Pickled Onions 2006

Having crushed, twisted, split and torn a record number of chilli peppers, and mixed a record number of chilli sauces, I can safely say that this years batch of pickled onions will be lethal...

A childhood dream realised...

Growing up where and when I did, I was a Liverpool fan. It was a time of John Barnes and Peter Beardsley, when teams like QPR and Oxford were still fairly handy, and when Man Utd were just another first division team.

With all my primary school friends sporting Liverpool shirts, I was desperate to have one. Some friends of my parents were going shopping, and they said that they would buy the kit for me (shirt, shorts and socks). I couldn't wait... I remember the day clearly.. it was at the start of the 1989 season, and I was playing with my lego and watching Carry on Henry on TV. Towards the end of the film, my mum came in with a sports shop bag. I opened it and found...

My Liverpool strip! I was ecstatic. But... I had always loved the Crown Paints logo on the front, and unbeknownst to me, the sponsor had changed to Candy in the 1989 season. The strip was exactly the same, except the logo. I went on to wear the strip continuously, until I finally grew out of it about 2 or 3 years later. But still there was a niggling acorn of disappointment that I had missed the chance to get a Crown Paints shirt.

Well, skip forward 17 or so years, and by the grace of the internet I happened to be on ebay, and more out of curiosity than anything else, decided to see if they had the 1987/88 shirt. There was only one, and a fair few number of bids. I was about to close the window and go back to watching ridiculous Japanese TV, but something made me sign in and put a bid in. Before I knew what had happened I had become the high bidder, and was absolutely determined to claim the shirt that had eluded me all those years ago. Starting out at around 20 quid, three of us steadily raised the pot, until one dropped out when it got to 45.

I thought that I had it in the bag at 50, but a late flurry with only a few hours to go left me still as the high bidder, but the price had crept up to a dizzying 67 quid... I know what you're thinking. Two thirds of a ton for a 19 year old second hand shirt? You fool. Well yes, I am a fool... but it's more what the shirt represents than the shirt itself. It represents the best liverpool team that has ever been, it represents all those gloriously sunny saturday afternoons in the garden with my dad and brother, practicing John Barnes free kicks. It represents being 8 years old and in the glory of childhood.

The shirt arrived yesterday. I took it out of the plastic wrap, hung it up and just looked at it for a while. Then I put it on. Then I took it off and looked at it again. True, I could have put my 67 quid to a more constructive use, but the feeling of youth recaptured makes it money well spent...

Dressing for work yesterday, I couldn't help noticing a Junior High School student sat on the road outside, craftily smoking a cigarette... by the time I found my camera, he had finished and was in the process of theatrically stamping it out...

He then skipped down the road and, glancing around to see that no one was watching, dropped the empty packet down a drainage pipe. Strangest of all, he then skipped away, doing some kind of dance, perhaps boxercise, perhaps ballet...

Paper bag please...

Good lord... are British sportswomen really this hideous or have I been in Japan too long?...

Australia 0 - 1 Italy SCANDALOUS!

I have lost what little respect I had for Italy after watching the second round match last night... the Australians outplayed them throughout, the Azzuri dived and overreacted to tackles and the penalty decision in the final seconds was a terrible one. The Italian deliberately walked over the prone Aussie defender and made it look like he had been shot with a rifle. He knew he'd pulled the wool over the ref's eyes - after going to ground, he appealed and then when it was awarded he laid prone, clearly to hide his laughter - just look at his face when he finally got up. Disgraceful...

What with the scandal involving Milan, Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina raging at the moment, and with all the whining and accusations from previous tournaments, this was another poor advertisement for Italian football. Shame on you Italy.

Classic TV

There was a pretty cool game show on tv last night. Predictably centred around food with a World Cup twist, it involved two teams (a Korean boy band and a hotchpotch of Japanese comedians dressed as famous people) and a giant 3x3 board with pictures of ridiculously expensive sushi on the squares. Taking it in turns, the players kicked a football towards the board, and the square they knocked out denoted the sushi that their team would eat. The great twist though was that once a square was knocked out, it was replaced with a chilli pepper square...

