Only the fans are big in Japan

David Baddiel13 April 2012

Here is a list of things you may not know about Japan at the present time:

1. They're not that bothered about the World Cup.

Well, the younger generation are bothered: the guy who stood next to me at Japan v Belgium, for example - who, frankly, seemed to have eaten all the teriyaki - got so excited when Japan scored their second goal that he kissed me, five or six times (before adding, helpfully, "I am not a homosexual.") Undeniably though, the atmosphere at the co-hosts opening game was fantastic.

There are also loads of 18-year-old girls who scream at the mere mention of David Beckham. But it's a young sport - the J-League only started in 1993 - and the older generation are still more interested in Sumo or golf or baseball, and slightly confused by the ardour of foreign fans.

Fact: mainstream Japanese TV is not showing all the games. About a third of them are only available on an obscure channel called Sky Perfect. If you want to watch these games you have to find a sports bar that is showing them, like the one I went to to watch Brazil v Turkey, Mad Mulligans. There I met a sergeant-major from the British Army who told me that life on the Falklands is so boring that helicopter pilots will deliberately fly over penguin colonies very slowly so as to make the penguins looking up at them gradually fall over.

The day I got here I couldn't find anywhere to watch Denmark-Uruguay so eventually I gave up. The next day, The Daily Yomiuri, the newspaper that gets delivered to my hotel room, began its report: "If the World Cup keeps delivering football like this, we are in for a tournament to top all tournaments." Thanks. (I like The Daily Yomiuri, though. It also said that when Uruguay scored, "Fat Man Coach Victor Pua bounced fleshily in delight" and quoted Mick McCarthy as saying, post the Cameroon game, "Well, when you concede a goal six minutes before half-time it kind of pisses you off." Was that reported in Britain?)

They're packed to bursting, most of the sports bars: the Japanese haven't quite understood that people coming to the World Cup want to watch all the games. Asking a hotel concierge, for example, why the hotel has not got Sky Perfect will be met with a smile and a shrug and absolutely no sense of outrage. You want to shout "But it's the World Cup!" in his face but it will make no difference. The truth is that the competition has made little dent in established Japanese culture.

2. Japanese TVs have a bilingual button on their remote controls, which brings up overdubbed English at the merest flick. This means that we can still listen to Motty or Barry Davies commentating over here. I first pressed this button just before the start of the Germany v Saudi Arabia game, to hear Tony Gubba describe the Saudi Keeper, Mohammed Al Deayea, as "a good shot-stopper".

3. The British Embassy in Tokyo presently houses about 20 British MPs, who are themselves here playing in a football team, managed by Lawrie McMenemy, which I have to say is a bit of a comedown for the big former guardsman. I sat in the social bar of the British Embassy watching Italy-Ecuador. Listening to them all sing their version of the Arsenal fans' "We love you Freddie because you've got red hair". It went: "We love you Lawrie, because you've got grey hair". The words taxes, is, this, why, I, pay, and them came to mind.

Their team played the Japanese Diet on Saturday and beat them 1-0. It made me wonder if anyone outside the stadium was accidentally converted to raw fish by hearing fans shout "Go on the Japanese Diet!"

4. Belgian fans at Japan v Belgium were chanting in English. This included: "We love you Belgium, we do", "Come on you reds", and, after their first goal, "You're not singing any more", which really wasn't going to have much impact on the Japanese fans.

5. Benny Hill was right. It's more of a general point about Japan, I admit, but there simply is no getting away from this: as far as the English voices produced by their bilingual buttons are concerned, they have no ristened.

I spent about half an hour talking to a Japanese person the other day about how parts of Tokyo are meant to be the basis for the look of Blade Runner, to no avail. But I knew she knew the film. I knew what was wrong.

Eventually, may God forgive me, I went for it. I said: "You know: Brade Lunner." And, no word of a lie, her face cleared instantly and she said, "Oh yes! Hallison Ford!" The best example of the continuing power of the l and r mixup is in Shinjuku, the red-light district, where there is a bar called Angel Kiss, underneath which it says, fantastically, "Talent in Pub"; but, even more fantastically, on the other side of the door it actually says "Tarent in Pub". English fans must have been piling in there every night assuming he's hosting a celebrity pub-quiz.

6. There is a major shrine in the centre of Tokyo called "Hi Ginger" which has been attracting a lot of visits from Irish fans and Paul Scholes.

I say all this, of course, mainly to avoid talking about the England game.

I'm sure it's all been said by now: Beckham was playing too wide, Scholes too deep, and the defence too badly. I don't know why Sven has resorted, at this late stage, to playing the long ball game, but if he must, then someone needs to tell his players that they need to knock the ball over the opposing defence so that Owen can run on to them, rather than just onto the heads of the players who tower above him. The mood of the fans at the game was weird, partly because that band who are at every game insisted on playing We're On The Ball too much, rather than Three Lions - a clear error - and partly because, although it seemed as if the crowd was packed with England fans, this was an illusion: about 80 per cent were Japanese fans in England shirts, who only get excited when the ball is about five yards from the goal - at which point they scream.

The hardcore England support was therefore only in pockets around the enormous stadium, which meant chanting and singing never built up a real momentum, except after the goal: and soon after that, of course, the team panicked, because they're all so young - I bumped into David Platt the day after the game, who said, "they need someone like Tony Adams, don't they? Just to calm things down" (and I wanted to promote him from the Under-21s' management immediately, come to think of it, I'd be happy if the team had someone like David Platt) - which meant that the mood of the fans became progressively more edgy and depressed, until Sweden scored, and then it never really recovered. The ones immediately around me were reduced to singing "Have you ever seen Freddie with a bird?" and, would you believe it, the bloody band joined in.

Still, England fans I've spoken to have cheered up a bit since - mainly because they've drunk so much - and the feeling is that if we get it together, we needn't lie down and lose to Argentina. The worry is that if we do lose and Sweden beat Nigeria, then of course Argentina and Sweden may just play out a draw in the last game, but let's not think of that: onwards and upwards to Sapporo, where at least the fans should be okay for beer.

One final note: the mood of the fans was not helped post-match by the alarmingly large Japanese police presence, both outside the ground and in all major nightspots in Tokyo. Someone has told the person in charge of security at this World Cup that ownership of an England shirt is basically tantamount to saying "I'm going to smash this bar up" which they should know is wrong as it may be the only one showing all the games. The police around the stadium were actually carrying light sabres - completely true - red flashing ones, which they were using to point the unwashed hordes of Boss Whitey in various directions. Any second I was expecting Hallison Ford to turn up.

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