G8 Online

Unsurprisingly, we failed to get up early this morning as we had tentatively been planning, so our visit to Yokohama had to be abandoned. When we did finally drag ourselves out of bed, Sultoon subjected us to the experience of watching parts of the video he had made of moments from the previous night's karaoke. Stunned by the awfulness of what we had done, we began to make some unambitious plans for the day.

The football was absolutely crucial : Sweden v Nigeria would effectively decide what result England needed against Argentina, so we had to fit that in. Ideally we would catch some of Spain v Paraguay, but we had made arrangements for the evening match which meant we wouldn't be able to see all of it ... it was another all-you-can-drink bar with Tommo and the big names from Yuhei's workplace.

Lunchtime was already upon us, so we decided to fill the couple of hours we had free before the first match by going to the beer museum which had stitched us up earlier in the week. This time it was open, and the disappointment was that it was poor. Nevertheless, they did have a con involving beer-tasting, so we tried a few for a small fee, and filled in the provided sheet ranking the beers in quality order. Fox had taken this opportunity to catch up on a couple of other areas of Tokyo that he had missed through arriving later than us, so we agreed to catch up with him at the Clubhouse bar for the Sweden game.

Having persuaded them to let us sit at a reserved table (the people who'd reserved it were only coming for the England game), we sat down and watched what turned out to be a great game. The highlight, for those that didn't see the match, was a sublime comedy own goal attempt. A Swedish defender cleared the ball off his own line into the shins of his own team-mate Johan Mjallby; the rebound from Mjallby smacked against the post and into the arms of the goalkeeper. We were of course disappointed, as this let-off allowed the Swedes to come back for a 2-1 win that meant England were out if they lost to Argentina, and struggling if they drew.

We diverted ourselves, therefore, by bantering a nearby chump. A Canadian bloke was sitting near DV and Sultoon in the bar, so obviously DV took it upon himself to say, "You must be pleased about the USA win the other day ..." "No, no, I'm Canadian!" said the young loudmouth. A few minutes later, Sultoon chipped in : "You must be pleased about USA beating Portugal ..." The bloke wasn't too offended, though, and instead decided to boast about his prowess with Japanese women : "Hey, I'm only 18, but these girls can't get enough of me over here, it's great! I've learned a few lines of Japanese ..." At this point, Sultoon and George smelled a con.

"We've got a line that always works well. It's 'geri-o shitamachi'," they explained. "It means 'You're very pretty'."

"Geri-o shitamachi! This is great! I must write this down ..." said the Canadian. Shortly afterwards he wandered off to try his luck with this new gem, blissfully unaware that he was about to tell some poor Japanese lady that he had diarrhoea.

Amused by this stitch-up, we watched Paraguay take the lead against Spain before heading off to our rendezvous with the big names for the England match. We stopped off at some amusement arcade which had an electronic darts game (truly awful) and a football shot-power tester, where you kick the ball as hard as you can and it measures the speed. This was quite poor as well, but it passed the time until we had to get a train to our next destination.

Unfortunately, our train decided to skip a station, for reasons we only worked out after us, leaving us scrambling to get back in time for the game. Having had the entire day to get there, I wasn't best pleased about this, but I needn't have worried, as we arrived at the bar with more than ten minutes until the kick-off. On the way in we met our Japanese companions, Yuhei included, and explained to them just how excited and nervous we were. The tension had been building up all day and by the time it kicked off, we were in serious need of the supplied drinks.

Imagine our consternation, then, when the projector cut out after ten minutes. I just sat there with my head in my hands as this crisis unfolded, unable to believe this disaster was happening. Fortunately, they got it going after a couple of minutes and we hadn't missed anything.

The bar itself was not up to the standards of the place where we'd watched the France - Senegal match - we were a little more cramped, and sitting in rows instead of at a big table - but there was still plenty of value to be had. In front of us were sitting a group of Japanese watching the game, including three girls whose main contribution was to emit squeals of excitement quite literally every time David Beckham was shown on screen. After a while, for value, we started joining in with the squeals, which seemed to discourage them for some reason.

The folks in front had also asked us if we would be doing a bit of singing, since we were all dressed up in our England shirts. We were happy to oblige after the initial temptation subsided, and soon some old favourites were rolled out. There were lots of "Seaman!"s, and even one "Sleeman!" (would you believe it Slee?), for starters; then, as England began to take control, we got louder and enjoyed ourselves more and more. "There's only Juan Veron and he's shit!" we cried as the Man Utd muppet misplaced another pass (we were asked what this meant, but couldn't really translate ...). The Japanese joined in with "The Great Escape", and seemed to be on our side. Trevor Sinclair became our hero for the evening as he came on for Hargreaves and proceeded to make some great runs at the Argentinian defence, mis-hitting his shot when on for a sensational goal. Owen hit ths post, and the excitement was building. When the penalty was given, we had to stop ourselves from celebrating until it was in ... we could hardly watch ... but then, like pretty much everyone who's reading this, exploded with delight as Becks hit the back of the net. We then sang through most of the half-time interval, confusing our hosts with "The Argie train came over the hill" and other popular classics. Inexplicably, they began to give us sake as well as beer, but it was quite enjoyable and just helped us to get more and more battered

Pictures from half-time : Tommo and friend Sultoon and I Fox, Sultoon and DV

Tommo, we had decided by now, was a massive name - Yuhei certainly seemed to think so. He was basically a Japanese version of a wide-boy, definitely up for some naughtiness, and able to get what he wanted (it was Tommo who had booked the bar, and the one for France-Senegal as well). We decided that he was definitely value.

Anyway, you all remember the second half : Rio and Nicky Butt were quality, and Argentina only had occasional chances. After the match we all paid up and spilled out into the street singing with delight.

The Japanese on the street were amused and pleased by this, and we wandered off to the station. There we got onto the train, no doubt amusing the public again (here's a good picture of DV) in great spirits to some sports-themed Budvar-sponsored bar, where Yuhei and friends were good enough to buy some drinks. At the entrance I met this Japanese girl called Kanako, who was wearing a "Beckham" England shirt, and after a chat in her perfectly competent English, she came over and joined us as well.

Amid all the chatter and drinking, however, we missed the last train, although all our Japanese friends (Yuhei included) seemed to slip out at just the right moment to get it. Kanako, however, had decided to stay with us, so we wandered off and went bowling.

This was good value : there were three more Japanese England supporters in the lane next to us, who began typing in their names as "Beckham" and "Owen" in honour of the victory. At this point George and Sultoon intervened and made sure that the third name was "Sinclair" in honour of Tref's marvellous contribution. We had some excellent fun, although Fox disappointingly won both games (irritatingly stealing the second one from me despite my PB of 152. Yes, I still remember.) Sultoon insisted on his usual ludicrous antics, attempting to throw the ball down the lane with dramatic spin and ending up chucking it lamely into the gutter on a number of occasions.

After all this we were knackered, since we had stopped drinking and the morning-after feeling was kicking in. It was three in the morning, so we still had a couple of hours to kill; George was broken, Fox was growing irritable, and we were generally not on top form. In the end, Sultoon, myself and our Japanese lady hanger-on went and got a karaoke booth. Unfortunately I couldn't sing since I had lost my voice from all the shouting earlier on; Sultoon wasn't in a much better way, so we left it to Kanako and her actually quite impressive singing voice.