to main page
*g8 news
This page created with Cool Page.  Click to get your own FREE copy of Cool Page!
*g8online
the big name website
  guestbook
  big names
Day Six  
Saturday 1st June
We've got Yuhei! Having come back to stay with us at the ryokan on Friday night, we now had our Japanese friend and guide's presence guaranteed for the weekend. And soon Fox was to turn up as well. However, not wanting to waste Yuhei's presence by lying in bed moaning about our hangovers, we got up instead and went to Edo-Tokyo museum, planning to collect Fox afterwards.

The museum was an impressive, if serious and austere, history of Japan from around 1600, and Sultoon and I, in our delicate state, did struggle to concentrate on the explanations of some of the exhibits. Here's a somewhat pointless
picture of DV in front of some model demonstrating techniques in Japanese theatre.

Next up was a trip to the sumo museum - or it would have been, but the museum was closed. Not to be denied some exposure to the sport, however, we grabbed a nearby sumo wrestler (
bigger picture here) and persuaded him to pose with us. George informed the friendly 18-year-old grappler that he'd like to become a sumo wrestler himself, to much hilarity. We were somewhat disturbed by his nasty-looking cauliflower ears, though.
For good measure, here's a comedy picture of Sultoon with a sumo wrestler's body (insert your own gag here).

Next, we
collected Fox, after a little hassle trying to work out just which exit from the station he had used. The weary traveller wandered back to the ryokan with us, where we watched Ireland play Cameroon before heading out to find a better venue.

This quest took us to Roppongi, a district which was rapidly becoming a byword for Tokyo naughtiness. It's an area generally frequented by foreigners (gaijins, as they're called in Japan) with lots of opportunities for drinking and spending money on sexual favours. What we wanted for now, however, was the Tokyo Sports Bar, as mentioned in our guidebook.

Having eventually located this, we were disappointed to find that there was a Y2000 cover charge, but this did at least get us a couple of drinks tokens as well as entry. It was standing room only, and we arrived just in time to catch the final replay of Dario Rodriguez's goal-of-the-tournament contender for Uruguay against Denmark. We couldn't fail to notice some rather naughty-looking young women wandering around as well, but in terms of attention-grabbing, even they struggled to compete with the main irritation. There were a couple of aggressive-looking English blokes dressed in T-shirts with "BOLLOCKS" written across them (above this, in small letters, were the words "The Dog's"). When, after the match, the bar began to play England songs (it had become obvious that this was an English-run establishment), they jumped up and down with moronic glee to "Vindaloo", shouted in top-of-the-voice tuneless unison to "Three Lions", and generally behaved like the English football-supporting twats that we had been trying to avoid.

Still, the bar itself wasn't too bad, with the Swedes and Germans in there providing a more cosmopolitan flavour (especially the Swedish bloke with the comedy moustache). However, the fact that it was so cramped eventually forced us to fold halfway through Germany v Saudi Arabia (with the Germans four goals up, this seemed reasonable). We stayed for long enough to buy some comedy Japan sunglasses (
modelled here by Yuhei), before heading back. The evening was spent trying to wind me up by prefixing every single sentence with the words, "Hales, what price ...?" (as in, "Hales, what price the next thing you say is 'for fuck's sake'?") Having batted this out, I joined everyone in folding - after all, in the morning it would be our first match day.