G8 Online

A big day out beckoned as we prepared for the Germany v Ireland match. We had spent the entire holiday hoping for lots of value from foreign football fans, but in fact, approximately 90% of the gaijins we had seen were Irish. We felt slightly cheated by this - having travelled all the way round the world, we ended up meeting people we could have easily encountered by simply wandering into the betting shops on Cowley Road. Nevertheless, we'd broadly decided to back the Irish, since we just couldn't find it in our hearts to cheer on the Germans.

The match wasn't until the evening, though, and Yuhei only had the afternoon off, so while Sultoon and Fox dozed, George, myself and DV went to the National Museum, which was conveniently located about five minutes from our ryokan. After taking in some suitably impressive swords and armour, lots of Buddhist / Shinto art, and stuff like this (a crap sample picture, but I couldn't use flash), we eventually reunited with the others and boarded the train to Ibaraki.

This was in itself something of a bad move : we'd decided to make full use of our expensive Japan Rail Passes, but being on a standing-room-only train for two hours (supposedly a "fast train", but in fact irritatingly slow) wasn't the best preparation. Nevertheless, we chatted cheerfully enough with a few Irish fans on the way there (not a German in sight - there were apparently 10,000 Irish in Japan), and Yuhei did a spot of translating so that the Irish fans could talk to the baffled Japanese punters who were sitting on the train wondering what the hell was going on. Soon the locals were producing their cameras to get their photos taken with the more flamboyantly-dressed of the Irish supporters, and there were generally good spirits (given the discomfort) all the way to the stadium.

On arrival at the terminal in Kashima where you catch the shuttle bus to the stadium, we were outraged. One of the "Bollocks blokes" (see Day 6) had turned up as an Irishman! We could hardly complain as we weren't exactly 100% Irish ourselves, but the bloke was obviously just there to abuse some Germans. Dreadful.

Before heading into the stadium, we stopped off at the "World Food" stalls outside, for some distinctly non-"World" food. Instead of the comedy potatoes and bratwurst we had been anticipating, it was all burgers and meat on sticks, but it wasn't too bad for all that, so we grabbed a bite and headed inside, a good two hours early.

We found ourselves surrounded, predictably enough, by green-shirted Irishmen, who had colonised pretty much all of our end of the stadium - a stark contrast to the small enclaves of national support that we'd seen at the Argentina v Nigeria game. The German fans were up at the far end, which was slightly disappointing, as we had concluded that they would provide much more comedy value. We weren't to be completely thwarted in our quest for amusing Germans, though, as I'll explain in a second.

First, though, Fox had, with what in hindsight was perhaps slightly dubious judgement, decided that he was damn well going to stick up his big England "N.F.F.C." flag that he had spent hours sewing together before leaving home. Having found a balcony from which to hang it and meticulously secured it, imagine his disappointment when an official went over and took it down again. Fox took the flag off the official, but although Yuhei appeared and tried to work out what was going on, he was only able to deduce that someone thought it had something offensive written on it. We were confused, but the decision was taken to put it up somewhere else. At this point a few tough-looking Irish blokes took it upon themselves to ask, essentially, just who the fuck we thought we were. Having underestimated the distaste that the hardcore Irish fans would hold his flag in, Fox grudgingly accepted defeat and folded the thing up again, wrestling with his conscience about whether to support the Germans after all.

The atmosphere was starting to build as the players came out to warm up, and a couple of German fans were beginning to draw themselves to our attention. One was sitting (well, standing on his seat) a few rows down from us, while his mate was a few rows higher up. It was the bloke in front of us that was more vocal, and he provided absolutely superb value, completely negating the poor value emanating from the American bloke from the previous match who was once again sitting just behind us.

Sultoon made it a personal mission to extract as much value from him as possible (as above - bigger version here), and proceeded to banter him, video him, and anything else he could think of. Having obtained a bizarre chant of "We fuck the Irish! We fuck the Irish! I fuck the Irish!" from him, Sultoon then tried to get him to join in with "Ballack is bollocks!", only to instead hear in return a loud but slightly confused yell of "I like the bollocks!".

The Germans at the other end of the pitch would no doubt also have been value, with banners including one reading (translated) : "Carsten Jancker - Football God". There was also a sighting of the ubiquitous "FC St Pauli Reds" banner, which we'd already seen on telly in Germany v Saudi Arabia and then again, bizarrely, at Argentina v Nigeria.

Anyway, to the match. The first half wasn't great, and Ireland contributed little, such that by half-time we were already demanding that they bring on Quinn, take off Kilbane and move Duff to the left wing (strangely, the same thing that everybody everywhere demanded Ireland do for the entire tournament). Duff was the only threat and looked like a class player, but the German defence was well marshalled by Ramelow and Miroslav Klose's header in the goal just in front of us separated the teams at the interval (picture of general first half action). This delighted our Germany-cheering friend, whose "Super Deutschland" chants had very much been going against the flow. The Irish fans, meanwhile, had precisely one song. To the tune of "Those were the days, my friend", it went : "Come on you boys in green, come on you boys in green, come on you boys, come on you boys in green [repeat as necessary]." By the 20-minute mark we were already bored of this and hoping to start a chorus of "Come on you Gary Breen, come on you Gary Breen", but the Irish supporters insisted on wheeling the original version out every couple of minutes for the entire match. We were soon fed up of it. Wandering around at half-time, Fox spotted a couple of Irish supporters singing (to the tune of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart") - "Duff, Duff will tear you apart, again" - it was a sad reflection of the lack of variety that at the time I thought this was a really good effort.

Anyway, most of you will remember the second half : Germany get unnecessarily defensive, Ireland bring on big Quinny, Kahn makes an absolutely amazing save from Robbie Keane, there's a prolonged spell of pressure for the last 20 minutes leading to a Quinn knock down and Keane finish in injury-time (shit picture of celebrations). The stadium exploded in excitement all around us, and we were swept up in the entire thing - it was great. Unfortunately, concern over the transport away from the ground at this late hour led us to leave the ground pretty much on the final whistle, missing some of the Irish fans partying. Presumably, though, this would have just consisted of another few rounds of "Come On You Boys In Green", so perhaps it wasn't so bad after all. There were some pretty impressive after-match fireworks though, and DV reckoned that the Deutschland bloke had his head in his hands crying as we left the stadium. Anyway, we did get onto another packed train to make it back to Tokyo at 1 a.m., all ready for Day 11 >