11 June 06

Waylaid

I was heading over to my friend Barbara’s this morning to watch the Mexico-Iran match. Barbara was in Southern California seeing family and Numenius was off doing his breeding bird atlas.

My ride took me past Ali Baba. Open, it said, at 8:50 am. I stopped my bike with a screech and got off. Watching a match in a room full of Iranians was too good an opportunity to miss! (I go to Ali Baba for lunch every Thursday: spinach special.)

The match ended badly for them, 3-1, but it was a wonderful time. The first half was excellent. Wouldn’t it be good, said a student, if these commentators knew anything about Iran.

I almost said, but bit my tongue, wouldn’t it be good if they knew anything about soccer. (It was televised on ABC, which, contrary to my expectations, did NOT interrupt play with advertising. But the commentary was still, predictably, horrendous.)

There was one other person in there besides me who was not obviously Iranian: a woman whose boyfriend was. She was bug-eyed. Welcome to the world cup, lass.

Posted by at 06:37 PM in Miscellaneous | Link |
  1. Isn’t the world cup a hoot? It’s so wonderful seeing players from countries like the Ivory Coast and Trinidad and Angola have their day in the limelight on equal terms with the big money countries… and to see them occasionally win! The commentators here in Japan are mostly quite benign, always with a former world cup player or coach alongside to comment, often with some important background information. The only time I get hot around the collar is when Japan is playing and the commentators say things like, “I think we Japanese are going to do better than the Australians in this hot weather, after all we are used to playing in the heat.” (last thing I heard Australia is somewhat hotter than Japan) Or, “Japan has a 70 percent chance against Brazil. Our offensive strategy has looked into all the historical tendencies of Brazil and worked out a solution to using this against Brazil.” (Never mind that Japan has never even gotten to the semi-finals and that they lost against Australia after having had a 1 point advantage for most of the game… Australia gained 3 points in the last ten minutes of the game. 3 points in ten minutes, that’s absurd)

    Tomorrow night I hope to be watching the Japan~Croatia match in a soccer bar downtown. It will be exciting to see everyone lose their inhibitions for a time and to cheer along with everyone.
    — butuki    16. June 2006, 19:08    Link

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