The World Cup - some thoughts

(1) Japan finished last in their group and over three games amassed a points total of one. They 'won' this single point after grinding out a nil-nil draw against Greece who played all of the second half with only ten men. Prior to the tournament the Japanese sports media were confidently predicting that not only would Japan progress from their group, but they would at least get as far as the quarter finals. I term this the 'Pearl Harbour Syndrome' - the irrational belief that despite glaring evidence to the contrary, Japan, simply by dint of sheer determination and lashings of Bushido spirit, can and will prevail.
(2) Is it just me or did the entire Chile team look like 11 convicts who had just escaped from the Santiago Prison. I mean all of them were sporting some serious tattoos and bad-ass haircuts. And what on earth was Andre Agassi doing coaching them?
(3) There should be an Irish word for 'schadenfreude'. I don't know about England (or Italy) but Luis 'Jaws' Suarez is welcome in the Teach Gaynor-Takahashi anytime.
(4) That Messi lad - Argentina's answer to Joe Clooney.
(5) And you can tell that Colombia are basically Banner boys at heart (and foot).
(5) Back in 2006 when Italy last won the world cup a number of the chippers back home gave out free fish and chips to celebrate. I am just wondering what would be given free if the Colombians won...
(6) The Germans: efficient, ruthless, machine like. Basically football playing panzers. Insert your dodgy stereotype of choice here.
(7) Greece - could they actually afford to attend the World Cup let alone progress to the second round? Wouldn't they have been better off quietly auctioning off their place to the highest (backhand) bidder - akin to how Qatar 'won' the right to host the World Cup in 2022.
(8) Goal line technology! What the World Cup needs are some white coat wearing, flag waving umpires. They would have saved FIFA millions - a hot meal after the game and petrol expenses is all they require. Plus their impeachable neutrality would have seen no penalty awarded to Holland and Robbens sent off for the sort of diving that you usually only see at the Olympic pool.
(9) As Cian so rightly pointed out, when all is said and done the World Cup can't hold a candle to the hurling championship.

The Longest Day

To mark the return of sunshine and the longest day of the year, we took ourselves off to Lake Shikotsu near Chitose last Saturday. While Daddy spent two frustrating, curse-filled hours trying to assemble his folding kayak (you trying do it with a set of badly photocopied instructions in Japanese), Cian and Sanae were making peace with the watery world around them. I eventually got the damn thing assembled and paddled around the lake for a bit without sinking, but by that time it was getting dark so I only managed a 40 minute session. Cian in the meantime was intent on depleting the lake's entire stock of fish but Mammy insisted on a catch-and-release policy.

Of the two lakes we visit in the summer, I prefer Shikotsu. The other one, Lake Toya, has more cafes, a very good bakery and the occasional farmer's market and thus appeals more to Sanae; but it also has crowds and a rather daft policy of permitting jet skis on the lake which, to my jaundiced occidental eye, sits rather oddly with it's designation as a national park. Lake Toya also has a series of monolithic hotels from the brutalist school of architecture dominating one of the shorelines. In summer this area has a firework extravaganza every single night for three months. Lord knows what the local wildlife must make of it. Mind you given how noisy the jet skis are roaring back and forth across the lake, there either well used to the noise or deaf.
Lake Shikotsu, by contrast, is where you have a better chance of brushing up against the sublime. Jet skis are banned, there are only a few small onsen hotels and guesthouses corralled away on one corner of the lake and much of the shore is inaccessible by car (Lake Toya has a road ringing its entire circumference). Thus it doesn't take much walking or paddling to leave the modern world behind and get lost (sometimes literally) in nature's quiet splendor.
And finally... Friday had been our wedding anniversary and we asked Cian to take a picture of us to commemorate the day. I think the boy nailed it.

Sports Day Part II

They held it on the Saturday. Despite Muroran, as of today Friday, having set a new record for successive days of rain (16 and counting), students, teachers, parents and conditions underfoot last Saturday were all declared 'fine'. So at 5:30 in the morning the fireworks went off and a startled Sanae leapt out of bed muttering the Japanese equivalent of "Sweet mother of Jesus you've got be fecking kidding me!" Cian was already bouncing around his room with excitement, all ready to go despite the event not starting for another three hours. And he has to be dragged out of bed usually.
Adding to Sanae's disconcertment is the fact that she had told her mother the evening before that the Sports Day would be postponed until Sunday so her mother decided to arrive by bus on Saturday afternoon. At 5:45 Sanae makes a frantic phone call to her mother. She says she will drive here. Now it's my turn to mutter "Sweet mother of Jesus you've got be fecking kidding me!" I brace myself for a call from the police at some stage during the morning.
But first I have to take my sorry, still bed-warm arse up to the school to queue for a 'top spot' in the school ground from which watch to proceedings. By the time I get there the queue is already 50 people long. And it's still not 6:00.
Stereotypes be damned - this county is utterly mad.
Anyway, they open the gates, we splosh through the Somme like mud and stake our places around the track with various bits of plastic sheeting which the wind then promptly blows away as it is fairly gusting out there. I find the least water-logged spot I can find and stake our claim. I feel like a homesteader circa Wyoming in the 1870's. I'm also a hungry homesteader so I go home and have breakfast.
At 8:30 we are all back up there. Sanae's school was due to hold their Undokai on the same day but sense prevailed and they postponed it till the Sunday so she was able to take a couple of hours to watch Cian's. (Her school had scheduled classes instead of the Undokai. Like I said, this county is mad).
I'm heading back to the car to get some umbrellas when I hear a "Brian!". I look up. It's Sanae's mother. It's 8:45. She has gotten here from Obihiro in less than three hours. My jaw drops. I have made the same journey countless times and motoring along the highway at 100kms it still takes over 4 hours. She must have been driving at close to Mach 1 to get here in that time. Sanae is stunned as I am when she sees her mother.
But no time to consider the multitude of laws her mother has broken for the games have begun! To give you the highlights:
Cian won his 70 metre sprint. The Tokyo Olympics beckon as does a raging debate over which country he will represent.

