Tsuyu Hot!

It is hot.

It really has become bloody hot.

About three or four days ago the "tsuyu" - rainy season, started here in Tokyo. What that means (apart from the obvious rain), is that the humidity becomes almost unbearable. The temperature hovers around 20-30 degrees, but the humidity makes this feel a lot worse. My apartment doesn't face the sun so it remains relatively cool, but as soon as I step outside I start working a sweat, and by the time I get to the station my T-shirt is soaked.

Not nice.

The frequent downpours don't provide much relief though, as the humidity remains and all that really changes is that you can't tell if it's the sweat or the rain that's responsible for your T-shirt being stuck to your back. (Most likely, it's a combination of the two).

The heat, along with the awkward times of the world cup matches, have resulted in me having pretty bad sleeping patterns for the past week or so. The match times here are 8.30pm, 11pm and 3.30am - not the best really if I intend to do something the following day... Nonetheless, I've been able to watch most of the matches (I rarely stay up for the 3.30 ones unless they're big games, or I have the chance to sleep the following day).

So what do I think? Well, firstly ARGENTINA are immense. Their first game against Nigeria was pretty crappy in my opinion, but i felt they more than made up for it by their performance against South Korea. Yes, the goals were not the best, and the cause of the Korean goal was awful, but at least they played real football (not the defensive rubbish most teams have been choosing to play), and they looked great for it.



ENGLAND on the other hand, were utterly rubbish (as usual, I might add). I stayed up last Saturday to watch the USA England game and was quite disappointed with the match as a whole. Yesterday's draw to Algeria was apparently even worse! (I failed to watch that as all night karaoke took priority). The highlights proved too boring to watch so I just skipped straight to the analysis and watched Lineker, Hansen and Shearer complain about how badly England played. (Don't worry, I won't link to that as it's not worth it).

JAPAN seemed pretty fortunate to grab that goal against Cameroon last Monday - their first goal ever in a world cup match outside of Japan (ie. not scored in 2002). I was a bit shocked at the lack of noticeable support for that game by the Japanese. I saw 2 people wearing Japan shirts all day - one of which was Ramses, and when we were watching the game at home, apart from us, we could hear nobody cheering or celebrating.

Kick-off for the The Netherlands-Japan game is in 25 minutes, and I don't think Japan will get quite so lucky this time around (although, The Netherlands didn't play too convincingly against Denmark...)

In other news, I was invited to be "interviewed" for a Japanese TV show. I basically just had to talk about something that I liked about Japan in Japanese. (I ended up choosing the fact that bicycles are registered here, so people are less likely to pinch them). The show either aired last night or will be airing this coming Friday - I'll try and record what I can so you guys can check out my awesome Japanese skillz!

Also, someone stole my shoes the other day - the second time in my life that I've had my shoes stolen (the last time was two years ago in Kyoto). I had a sports class so I left my shoes on the "shoe shelf" and changed into my trainers. When I went back after class they were no longer there...

Who the hell steals shoes???

Oh well. I filed a report and if they haven't shown up by next Thursday I'll just have to go out and buy them again. (I don't think they would fit many people here either - I have to go to a specialist store to find my size of shoe)

Anyway, kick off time...

頑張って日本！