World Cup Fever

Japan won the pivotal game of the preliminaries tonight and it was c.r.a.z.y on the streets. We headed down to Kabuki-cho where thousands of near naked drunk Japanese were acting like.... Australians. Men with Japanese flags face-painted across their faces, or with flags wrapped around them, whooping "Nippon, Nippon" over and over and over... Considering their advanced state of anaebriation, a simple chant proved to be for the best.

It was cool to be in the midst of it, but I couldn't help feeling like I was at the Footy Grand Final. All that talk of "furiganism" and here they were; the Japanese illustrating the point.

Before the World Cup, the Japanese police had gone into overdrive, getting teams of riot police trained to deal with the onslaught of 'furigans'; shops and restaurants near World Cup stadiums all closed down because the furigans were guaranteed to set fire to things (of course, happens all the time)... and during the Cup, the riot police were mainly stationed outside the gaijin bars waiting for the furiganism to explode into a chaotic post-game frenzy. The whole country was on red alert for a month, when the only problem children of the Cup were....the Japanese. And even then, the front page of the Japan Times the day after Japan beat Tunisia was a huge article about the wayward Japanese fans in Osaka:

"Fans jump into the river."

The Japanese are just not used to other Japanese people misbehaving.