Thought I'd have a go at writing a match report.
The happily sleeping human rapidly develops immunity to phone-alarm melodies, especially when being asked to wake at crazy times. All Liverpool fans living in far off time zones know that. To get up successfully for midweek games, you need to be resourceful, determined, willing to go that extra mile. That is why, at 3.30 this morning, the walls of the houses of a small neighbourhood in Tokyo shook to the sound of "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it's off to work we go," blasting out for the first time in full orchestral splendour. It may not have been pretty, but it worked. Sleeping residents felt instantly nauseous. Local cats put paws to ears. Ghosts ran for cover to safer ground. And one Liverpool fan fell down his stairs and turned on his TV.
The just woken take time to get things together, especially when they've only had three hours' sleep. That explains the first fifteen minutes of the game as seen from a sofa in Tokyo. No scanning the line-up and quickly deciding Rafa's gone for experience. Instead, you come out of your haze slowly, noticing the strange (Cisse and Garcia playing right and left) and slightly worrying (Djimi in). Then you find the good (they've left out Crespo and started with Drogba on his own up front) and the reassuring (Stevie, Xabi, Didi in the center, Stevie Finnan at right full). And then you realize there's fifteen minutes gone and the reason you can't see anything is you haven't put in your contact lenses.
The first half passes in a blur of Liverpool control. You hear the Fields of Anny Road belting out—really belting out. The Twelfth Man sounds on form. Sami gets clipped in the penalty area and goes down. The Scandanavian sportsman's smile registers his disbelief that he hasn't won a penalty. Camera pans to the ref, who's looking shaky and overwhelmed.
Xabi's on form, cruising confidently in midfield, making himself time. We're winning the midfield and we're mostly solid at the back, although the Japanese commentators rightly point to some "scary moments" in the Liverpool defence. As I'm coming closer to my senses, there's a Reina warning. It happens in slow motion. I watch him coming for the ball, a small man in a crowd of big bodies. That he's intent on punching it is clear for all to see. That he hasn't got a chance is also evident. My stomach turns. The ref blows for a foul by Drogba but the warning signs are there. Have we got ourselves another keeper who can't deal with crosses? Or is this something that will improve? As I'm asking myself these questions, he makes a brilliant save from Robben.
At half-time, I'm cold and go back upstairs for fifteen minutes. It's been a good half. We've controlled it and Lampard, especially, has been non-existent. There's been very little threat from Robben (full credit to Stevie Finnan) and even less from Duff.
I get the feeling I had so many times in last season's run, when the fear and worry about the opposition dissipate and unshaking confidence arrives. Sooner or later, we'll all going to stop underestimating this side.
When I get back downstairs they've already restarted. Again we dominate, almost from the start. Two things become clear: We're not going to weaken in the second half. And they'll be very happy with a draw.
And then, the second clear penalty. William Gallas, you're having a laugh. You may as well have caught the fucking thing and put it down your pants it was so obvious. And the ref is well-placed, perfectly placed. Inexplicably, again he doesn't blow. He's been producing yellow cards readily all night, but what is his problem pointing to the spot? Again, a referee blinded in the Chelsea headlights. Didn't that use to be a Manchester phenomenon? Nothing new.
They bring on Wright-Phillips for Robben. I'm not concerned. Finnan will handle him and I'm happy to see Robben go. Later they'll withdraw Duff. When Chelsea take these two off, you know your defence has done its job. Clumsy moments aside (Carragher and Hyppia colliding), we've looked solid.
I'm awake now. I know that because I'm reacting in my normal way to Luis Garcia. Delighted to see him always looking for and getting on the ball. The anticipation of something special and the worry he's going to lose the ball. The awe when things go right (He's really bossing Ferreira tonight), and the relief when they don't but he at least manages to pick out a red shirt.
The usual worries about Djimi prove founded, but there's something else emerging, too. What he lacks positionally and on the ball, he makes up for in pace and in the tackle. Djimi's got his strengths and they showed in the second half tonight.
Jamie Carragher, as ever, has been—to flog the cliché—colossal, and Stevie, without having the greatest of games, has looked up for it and threatening in his roaming, advanced role.
The sight of Chelsea running down the clock is proof of our dominance. The final whistle blows. I'm satisfied. Revenge was never on the menu.
As the players leave the field, John Terry is having a tantrum. He thinks Xabi's dived to get him booked. I think of two incidents involving Xabi and Chelsea last season—Lampard's tackle and Gudjohnsen's dive to draw the yellow card, and one involving Terry himself—his cynical foul on Luis Garcia. I recall his tears in the semi. Xabi doesn't look too concerned. I'm not either. Six a.m. I leave for work in three hours. Time to go back to bed.
Written on the eve of giving more money to Rupert Murdoch's Sky.
