The day had gone swimmingly well, apart from the 20 minutes of torrential rain, but even that didn’t bother us too much. We returned to the shoe box armed with beer, wine and a suitable collection of snacks to watch England v Tonga on the TV. The France v Argentina game had been on the TV the afternoon we arrived and so what could possibly go wrong. 7.00pm ready to go, still no sign of any live coverage on the limited number of channels we have access to and Robert was starting to get decidedly twitchy. At 7.15pm we abandoned the shoe box and dashed to hotel next door to see if they had it on TV anywhere – not a chance. However the truly lovely receptionist looked up a sports bar and wrote down the address in Japanese for us and put an X on a map of a local area.
Armed with this information, we dashed out into the night to flag down a taxi – now for those of you who have never lived in Japan, this can be trickier than it sounds. Some taxi drivers do not want the bother of having to deal with a possibly (definitely in our case) non-Japanese speaking customer. While I would usually have every sympathy with them, I had a husband who needed to see a rugby match, so by the time we got to the 3rd taxi flagging attempt, we were practically on his bonnet. He was charming and followed the receptionist’s instructions to the letter leaving us in a very quiet street looking at a sign that said the Saru Bancho Sports Bar was on the 3rd Floor. Fortune favours the brave, so up we went to the 3rd Floor but no sign of life and so, for no logical reason, we decided to check out the 4th Floor and there it was, a tiny sign hanging on a solid door opposite the lift saying OPEN. X truly did mark the spot.
Robert shot out of he lift like a man possessed and dashed in – only 23 minutes missed. The bar owner was the only person there and looked a little startled at our sudden and Robert’s joyful entrance. He poured Robert a beer as he settled down in front of the 3 screens all tuned to the England match. I asked for a gin & tonic but instead got a gin & soda with a squeeze of JIF lemon juice as there was no lemon, but it felt churlish to complain, bedsides he might throw us out. Nothing could have been further from his mind and it turned out our host (it felt like we’d walked into his lounge) was a Japanese winger from the 80’s, Norihito Nagaoka, who after making sure we had plenty to eat & drink, proceeded to rifle through the cupboards and presented us with several gifts to take home. The match was scrappy, but England won and Robert & I have a NBF.
