Savea indifference to rugby
If the good people of Japan didn’t know about much or anything about the All Blacks before that exhilarating, free-running demolition of the Springboks on Saturday night, then they still don’t.
Rugby World Cup fever is at room temperature in this beautiful island nation which is a bit like New Zealand except with a lot less paddocks to play footy in.
My opening conversational gambit in the bars, ramen houses and public parks of Tokyo has been, “What about that Julian Savea, eh?”
It’s gone down like a lead balloon but it’s to the vast credit of the good people of Japan that I’ve never encountered indifference at such polite levels.
“Yes,” bowed one man, politely curious, “what about him?”
They have other things on their mind. Typhoon Tapha, the 17th of the cyclone season, whipped up a frenzy
and caused blackouts in 30,000 homes.
In crime news, a man’s body was found lying on a riverbank in Tokyo. He had been strangled with a thin cord.
But the biggest talking point is the performance by 26-year-old sumo champion Mitakeumi at the weekend to hoist his second Emperor’s Cup. The 176kg colossus drove his opponent over the straw to win the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament in front of a sellout crowd.
Tickets sold out for all 15 days of the tournament.
“Rugby,” wondered my dining companion as he dipped his chicken dumpling into karima, a spicy sakura shrimp condiment, “must be very interesting?”
He made it sound on a scale with another tournament held this year, in Wellington over Queen’s Birthday Weekend, which attracted the best players in New Zealand, was fiercely competed, and certainly intensely interesting to its followers, but rather failed to make a dent on the national consciousness — the New Zealand Scrabble Finals.
But even Scrabble champs have their slice of fame.
Alastair Richards, who won the 2019 Scrabble tournament with 18 victories in 22 games, is recognised now and then in certain parts of town — and the All Blacks, too, are starting to make themselves known.
I was waiting in line for lunch at the legendary Chu¯ ka Soba Benten ramen joint in Tokyo two days after the All Blacks-Springboks thriller when I got talking with a guy who congratulated me on my choice of restaurant, and recommended the tsukemen.
“It’s a wheaty-tasting noodle boiled and shocked in ice to create a bouncy texture,” he said.
It was like talking to Jesse Mulligan. He really knew his ramen, but his enthusiasm took a sudden surge when he asked where it was that I was from.
“New Zealand!”, he said, and shook my hand. “What about that Julian Savea, eh?”
Rugby must be very interesting? Japanese diner