids stuff, plush toys and the like, but nothing much else. And it was not even the knock out stages of the tournament! This reminded me of how Japanese videogames companies run things. Clearly the people responsible for stock levels of official merchandise had undercooked the levels of interest that non Japanese fans would have in Japanese memorabilia. They most likely worried about being overstocked on stock lines. We know that these Japanese lines would be amongst the most popular and such is the body size difference between most of the visiting nationals and the Japanese, you would have thought that the M, L, XL and beyond would have been more generously stocked.

Needless to say, I could see exactly what had happened and when we got in there, I said to Kirsty ‘get what you can and don’t delay. Go for anything Japanese’. The only two items we could find were hoodies and track suit tops. My theory was there was still ‘some’ stock because no one thought about heavier items of clothing in that heat. We got a couple of garments and then decided to head to the Tokyo Stadium, which true to form was about a 40 min train ride out of town.

On the way out I saw Kev the badge seller and said to him that he should try and get some merch made up to sell ASAP. There was, for example, no official RWC2019 pin badge available anywhere!

On the train to the stadium I met a couple of lads from the Black Country who had, like us, really enjoyed Japan, the place, the culture and the people. One of the lads did add that he was looking forward to only one thing back home, which we ‘crusts’ in his bread. Most of the England fans were pretty quiet and relaxed, unlike the many Argentinians who were singing and bouncing reminding me of Boca Juniors fans before a big game. Unlike football, there was no bad feeling and only courtesy and smiles from all. This is rugby.

Orderly queues as always

When we came out of the station we decided to plot up outside a shop selling cold Asahis and soak up the atmosphere. It was here we met Carl and his friend Jim and Andrew and David in amongst the carnival atmosphere. It turned out Carl had been to the 1986 football World Cup in Mexico, and we agreed we must have been standing next to each other that fateful day when Maradona punched the ball into Peter Shilton’s net. Small world. I interviewed Carl too for Radio 5 Live and was happy when his piece was used on the show later the following week.

We had a great drink, met a Japanese fan wearing a West Ham shirt with Di Carnio. (Sic yes I know it should be Di Canio) and then moved on to the stadium to meet up with our friends James and Angela who had been in Japan a few days and as we were to find out were super excited by the whole shebang.

I had been to the Tokyo Stadium before, again in 2002 to see England draw 1-1 with Sweden in the football World Cup. It was good to be back and the atmosphere was simply incredible.

Kirsty and I saw a line out face off between a bunch of England and Argentinian fans, where the ball was being thrown in over a moat style piece of no man’s land. It was hilarious watching lads who were slightly heaved than they would like execute their line out moves to a pretty good standard considering how much beer they had drunk!

Eventually we met up with Angela and James at exactly the same time as we bumped into Victor Ubogu who we’ve got to know over the years. James was brilliant, he’s one of the world’s really happy people as well as being hugely tall. He grabbed me and said, ‘Andy, I can’t believe it, we’re here at the World Cup, in Japan, it’s sunny, we’re playing Argentina, we’ve got loads of beers and we’re having a drink with Victor’. From there on in, we knew the day was set well and we knew victory would be ours.

And it was. Another crazy red card did assist England, but I felt we were never in doubt and we ran out 39-10 winners. As the day went on, so it got more blurred, but we had the best time. We got some crazy Bento box as part of our seat ticket, which came in a lovely bag with a RWC poncho, seat cushion, water bottle and a match programme. It was all good.

When we got back to Tokyo and walked to Ginza, we managed to find a bar which was showing the Japan vs Samoa game. We had desperately wanted to see this game and for some reason it wasn’t being shown at the stadium after our game, which was a shame.

We managed to catch the 2nd half and witness another amazing victory for Japan against a team physically so much bigger than them. The Japanese played with their now signature pace and verve and duly delivered another famous result. The atmosphere in the bar, well outside actually, was just wonderful with all ages thoroughly enjoying the match. It was tense for a very long time, but the Japanese ran out 38-19 victors and added the scalps of Samoa to Russia and our beloved Ireland . After the heat of the day we got some rain. Tomorrow we were headed off to Oita right down in the south of Japan. The prospect of more than one night in a hotel really was rather appealing. And on Wednesday we would see Wales take on Fiji with our Welsh (and Irish) and South African friends.

