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Visiting the Okada family home was, of course, a pleasure rather than an obligation. So off we went in the Sunday morning sun to a station twenty minutes or so from our ryokan, which was the nearest point on public transport to Yuhei's abode. By now it was past eleven o'clock - while others dozed, I had spent the morning fruitlessly chasing around trying to withdraw cash so that I could buy a new memory card for my camera. I'd not only failed, but my fully-paid-up credit card had been declined by the strange Japanese technology. However, a trip chez Okada was bound to cheer me up.

Yuhei lives on the twelfth storey of a block of flats, in a nice cosy little apartment with the family. On the way up, we discovered the fantastic system of "cars on elevators", a system used to save space for parking. This operates by having banks of three cars which are stored in a contraption which acts much like three open-ended, vehicle-sized concrete shoe boxes stuck on top of one another. A button is pressed, and the rack of "shoe boxes" moves up or down so that your own vehicle (or empty parking space) reaches ground level, ready for use. This was quite cool.

Anyway, we made it up in the lift and met Mrs Okada, who had been good enough to produce us a quality lunch. Unfortunately, Mr Okada could not be present, as he was tending to Yuhei's seriously ill grandfather. However, we enthusiastically tucked into a lunch which had a distinctly Japanese flavour (sushi, rice-wrapped-in-little-omelettes) while still containing plenty of stuff for George and Fox (sandwiches, meat on sticks). We had a pleasant chat, and Yuhei's mum spoke excellent English, as we might have expected given that she'd spent time in Britain. We bantered Yuhei with the occasional gag about him getting married, and took a few photos.

This is us as photographed by Mrs Okada (bigger version). She then proceeded to present us with nice little gifts : Japanese-style bookmarks with traditional-style artwork on them.

Having enjoyed our lunch and a bit of a chat, it wasn't long before we were on our way again, and our next stop was the ultimate Japanese stiou attraction, the 100 Yen Plaza. This is like an "Everything's A Pound" shop in this country, only better, since it has things that are actually of some use, and also costs nearer 50p so that stious like us can buy twice as much. It was, therefore, good value, as we could buy nice souvenir chopsticks and other assorted pointless bits and bobs. On the way out, I also purchased myself a small Japanese flag which I'd noticed at the exit, so that I could wave it at the evening's match against Russia.

This turned out to be a mistake. Having crossed town to have a look for entertainment and a place to watch the evening's match, I then discovered to my chagrin that when I had nipped back into the store, I'd left my wallet behind. To their credit, nobody bantered me about this, and a couple of phone calls later (the shop's phone number was on the receipts), Yuhei had found out that the wallet had been spotted and kept safe by the shop staff. I therefore wasted another hour and a quarter dashing back and forth across town to get it. Meanwhile Sultoon and George kicked their heels idly, and DV went off to meet his mates briefly. Yuhei and Fox exchanged their digital cameras for new versions (their old ones had turned out to be poor, despite the hassle they had gone through to get them), and picked up Yuhei's brother ... and then we all had to meet up again.

At this point, DV's behaviour seemed a little random. He phoned up and insisted that we all go to Harajuku station, since he had found some kind of football-playing place that was great value. We'd all agreed something entirely different, but he eventually managed to persuade us that this was a good idea, so off we all went again. Luckily, Sweat turned out to be right.

What he had found was "Nike Park" - basically a gigantic advert in which you can play a part, but nevertheless superb. There were a number of outdoor three-a-side courts, like the one on TV (of course), and all you had to do was put your name down and you could join in the fun. Obviously, we all had to have a go, and pretty much everyone got a good run-out. It was winner stays on, but not next-goal-wins : instead it was first to two, so that you at least got a minute or two each time. Our lack of fitness showed, as both the teams we put together managed to win two games before failing in their third.

Inside the nearby building was even more value : a load of different games of skill for us to try out. Anyone who's been to Nike Town on Oxford Street will have some small idea of what it was like : cages in which you were invited to try different tricks. However, it was a bit more involved than the Oxford Street version. There was a shot-power-measurement cage, a skills-practice cage, another three-a-side court, and much more. Highlights were a volleying game where balls dropped out of different holes above your head and you had to adjust quickly and hit a target, and something with a layout like a tennis court in which you played in pairs and had to place free-kicks to hit the targets above your opponents' heads.

Needless to say, we hung around for ages messing about with all this stuff. I thought you might like to know that the shot-power-ranking is : 1) George, 2) DV, 3) Fox, 4) Yuhei, 5) Me, 6) Sultoon. Fox is best at hitting targets over a net, and DV is pretty good at the volleying thing.

Anyway, we couldn't stay forever, and there was a match to see - the one the whole country had been waiting for, Japan v Russia. All day on the trains we'd been seeing people in Japan shirts left, right and centre, mostly with "Inamoto" or "Nakata" on the back. As we headed out of Nike Park, there were a few more, so we followed them, and found that they were heading towards a public open area round the corner. In it was a great big screen, and a crowd was beginning to gather. Perfect!

There also seemed to be some kind of outdoor club/rave affair going on about 100 yards away. This was a bit confusing : only about 50 people were there, but they had a pretty impressive sound system and were dancing away with great energy to some hard house / techno DJ. Highly unusual, we thought, but we had a match to watch, and so wandered back to the big screen and tried to get comfortable. (Crap picture of the crowd)

Strangely, the music ended when the match kicked off, but that didn't mean it was about to go quiet. The singing and shouting wasn't constant (the first half was so uninspiring that it couldn't be) but it was great fun and the atmosphere was still really good. Thousands of people had turned up by now, and although their library of songs was limited ("Inamoto! Inamoto!", "Yana-gisawa! Yana-gisawa!", etc.), at least everyone could join in. A big crowd favourite was "Nippon, nippon - nippon, nippon, nippon HAI HAI HAI-HAI-HAI! [repeat]" which we rather enjoyed.

In the second half Japan did make the breakthrough, and when Inamoto scored the crucial goal the place went crazy for a while. Then everyone calmed down a little for the rest of the match, Bestchastnykh missed an easy chance, and the tension was building. Meanwhile, I was being talked to against my will by a Bob Marley-style stiou who kept going on about how England would win the World Cup and how Scholes was quality. Luckily he was distracted by a completely wasted attempt to pull some random bird, so I was able to get away.

The pandemonium when the final whistle went was a great experience. The singing doubled in volume, some random tropical-style drummers struck up to give it all a bit of a party atmosphere, and everyone in the area spent the next hour or two jumping up and down and grinning at each other (crap picture). We had been planning to head off, but decided to stay on and take in the atmosphere. Consequently, we spent our time celebrating with the home fans, and getting into random photo s with people we'd never met.