If I read one more football fan talking about football being taken away from the working man, players getting paid too much, or Chelsea being the harbinger of football's meltdown as if it's somebody else's problem, I'm going take out my cliche gun and shoot the whole fucking lot of them.
Yes, working class fans are being priced out of football. Yes, players get paid crazy money, and yes, Chelsea are the bulging symptoms of the game's life-threatening venereal disease, but none of it can happen in a fanless vacuum.
If fans stopped paying, stopped subscribing, stopped buying the merchandise, the whole thing would collapse, like the long-held socialist wet dream where the festering boil inevitably bursts and the demon capitalism implodes upon himself.
Murdoch and the rest would be gone before you could say the words profiteering, irrelevant parasite, and the game whose imminent demise we all love to lament like it's beyond our control would be back in the hands of its true owners. And we could all say "I told you so" together.
But no, we won't do that, and people like Murdoch and the chairmen of football clubs know that instinctively. We'll wallow and we'll moan about our lot a while, and then we'll bend down proudly and take our medicine up the ass.
"Can I?"
"Yes."
"You mean no, don't you?"
Had one of those moments tonight on the south viewing deck of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Buildings in Shinjuku.
As I was setting up my little tripod to take a few photos of the Tokyo night skyline, one of the staff approached me, did that cross the arms dame gesture, and said in English, "Hand only."
He meant I couldn't use my tripod for taking photos. Only handheld shots were allowed.
I asked him why in Japanese.
He took me over to a sign on the wall, written in English, that said "Do not use tripods because they disturb the neighbours."
The only neighbours were a couple practically having sex on the window ledge. I could've stripped naked and started doing jumping jacks and they wouldn't have been disturbed.
And there was graffiti everywhere.
But I've been here long enough not to argue. Rules are rules.
Rausudake with an artificially added sky. Early days with this technique, as you can see, but the possibilities here are endless. Apologies if you're a purist.
Following Steve's suggestion, how it looked before the tampering, with a completely washed out sky.
With thanks to Kurt, I've finally got around to working out how to do this. The key, for any other beginners interested, is Adjustment Layers and Layer Masks in Photoshop, and the use of the airbrush to feather. To anyone not interested, that isn't going to make much sense, but here's an example. The raw image of this photo, taken on Kitadake in July, had an almost completely washed out sky.
In the afternoon, I went through the slow, lazy, loving ritual of packing. The older I get, the earlier I pack and the more I savour it.
There's a dictatorial pleasure to be had in jettisoning the loved but unneeded for the overall good of the pack. It's the pure pleasure of dictatorship without any of the repercussions. There is no need to consult others or to compromise. And if the dictated are things, they can't bear grudges or talk back.
Paring it all down, going back again and editing your first impulses, is vital: For two nights' camping at 3,000 metres in late-September Japan, the essentials already take up a lot of weight, and getting up to 3,000 metres will be so much easier if your pack is lean, pragmatic, and unemotional. Duties to fellow human beings notwithstanding, there may not be justification for extra pairs of pants.
As importantly, the physical act of packing triggers the inner process of mental preparation. Incessant obsessing. For Rausudake, it was the bears. For Yari, it's the exposed ridges and the 100 vertical metres to the top. Knife-edges and a spear.
The pack sits at the end of the bed, ready. The mind races to prepare.
Standing there doing my hair before work this morning with my broken old steel comb, the memories came suddenly and unexpectedly back.
It's been around longer than me, that comb. In its heyday, it was probably brushing bad fashion hairstyles before dances in fifties and sixties' Ireland, Brill Creamed up and ready for a Ceili, or some Rock and Roll. I started using it as a secondary student in Dublin some time after his death. And after a lot of persuading, I was allowed to take it with me to Japan when I came here after university. Now it sits on a shelf in yet another house in central Tokyo, far away from its home, and is only called into the briefest of action every weekday morning. It doesn't travel in suit jacket pockets to dances anymore.
How can an old steel comb take on so much importance? Maybe it's the things it knows and the memories it holds. The places it's been and the eras it's seen. The owners it's had and their connection. Its role as a bridge between generations that never had a chance to really meet.
But somewhere along the line of my life an old steel comb became my most loved possession. Or put another way, one of the people I loved most became an old steel comb. Things they are never inanimate, and some days you have to let the wave of sadness they send wash over you, and just stand there, admitting you are drenched. And even smile about it. They never talk about losing a father but gaining a comb.
A summer bike tour taking in Kushiro, Kushiro Marshy Plains, Lake Akan, Lake Mashu, Lake Kussharo, Shari, Utoro, Shiretoko 5 Lakes, Iwaobetsu, Mt. Rausu, Abashiri, Lake Saroma, Monbetsu, Hamatonbetsu, Lake Kutcharo, Cape Soya Misaki, Wakkanai, Rishiri Island, Mt. Rishiri.
