Part 2 - Monday and Tuesday

When I last wrote I was about to head to my third game in three days. I was ARing another University match.  To get to this match required catching 3 trains. Maybe if the public transport of Wellington was as good as it is here I may consider catching it. Everything is on time which does make it very easy to plan a trip and get places. The game took place Kamiyugi which was a far cry from the Stadium at Prince Chichibu. Another strange thing about this game is that a rule was established that if the ball went onto the athletic track that enclosed the field teams would not be allowed to take a quick throw.

After the game we watched another game that followed ours. This game produced a huge upset apparently not that I knew who was meant to win. After this we went to a BBQ restaurant. The BBQ was a cast iron pot filled with hot charcoal with a grate on top. You cooked the thin slices on meat onto of this. It was a very nice meal. Nobouro also told me to try some of the cold sliced meat he had ordered. It tasted like beef but he proceeded to tell me it was in fact Horse meat. It tasted just like a lean bit of beef. Post dinner we took the train back to the centre of Tokyo. We went to visit the large crossing which you see on Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift (great movie). Nearly 3000 people cross this crossing when the light turns green. It was amazing to see all the people around and also as it was dark the amount of lighting and advertising on the surrounding building was something I had never experienced before.

 Tuesday saw me have a day to myself. I used this day to explore the local area where I was staying. It was really cool to be able to wander around and take everything in. A couple of things really interested me. The first was that there were lines of about 50-60 people outside a couple of stores. I thought there may have been someone famous inside or something special going on. No it was the line for buying POPCORN!! I couldn't believe it. I asked about this later as I thought it must be pretty special popcorn but apparently not it was just normal popcorn. Wow. Another thing that amazed me was the lack of rubbish around the city. The Japanese pride themselves on being clean and you can see this when you walk down the street. There is not a spec of rubbish. After having some Sushi Train for lunch I wandered back to my Hotel. That evening I attended a meeting of their up and coming referees. At this meeting I presented (through a translator) on my experiences as a referee so far and any small pieces advice I had. It was a very humbling experience and they hung on my every word. They also asked a heap of questions which were very good. They are eager to learn when it comes to rugby. After the meeting we had a dinner at a Chinese restaurant which was very nice.