Braai comes off wors as Schalk seduced by sushi
Bok fell in love with ’unbelievable’ cuisine during rugby stint in Japan
SAKI SAKI: Schalk Burger with his wife Michele and Schalk jnr during their stay in Japan HE does not seem the type who prefers sushi to boerewors, but Schalk Burger’s favourite thing about living in Japan was the food.
The bulky Bok flanker and his family this month returned to South Africa after his six-month stint with one of Japan’s top teams, Suntory Sungoliath.
“The standout feature was the cuisine,” said Burger, who described Japan as “like going to space”.
“The food was unbelievable. You can pretty much have everything [and] it’s all fresh and clean and of a high quality.”
Except for breakfast — which was the biggest culture shock.
“Japanese don’t eat breakfast like we do, they eat normal food for breakfast,” he said. “So if we wanted traditional bacon-and-egg breakfasts, we took the 30-minute train ride to the Aussie cafe to get some.”
He and Bok scrumhalf Fourie du Preez, who lived in the same apartment block in Fuchu, a small town about 30km from Tokyo, would do the breakfast run together.
“Me and Fourie often cruised through with the kids. That was our local rendezvous.”
Burger, 31, said it took six weeks for him, his wife, Michele, and their two sons, Schalk jnr, 2, and Nicol, 1, to recover from the initial culture shock and adapt to their new home.
And although Burger quickly fell in love with the food, ordering it was more of a struggle and the language barrier was his biggest obstacle.
“Everything is written in Japanese, so you’re completely lost. Walking into a grocery store and trying to understand what is what was very difficult.”
He often longed for an “ordentlike braai” and wine from his father’s wine farm, Welbedacht, near Wellington.
Nevertheless,
he
“immersed” himself in the culture, ensuring he and his family saw the traditional side of Japan by travelling around the countryside and visiting Buddhist temples.
“Fortunately there are lots of foreigners in Tokyo, so my wife had a girls’ group. The family fitted in well. We did every touristy thing there is to do in Tokyo.”
And it was a relief not to be mobbed by rugby fans.
“It’s unbelievable how nice and quiet my public life was . . . superrelaxed. In Tokyo I don’t get shared with 40 million people and my wife, so there was less of a fight for time with me.”
Now back home, Burger took his family on holiday to the West Coast before leaving on a month-long tour to Australia and New Zealand, where he played his landmark 100th Super Rugby game for the Stormers against the Highlanders in Dunedin yesterday.
Burger is hoping for a successful year with the Stormers before turning his attention to the Rugby World Cup in England in September.
“In the back of your mind you want to get to the World Cup. But right now my focus is playing well for the Stormers and later on I will set my goals for the World Cup.”
If selected, Burger will feature in his fourth successive World Cup. He made his tournament debut in 2003 and was a winner with South Africa in 2007, then lost out in the quarterfinal four years later.
He and his family will return to Japan after the World Cup to complete the second stint of his two-year contract with Suntory, before he returns to the Stormers for their 2016 campaign.
Beyond that, Burger is not sure what the future holds, but he has no immediate plans for retirement.
“I have another year at the Stormers, and that’s pretty much all I know for now,” he said.