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Today was always going to be the highlight of the holiday, and there are dozens of photos to prove it. We were up bright and early to get on with the face-painting ritual that we had planned for, an activity which provided much amusement to our host, the nice lady who owned the hotel. She was fascinated as we decorated ourselves in front of the mirrors and basins just off the ryokan's hallway. The American guests there were bemused - they were apparently members of some pottery club or something that had an expedition to Japan (God knows why), and weren't quite expecting to be confronted by enthusiastic "soccer" fans. However, nobody took us for 'fooligans' (a term the Japanese used for any football fan clearly from Britain, regardless of violent intent), and we gamely posed for a few snaps for our host's benefit.

Then, looking amusingly conspicuous in our face paint and flags, we headed for the station to get the bullet train we had booked to Osaka. Unfortunately, this once again failed to involve travel on the Honkee line; although in fact, once we got to Osaka, we did have to travel on lots of other lines, since the route to the stadium wasn't entirely clear to those not used to the vagaries of the Osaka public transport system. However, we did make it to the right station eventually, and made our way out towards the stadium.

It was at this point that the madness began. As we approached the large public square in front of the entrance-way to the stadium, we were confronted by the first Japanese person asking to have their picture taken with us. Before he had finished, another request came ... and so it went on. We were given small children to hold for photo opportunities, and posed for lots of snaps with random cheerful Japanese people in Beckham shirts before we even made it into the square. An English newspaper photographer asked for a photo, although we have no idea whether it made it into the press back home - you wouldn't have recognised us anyway, as he only took a snap of the top of our heads (they were adorned with St George's flags in red-and-white hairspray).

It took us the best part of an hour to make it across the square. We didn't hurry, of course, since we thought our new-found celebrity highly entertaining, at least for a while. Queues soon formed to get pictures taken with us, and we are no doubt a key part of hundreds of Oriental photo albums. This is DV making a new friend; and here's a picture of a bunch of people trying to take pictures of us at the same time. Sultoon amused himself by trying to get in pictures with fit girls - here's one attempt.

We had business to attend to before entering the stadium, of course - namely, the sale of Yuhei's ticket. The first people we negotiated with said they wouldn't pay our 35,000 Yen asking price (about �180 - we needed to get Yuhei his ticket price and train fare back) because they were saving up for the next round - surely a terrible tempt of fate, since if England lost to Nigeria they could still go out. However, we soon found a willing chump - an American bloke who was all too happy to give us the money. He was only to see about 10 minutes of the game - we saw him later during the match, wandering in after about 20 minutes, then talking to someone on the phone ("Yeah, I'm at the England Nigeria game!") before wandering off again. Poor.

Eventually, we had to give up on the whole thing, and actually had to play the "no more photos!" card so that we could go into the ground. Having walked through the main gates into the stadium complex, we thought we could take a picture with just ourselves in for posterity - but no, Japanese people kept butting in as soon as we lined up to pose. Eventually we had to give up. The stadium itself looked pretty impressive from here, though.

There were a few little stalls along the way into the ground itself, selling and giving away World Cup trinkets, and outside one of these came the photo opportunity Sultoon and Fox had been waiting for. They'd already decided that in my red-and-white face paint, I looked like Ronald McDonald, so imagine their joy at the opportunity to take this snap.

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The day was already worth the entrance money - we were having a fantastic time, and we hadn't even made it into the stadium. Once we did get inside, we found that despite there being a running track around the pitch, we still had a fantastic view, which was far more than we had expected. Delighted, we set about putting up our flags, but were soon waylaid by more enthusiastic Japanese fans requesting pictures. This bloke was quite good value, though, especially as he trumped Sultoon's "Tony Dorigo 1993" England shirt with a Euro 92 jersey. Nevertheless, we soon had the flags in place, although it seems they were too high up in the stand to have been seen on TV back home. Fox's "NFFC" flag finally got an outing, and was certainly more visible than our "G8 on tour" flag, which didn't look quite as impressive in the stadium as it had at home but was still a worthwhile token gesture. DV even stuck up his Wycombe Wanderers shirt, although space to put flags was at a premium. We were wise to have arrived so early - even though there were more than two hours to go before the match, there was soon nowhere left to hang anything. We still had plenty to do to amuse ourselves to while away the remaining time - playing with the cameras, to start with. Fox now had a digital camera of his own, of course, and got busy with that, so we had plenty to remember the day by. Here's one of DV and Sultoon; one of George and Fox; and another of DV. We even managed to get ourselves shown on the stadium's big screen, yelling cheerfully "Hey, Mr Cameraman!" in homage to the berk at the Italy-Croatia game on Day 13.