Zipping off from Osaka again on the Shinkansen felt like the norm now. This time we were heading back to Tokyo to take a bus to Kawaguchiko which is a picturesque lake to the north of Mount Fuji. Ironically, we whizzed past Fuji on the train, so it felt a bit weird that we couldn’t jump off and get there without finding the bus. But such is life sometimes.

The bus to Kawaguchiko was easy and pretty efficient and took a couple of hours from Tokyo. Mount Fuji is normally shrouded in cloud and today seemed to be no exception!

We arrived early afternoon at the railway station that served the lake and found our way to our Ryokan, another traditional inn and our second of the trip. This place was a recommendation of our friend David, who now lives in Japan and has done for 10 years. This was a little bigger than the one in Miyajima, but no less quality. The rooms are wonderful and incredibly relaxing, and no shoes are allowed. You are even expected to use special toilet only slippers, in order to preserve the cleanliness throughout. Japanese toilets are pretty special and unlike any toilets anywhere else in the world. The seats are heatable, there are various sprays and fountains, hot air and more. Once you have experienced the sheer joys of a Japanese toilet, everything else becomes a little bit of a damp squib, no pun intended!

Anyway enough of toilet talk. Onsens, those hot communal baths, either public or private, are all part of the Ryokan scene. But tattoos are pretty much frowned upon in Japan and if you have any, you are generally not allowed to use a public Onsen. So we booked a private Onsen and it was as fantastic as ever.

We changed for dinner, watched France vs USA on Kirsty’s iPad and then enjoyed the most amazing food, again.

We had started to use Google Translate more and more on our trip, and that provided no shortage of hilarity given that the Google algorithm takes sometime to check with you on it’s translation before moving on and making improvements. It can sometimes throw up some awkward interpretations! Below was a selection of the ‘translations’ for our amazing breakfast the next day.

Sometimes it’s just better to get stuck in and eat, such is the incredibly high standard and presentation of Japanese food, everywhere!

We spent a day walking around the lake and enjoying the scenery. The area felt a bit like the Lake District in the U.K and for the first time in Japan, it felt a little tired and in need of a little bit of TLC. To be crystal clear, the standard of the area was still high, zero litter or graffiti, it just wasn’t as high as other places we visited in Japan.

The area seemed to be known for gemstones & herbs and it did seem that for families there was very little to do, and most visitors were in the area for a couple of days of hiking. We met a couple of English girls who were traveling and they had an Airbnb and were intending to dine out at 7Eleven and Lawson so they would or could not really contribute financially to the local economy and I suspect that would not be an isolated case.

We had a really enjoyable time in the fresh air even though Fuji was pretty obscured. We needed to find a place for dinner as Kirsty’s old friend Simon was going to come over and visit us. Simon, purely by chance was in Japan for the sports car racing as he works for Aston Martin. We found a lovely restaurant and figured out what to eat. Their kitchen closed at 9pm and Simon was running late. We knew he wasn’t able to eat fish or seafood, so we chose the local signature dish Shabu Shabu. This proved to be somewhat hilarious in the eating given it was like a Fondue with hot brothy water rather than cheese, into which you cook vegetables, thinly sliced meat and incredibly slippery fat rice Udon noodles. All of this armed only with chopsticks which were the only tools of extraction!

It was great to meet Simon at long last and man did we all have a laugh, and swear a bit too. The whole episode was like being caught in an Escher drawing, but for real. Even if we had seafood and fish, Simon would have been fine, he would never have got it anywhere near his mouth!

We turned in and I set an alarm. It was Glastonbury ticket time again and I needed to be awake at 2am to see if I could buy our tickets. Other friends from the UK were on and our Whatsapp group was pinging away. The coach tickets were sold out in about 24 mins. The main tickets were going on sale on Sunday morning, 9am UK time. So our hopes rested on that.

Next morning we checked out of our amazing Ryokan and headed to Shizuoka for the next game we were going to. Italy vs South Africa.

