First 3 Days

After 3 days of being in Tokyo I now have found time to write a bit of an update on how the trip has gone so far.

On Friday I set off to Japan from Wellington. After a long flight with a dodgy TV I finally arrived. Noboru met me at the Airport and we took the train into downtown Toyko from there we took a taxi to my hotel. My hotel is in Aoyama which is a very flash area. You walk down the road and there are flash cars parked outside every house. The share volume of people amazes me. At my hotel I meet Yoshi who is in charge of the international relations with referees. he is a very nice man and after I had checked in we went off to a small Japanese restaurant for dinner. I took the philosophy coming in when it came to food of don't ask questions and just eat. It paid off. Over a couple of quite beers I consumed seas urchant and also the entrails of beef. I was pretty tired after the flight so after dinner and finding out what my programme for the week was i headed off to bed.

Saturday I woke up early not quite adjusted to the timezones. I wasn't being picked up until 11.30 so i had a lot of time to kill. I needed to purchase an adapter for my laptop so I googled the closest electronic store. This was about a half an hour walk away. I needed to stretch my legs so off I went. Thanks to googlemaps i am pretty sure I went the most off the normal road route possible. I got to the store with no issues though and got to see a bit of the residential part of Tokyo. After purchasing what I needed I took the train back to my Hotel. This took 5 minutes and was surprisingly easy to use.

Yoshi picked me up and we made our way to the Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium. The stadium is similar to AMI Stadium in Christchurch. I meet the referee I would be ARing that day for and then headed off to the Pre-Match meeting. This is a different thing about rugby in Japan. An hour and a half before the game the referees, ARs, Match commissioner and the manager of both teams meet and it is decided when the referee will speak to the player/ do the toss/ If there are any issue. After this we got ready for the match. The game that took place saw Yokogawa Electric company take on Kurita Kogyo. Kurita had ex OBU player Ash Parker and Cheifs first five David Hill playing for them. These two dominated the match with Kurita winning by 20. It was an interesting first experience to Japanese rugby. A lot of structure and one thing that stood out was the lack of depth that their back-lines run with.

After the match we headed to an English Pub around the corner. There we ran into Ash and David and managed to have a chat to both of them. This was helpful as I am refereeing them next week against Mitsubishi. This should be good fun as the first five match up will be David Hill vs Stephen Donald while Shane Williams plays on the wing for Mitsubishi. After a few beers and some food I headed back to my hotel to get some sleep. I kept being told what a massive match my game would be on Sunday so i thought it would be best.

Sunday I woke up to watch the All Blacks. The live-stream was amazing quality but the american commentary was hard to listen to. After this I got ready to head to the same stadium as yesterday. about 200 people watched Saturdays match. 2 hours before kick off the stadium was already full. The hype around this match was huge. Live on TV and a full house I was pretty excited. After the pre-match meeting I had the hardest front row talk of my life. It needed to be translated but I think the message came across. Scrums are an interesting concept here. They like getting really low and their feet go really far back which can lead to a lottery to whether or not it will stay up. Something that im sure they will work on.

Kick off came around and I was ready to go. This game is the biggest game in their University calendar. Teikyo University are the champions and Waseda are the All Blacks of Japanese rugby in terms of reputation. A TV audience of over 3 million apparently tuned in to watch this game. After the University anthems (yes they have anthems which they sing as loud as we sing our national anthem) it was time for kick off. An amazing atmosphere for the first couple of minutes. I was able to observe for the first 5 minutes and not be forced into a decision which was nice. In the second minute Waseda won the ball just on Teikyos side of halfway. The 10 for Waseda was back in the pocket about 55 metres from the goal line. I thought he was just going to kick for the corner but instead he unleashed a monster drop kick which sailed over the posts. From there though it was pretty much all Teikyo they were just too strong and too clinical. The score blew out towards the end ending 53-11. An amazing game to be involved with and something I really enjoyed.

After the game I had to give a speech at the aftermatch. I used very limited (and probably very bad) Japanese combined with Noboru translating for me. Last night we headed to a "Japanese Pub" with members of their association. The amount of food ordered was amazing and I had to convince them that I was in fact full and anymore I would explode.

Today I am ARing again. Another University game which should be good for the legs.

I will hopefully update this every couple of days.

I am having a great time and if anyone from the the WRRA executive is ready this thank you so much for this opportunity.