Photos in the gallery.
And an album of the seagulls of Hokkaido.
A couple of weeks ago, I climbed Mount Rishiri (photos in the gallery), an island-mountain off the Northwest coast of Hokkaido. I climbed in runners in the rain, so my feet got very wet. Coming off the mountain, I needed to buy a pair of sandals. I got on my bike and went looking for a shoe-shop in the tiny port of Oshidomari, with no real hope that I would find a pair of sandals my foreign size on such a tiny island as Rishiri.
Finding a shoe shop, to my surprise there was a pair of New Balance sandals in the shop window, and they looked like they might fit. As I went into the unstaffed shop, a bell sounded to tell the owners in the back a customer had arrived. A plumpish realist of a woman in her late thirties or early fourties arrived and asked if she could help me. I pointed to the sandals and asked if I could try them on, speaking confidently in Japanese to dispel any doubts she might have. She said she'd go get them from the store room at the back and went off again.
Then a much older lady arrived, bent over but with a glint in her eye that made her seem much more alive than her daughter. She asked me if she could help me, and I told her I was already being served, and that I was waiting to try on a pair of sandals.
The conversation began. In it, the old lady switched roles from flirting young version of herself, to salewoman, to old lady concerned about religious customs without a moment's thought or warning. Staying in the conversation was like surfing a very enjoyable wave. I didn't want it to stop, but there's only so long you can draw out the process of buying a pair of sandals.
And where are you from?
Ireland
Is it very cold there?
About as cold as Japan.
Japan? What do you mean by Japan?
Hmmm. Tokyo, I suppose.
Ah, then you come from a very warm place. It must be cold for you up here on Rishiri. And what are you doing on Rishiri?
I climbed the mountain today.
Oh, it must have been very, very tough.
Well, the weather was fairly bad today, but if the weather had been good it wouldn't have been tough at all. My feet got wet, you see; that's why I'm buying sandals.
[Daughter returns with the sandals, I look at them and think they're too small, and the old lady's sales instinct kicks in]
Ah, but you must try them on. You can't tell just by looking. Here, take off those wet runners. Oh, what smart feet you have. Lovely, smart feet. So smart. There, see, they fit you perfectly. Just the right size.
That's great. How much are they?
They're 3,800 yen plus consumption tax, but I'll tell you what, we won't charge you any consumption tax at all.
That's very nice of you. I'll take them. I'd like to wear them from now if you don't mind. Could you put my runners in a bag?
Oh, but you can't wear them now. That's not done. You never put on new shoes in the evening. Always best to wait until the next morning. Something bad might happen.
[Daughter jumps in]
But the poor lad's feet are soaked. He wants to wear them now. That's why he's buying them.
[Mother]
Yes, and they're lovely smart feet and he's a lovely fellow, but it's dangerous putting new shoes on at night, and he really shouldn't do that.
[Daughter]
Mother!
[Mother]
Wait, there's a way around this. Give me that red marker.
[Starts making marks on the soles of the new sandals]
There, they're not new any more. It's fine to wear them, now. We'll put those runners in a bag. Here, put the other one on. Your feet look soaked.
[Outside the shop, mission accomplished, saying goodbye to my new friends]
Ah, you came by bike? From Tokyo?
No, just from Kushiro.
Wah...wonderful. Are you a regular member of a gymnasium?
Well, I am, but my attendance isn't all that regular...
Wonderful, really wonderful, travelling around Japan on your bike. Are you going for dinner now?
I am, yes.
Have a lovely dinner and please ride carefully. Thank you very much.
I said my thank yous and cycled off in my new sandals, happy to have met them and sad the Rishiri sandal experience eventually had to come to an end.
Oze is not the most crowded place of natural beauty in Japan. That title goes to the Shiretoko Five Lakes, although you'd never tell from these photographs.
There's a consensus of silence. None of the tourist literature mentions the island's dark side, But I assure you, it's there, and they are there, sinisterly well-fed for their kind, loitering in the shadows trying to look nonchalant, all the while taking side-glances your way and biding their time—before they strike.
Spotted this Northern Fox on the way back down Rausudake.
These two brown bears had just finished feeding on salmon from the river mouth in Shiretoko.
Is this an eagle? Taken on the Okhotsk coast just south of Abashiri. These fellows are all along that coast.
I also saw a 30cm green snake (maybe a tree snake?) on the trail down Rausudake, but didn't have the presence of mind to take a photo.
Before I came to Japan, I had no sense of racism, because there was only one race in Ireland then.
Now, I find myself thinking in racial terms virtually every day.
Here's a question. Can you become racist as a reaction?