Today was Friday 4th October and that was One Special Day, the day many games companies gave up their daily revenues to support Special Effect, the gamers’ charity which ensures everyone, no matter what their disability is, play games on a level playing field. We had to get a picture of my old One Special Day T-shirt in front of Mount Fuji.

Our bus duly arrived, and we climbed aboard ‘Thomas & Friends’ and headed to Mishima to get the Shinkansen to Shizuoka. We loved our time in Kawaguchiko, thanks to David for recommending this part of the world. And yes, true to form we zipped past Mount Fuji again on the train. It seems wherever you go, Mount Fuji is likely to be in view!

Another day and another big Japanese city, this time Osaka via the Shinkansen from Hiroshima. We had no actual plan of activity at this point, so just went with the flow. So much so that we actually decided to head straight to Kobe once we had found our hotel. There was unfinished business to be sorted.

Gary and Joe had met with David and his Dad, John and his Mum, Clare the day after the England vs USA game in Kobe to sample the world famous Kobe steak. Kirsty had felt short changed that she had missed out on sampling that speciality, and had been banging on about it ever since. Kobe is only 30 mins away from Osaka by train and Scotland were playing Samoa there that evening, which was a bonus. So we agreed to seek out Kobe steak. We found a lovely restaurant on Tripadvisor and sampled away. It was pretty amazing, even for an ex-vegetarian like me. The chef moved his knives like Dynamo at his very best, such was the speed and sleight of hand. We savoured it and we won’t forget it, the quality of meat was outstanding, think semi soft full fat butter with a slight and distant taste of Bovril. Delicious.

Post prandial, we decided to hit the Kobe Fan Zone and see if we could get some tickets for the match. That didn’t work out, but there were plenty of Scots and a few Samoans around plus a smattering of other fans and the atmosphere was great, as usual. The queues for beer tokens and for the beer itself were virtually non existent, nothing like the queues the last time we were in town but then again there were fewer Scots fans here than English. But the Scots won the dressing up contest hands down, they always do! As do the Irish and the Welsh!

We watched the Scotland vs Samoa game on the big screen in a wonderful setting. The Japanese fans were out in force and all sat in an orderly fashion on the neatly arranged benches. Before we sat down to join them though, Kirsty showed some other rugby fans and the Land Rover team running the show, how things were done by successfully spin passing a rugby ball into a net. That one will go down alongside Kirsty’s goal kicking fest with Graham Bell at Henley Rugby Club a few years back. It really was hilarious. A couple of Americans were shown up when they failed to do what Kirsty had done.

There were very few non-Japanese fans in the park at kick off which wasn’t surprising given the Scots were playing up the road. Bernie and Sian were, like us, in Japan for the rugby. Bernie was Irish and Sian Welsh. We shared a few pints and all shouted for Scotland who needed to win and win with a bonus point after their loss to the Irish.

It was a great performance by the Scots on a very humid evening. And then the fun really started. Out of nowhere at the end of the match a piper dressed in full traditional Scottish dress, banged out ‘Scotland the Brave’, ‘Highland Laddie’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ with his fellow pipers. It was sensational and had all the Japanese fans up and dancing as well as all of us. The hilarious and wonderful thing about the lead piper was he was Japanese! That one moment summed everything up about this World Cup and how the Japanese have embraced the spirit of the game more than any hosts ever did in the past.

Another great night, plenty of laughs and a wonderful atmosphere. We got back to Osaka in a haze, euphoric but exhausted. And slept.

We woke up the next morning, to blazing sunshine and decided to go to the huge Osaka aquarium via the Pokemon Store. Both were amazing. Both had space for school children to experience and learn, which is another great feature about Japan and Japanese society. Children are allowed to be children. Learning, writing things down and interacting with adults seems to be key and it’s refreshing.

Needless to say the Osaka Aquarium was five or six storeys high and had an incredible variety of sea life. By the time we left it was dark, the Osaka light show was in full swing, just like every other city in Japan that we had visited.

Our friends, Lizzie and Alec, who we had met in Miyajima were in town and we met up for beers and Gyoza. We shared plenty of laughs and memories and resolved to meet at the Wales vs Fiji game in Shizuoka later in the week. Fun times ahead.

For now, we were headed to Mount Fuji. More fun times ahead.