However, it was soon drawn to our attention that a match was about to take place, and a sudden increase in the volume around the stadium made it clear that David Beckham had emerged to warm up. It's impossible to stress how famous Beckham is in Japan - he is undoubtedly the most famous footballer to the Japanese, and the adulation he received really made us believe that he must be the most famous footballer in the world. We wandered down to the touchline to have a look at the England players at closer quarters, before heading back up to our seats. A few rows behind us, we found some comedy blokes in David Seaman disguises (apparently these guys got a bit of newspaper coverage back home, I'm told). But there was also another, less desirable character who wandered past us shortly afterwards : none other than one of the dreadful "Bollocks blokes" from way back on day 6. We weren't impressed.

Anyway, the match was finally drawing near, and the players came out of the tunnel for the anthems. We were disappointed, but not surprised, to find that all the England fans fell for the con whereby two verses of God Save The Queen were played instead of one, despite this being the third England game out of three that it had happened, so everyone burst into loud applause and cheering after one verse and then stood there confused as it played again. Then we were all invited once again by the stadium announcer to "Say Yes for Children!" once again, this being the appalling cheesy rubbish that was recited before each match. The players then headed for their positions ready for kick-off.

Unfortunately, the match was extremely poor. For those who don't remember this least memorable of England games, the highlight of a drab first half was a Scholes drive that cannoned off the outside of the post; otherwise there was precious little to cheer. We obviously cheered "Tref" Sinclair's every touch after his contribution against Argentina, but he did little more than anybody else - although, to be fair, it was very hot out in the sun. Rio Ferdinand was the outstanding player, although in the end Jay-Jay Okocha was given man of the match as a token gesture before his international retirement.

At half-time we were a little deflated at the performance, but still found plenty to do to amuse ourselves. The highlight of the break was when Sultoon spotted David Baddiel holding court a few rows down from us, and decided to execute a con. He led us down there to meet the so-called comedian, and, clutching a camera, said, "Hi David ... I was just wondering if, er ... you could take a photograph of us." Then we posed for a picture. Baddiel was not entirely amused, but had little choice but to laugh given the amusement of the England fans around him, saying something along the lines of "yeah, yeah, about one in ten people try that gag". Sultoon, as a confirmed non-Baddiel fan, was delighted.

So to kick-off in the second half. Basically, nothing happened for the next forty-five minutes. Sheringham missed a good chance, having for some reason received the biggest cheer of any England player when he came on as sub. Vassell came on later and did a couple of step-overs (aah, good one-trick pony). But that was just about it, apart from a couple of excellent Ferdinand interceptions. Here's a couple of random action shots (1) (2). The highlight of the half had been the roar that greeted the news that Sweden were leading Argentina 1-0. Soon the final whistle went, the players left the pitch, and we slowly made our way out of the ground, while high-spirited England fans sang cheerfully about Argies going home. On the way out, we encountered a couple of celebrities - recognise them? [bigger version]

Fatboy is the one to the left of Zoe, by the way. We declined the pointless opportunity to try and talk to them, and headed out into town.

Having grabbed something to eat just outside the ground, we headed back into a random area of Osaka to see if we could find any value. We seemed to have made it into a busy area of town, and soon bumped into a random Japanese couple who wanted a chat. They led us into a bar called "Beer Carnival", where we bought drinks and a few snacks, and chatted to them. Sultoon's face paint was fading badly, but mine was as bright as ever, which caused much mirth. It turned out that the girl (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, although I'm sure someone can remind me) was an English teacher, so we didn't have too many difficulties communicating - her boyfriend's English wasn't too bad either. I was persuaded to pose for another somewhat ludicrous picture involving a cigarette and some chopsticks. However, the jugs of beer didn't arrive fast enough for us to get really battered, but it was nevertheless a good laugh. Here's a couple of group photos (1) (2).

Eventually we had to make our way back to Kyoto, since the bullet trains didn't run all night. Once we got there, there was still time for us to stop into an utterly random shot bar and confuse the locals with our face paint, but for Fox, time was running out and work was calling. He was set to leave at about five the next morning to get back to Tokyo for his flight, since (believe it or not) he had to be back for a work outing to Monte Carlo. Soon the rest of us retired as well, after a day of immense value, to contemplate a second-round game against group 1 winners Denmark. Sadly, we'd be back home for that one (except DV, who was meeting up with some mates for a couple of days) .There was still one more full day in Japan to contemplate for myself, Sultoon and George, and plenty of sights to see. Click through to Day 18 >>