To give you the lowlights:
Cian was on the white team. The white team finished last in the relay, lost the tug of war, and didn't throw nearly enough rice balls into the net in the admirably clear titled "throwing the rice balls in the net" competition.
Red team, as we say back home in GAA circles, wiped their arses.

"Anyone buying or selling the Undokai tickets?!"

Japan: land of advanced water treatment technology

Lunch time.

Reminiscent of the ploughing championships.

The white team - putting a collective brave face on the results.

Dancing. No, really.

And it didn't rain. Until the exact moment the Undokai was declared over and the first drops started to fall.

The Deluge.

It has been raining. Consistently, incessantly, continuously since Friday the 6th of June. In the previous eight days (and counting) we have had over 400mm of rain, which for the imperial minded amongst you equates to 675.8 gallons (approximately). It hasn't been the intemittent showery rain Irish summers are cursed with, but rather full-on, don't stop till you've had enough, biblical downpours. For two days running they have had Muroran on a 'Red' landslide warning and all trains between here and Sapporo have been cancelled. Even the ducks are complaining.
I'm thinking of building an ark.
So, it is wet, thoroughly aquatic even. And tomorrow is supposed to be Cian's sports day. There is a more than a watery whiff of deja vu to all this. Last year we experienced similar conditions and the Sports Day had to be postponed. In fact, pretty much every year we experience these conditions but those in charge seem to be happily oblivious to this.
Unlike the rest of Japan Hokkaido, you are often told, does not experience tsuyu - the rainy season. That's a lie.
In the 16 years I have been living in Hokkaido every June brings with it prolonged, persistent rain that can last up to three weeks before it finally relents. Now, this isn't the case for the whole island but rather just the Pacific side, so people lucky enough to be living in sunny Sapporo are happily oblivious to our sodden, damp, mold ridden existence here in Muroran.
So June - the weather is never good, usually not even close to middling. But yet all the schools in the city persist in holding their sports days in June. And why is this? Well, again you will be told that it is 'traditional'; since time immemorial sports days have been held in June. But 16 years have also taught me that 'tradition' is in fact the Japanese word for 'stifling inertia'; nobody in a position of authority is willing to step up and say "Arrah lads, for feck's sake, enough of this wet shite. We're not fish. Why don't we shift the whole extravaganza to the beginning of July? Tends to be sunny then".
So June, tomorrow to be exact. Or inexact, as of this time of writing Cian's school still hasn't decided whether or not they will go ahead with the event. And as of time of writing it is, to use a meteorological term, pissing down outside. Earlier today I took a photograph of the sport's field at the school. Short of a giant with a giant hairdryer magically appearing and spending the night blow drying the ground, there is no wet way the surface will be fit for anything else besides paddling.

You'd like to think that common sense would prevail but as last year abruptly proved, common sense has no place at the Sports Day.
Instead we will be notified by fireworks at 5:30 tomorrow morning.
No, really, we will.
Communicative devices like telephones and email are just way to unreliable and, let's face it, untraditional.
So should all systems be (unbelievably) go we will be notified by a series of city wide explosions at the crack of dawn. If sense prevails then the silence should be deafening.
I will keep you posted.

Health

Earlier this week Cian woke up in the morning and before going to the toilet had to stick a film of plastic to his arse. He had to this for two days in a row. This wasn't something Mammy and Daddy thought up because the boy refused to tidy up his room  but rather a school mandated health inspection. They wanted to check for pinworm eggs. No, seriously pinworm eggs.
Do you even know what a pinworm is?
Neither did I but here's a helpful explanatory diagram:

To be honest I found it all a tad insulting, the implication being that such is the squalor and degradation the Takahashi-Gaynor's are living in the educational authorities have to test for intestinal worms. Before I could drive a JCB into the school gates Sanae pointed out to me that (a) all the kids in all the schools in Japan are tested; and (b) these tests have been going on ever since the sun god Amaterasu descended from the heavens and complained of an itchy arse.