... and if one of the players put the ball through it, they would have to eat a fiendishly hot chilli pepper. The players were remarkably accuarate, and were able to pick their spots pretty well, as demonstrated by one of the Koreans below.

Bang! Right on the money... this lead to a handful of flaccid beige sushi being wheeled out, at the astronomical cost of 2000 yen each (and that's just one piece, not the usual two).. naturally, there were wide-eyed calls of "amai!" and "oishii!", though for that price I would have expected Konishi Manami to serve it on a gold platter, dressed in a nurse's uniform... next up in the shootout was the Japanese version of Ronaldinho, who had been incredibly smug throughout and trying - in vain - to emulate his namesake's tricks and skills...

It was inevitable that he would tap the ball through one of the chilli pepper squares, and he did. Cue the dramatic entrance of a bright red pepper on a square of rice, a tentative nibble and then a lot of huffing and puffing and drinking of water. Classic.

And finally, with this being wednesday, there was an appearance by Gorie, aka huge man in a pink dress. He/She was sat at a picnic table having lunch, inexplicably with a painted green face, whilst a naked man with a lizard tail writhed about in the background...

It's testament to the fact that I have been in Japan for a long time that the previous paragraph seems completely normal to me now...

A little beer to go with your head, sir?

Ordinarily I would have complained about this, but the beer was big (over a pint, even with the head), cheap (400 yen) and the food that accompanied it was served in less than 5 minutes...

Appalling hair

What on earth was this guy thinking... if you're going to get a wig, why opt for the North Korean look?...

JAPAN 1 - 3 AUSTRALIA

The photo above says it all... the three pundits in the studio are shellshocked.. their team, complete with flowing dyed brown hair and teen magazine looks, left clutching a stinging 3-1 loss, despite being in control for 84 minutes and coasting to a well-earned victory. It was a painful 8 minutes for the Samurai Blue, but with Croatia and Brazil still to come, it's probably going to get worse...

ENGLAND 1 - 0 PARAGUAY

A disappointing game.. after a fairly bright opening and a goal, England protected their one goal lead for 50 minutes, resulting in a welcome but frustrating Italian 3 points.

The second half was dull, Crouch was woeful and the Paraguyans had so much space in midfield due to England backing off. Tellingly, at the Japanese bar last night, at the final whistle all the Japanese bargoers clapped and muttered "sugoi", whilst all the English (and Irish, Canadians and a New Zealander) all remained stony faced and shook their heads gently.

Just one of the reasons I like working in Japan more than in England...

3 and half years ago, I worked for a small boiler company in Diss. Aside from a few other males, it was a female zone, and a volatile one at that. There were daily spats and spiteful altercations, and plenty of tears before bedtime. Outfits for the christmas party were chosen months in advance, and a day didn't go by when at least 4 girls didn't run off to the bathroom in tears over something trivial. It was immature, it was dull, it was superficial, and I hated every moment of my two months there.

Having experienced this in England, I came to Japan with hopes for something better and my goodness did I get it. Although there has been a lot of bureaucratic silliness in my 2 and a third years here, there have been some wonderful things that make each day a pleasure. One of the best things about my job is the Japanese girls that we work with. Under incredible pressure from above, and facing a job that doesn't seem to have any benefits, they somehow manage to maintain a state of cheerfulness and brightness, and add a bit of sparkle to every day. Aside from being nice girls, the staff also control the teacher schedules, so it makes good sense to treat them nicely. A lot of the teachers bad mouth the staff, and treat them with indifference and then wonder why they seem to be unlucky with their schedules. More fool them...

Most of the staff are fantastic, but I think a special mention should go to Mari.

Mari is quite new to the job, and is always smiley and full of vim. Not only that but last wednesday, we got to work to discover the following...

Yes, she had made cheesecake for everyone! Wow... and I can say without reservation that it was the best cheesecake I have ever tasted.

I sometimes think back to those few chaps working away in Diss, outnumbered by those shrill, unpleasant girls, and breathe a sigh of relief that I got away...