Last night I went to the first of my (now sadly only 2)
Rugby World Cup games of this year's tournament, and it was... well,
sweaty. But still a good time.
I
don't suppose the 3 people who read (skim / glance at) this blog are
rugby aficionados, so I won't get into the game itself. I will just
say that it was an ugly one, lots of poor handling of the ball
(presumably due to the heat and high humidity making the ball slippery
from the aforementioned sweatiness). But in the end Scotland won 34 - 0,
so it all turned out well for me.
The
game was packed, and the majority of the fans were not Scottish or
Samoan. I always enter the ticket lottery for the highest priced tickets,
because the chances are better -- most people are only willing to pay
for the cheap seats -- but also tick the box that I will take less good
seats if it's all that's available. Well, I definitely got the less
good seats this time. I was only about 10 rows from the very top of the
stadium, due to such high demand.
It's great to see how the locals love
the game and have embraced the tournament. A lot of the Japanese folk I saw were kitted out in their own team's gear, but many had on Scotland or
Samoa tops. That means they didn't just buy a ticket to a game for a
lark, they chose a side and bought the shirt. I love it.
Second lesson from Japan: They are amazing at queue management here.
Every lineup at the stadium -- getting in, buying food, everything -- had ropes to direct it in an efficient snake formation, and someone standing with a sign to indicate where to join the end of the queue. I thought the Brits were the champs of standing in lines, but nope, Japan takes this round.
After
the game, I headed back out on the subway and decided to make one more
attempt at finding the ticket office to get my Japan Rail Pass. This
time I was successful, hooray!
So all in all, a good night for me. Now off to another city...
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