The pinnacle of the tour was the Shiretoko peninsula.
I stayed for four nights, two longer than originally planned.
You cycle 40k along the road on the edge of the peninsula until you reach the little port of Utoro, mountains on your right, the blue sea on your left. It was unspoiled even then.
And that's the populated part of the Shiretoko peninsula.
From Utoro up, it becomes the kingdom of the deer and the bear and the fox. All that remains is a one youth hostel and a hotel. The road only continues about another 20k. After that the only way to travel is to cross the rope-bridge, take your chances with the bears, climb high and walk the one trail down the centre of the ridge.
The sheer untouched remoteness of this peninsula is especially unique in the Japan of Alex Kerr. No pork-barrel concrete, no dammed rivers, no human habitation, no tourist tackiness or amazing, record-breaking, plastic attractions. Just green. And the deers and the bears and the foxes. And silence. A credit to the local grassroots movements who fought and stopped the machine of "progress." And a truly entrancing place.
Unfortunately in some ways, it's just been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Long term, that will help preserve it in its current natural state. Short-term, it attracts a lot of punters and the places to stay put their prices up.
No matter. The majority don't make it past the five lakes or the waterfall. I saw two bears in the wild, at a far enough distance not to feel worried. Others saw more and closer, fishing for salmon at the river mouth not a 100 metres from the Iwaobetsu Youth Hostel. Don't eat those carrots. Good eyesight is not always a benefit.
The best memory on the bike came in Shiretoko, too. I'd sweated the summer beer away climbing in a low gear for 12k from Utoro to the five lakes, endured the rude hordes from the tour buses at the lakes, and it was time to cycle home. For that 12k home, I hardly pedalled at all, and the bike was going just under 50k the whole time. The buses were gone and the roads were virtually empty. There was noone else except a curious northern fox and the weather was perfect. It was one of those euphoric moments among a lot of ordinary times on the bike. After the day's earlier effort, the speed of gravity in your favour and the reward.
There was also a Canadian wearing a Canada t-shirt and carrying around an enormous Kermit the Frog teddy bear on the back of his bike. Canadians aren't strange at all.
A quick selection of a few of my many photos of the place.
I hadn't planned to climb mountains at all this holiday, but sitting in the bay in Utoro eating breakfast, the ridge of the Shiretoko mountain range sharp and so clear in the morning sky in the background, it was too hard to resist. I had no boots, so I climbed in runners.
The weather was good so it didn't matter.
In fact, I felt as light and nimble on the trail as I ever have. The trail itself, as Ted said, was incredibly well maintained and the day beautiful.
There's a patch of 650 meters that is littered with ants' nests. Ants taste sweet. Bears like sweet tastes. Bears like ants. The Shiretoko peninsula contains the densest population of bears in Japan. Brown bears at that. More than 650 of them at last count.
The fellow explaining hiking courses at the Iwaobetsu Hostel warned all of us potential climbers about the danger of that part of the trail. It was almost as if he was encouraging people not to go. An old couple from Chiba in Hokkaido to climb the Hokkaido part of the 100 famous mountains pulled out the next morning.
I understand why. I had the biggest case of the butterflies the night before, and that 650 meters was the scariest short distance I've ever had in the mountains. But the bell must have worked because I didn't see any bears that day. And when you're tired enough you forget about them. I experienced exactly the same thing last year on Tomuraushi, which I still consider the king of the mountains of Hokkaido.
This year, though, I was more prepared.
If there's one thing I've learned about the mountains of Hokkaido, it's this: You leave early. I was on the trail before six. 1,600 meters in Hokkaido is the equivalent of 3,00 meters on Honshu, and you don't want to be (a) caught on the mountain after dark or (b) stuck up there in bad weather. And the best way to avoid both is an early start. Storms in Hokkaido, in my experience, happen often, and always seem to happen in the afternoon. That day was no exception. The skies opened around four, by which time I was already lounging safely in the murky bath of the Iwaobetsu Hostel.
The rocks at the top of Rausu are reasonably dangerous, though nothing serious really, and the peak was crowded with a bunch of group hikers, but all in all Rausu was a beautiful bearless hike in the green mountains of Shiretoko.
My closest friend in Japan reckons my face changes in the mountains. Without wanting to sound ridiculous, I feel different there and I don't know why. Bike tours, as great as they are, will just never compare.
Photos in the gallery.
Haneda Airport.
A view from an airplane.
One of Hokkaido's many seagulls.
Back from the island of windmills, seagulls, dying towns and beautiful mountains, brown bears, green snakes, sly foxes, and striped squirrels. The bike is down but not out. The hat has seen a couple of new hyakumeizan. Its owner has sore thighs and a brown face. Photos to come soon. Comments are back on. I turned them off while I was away.
