That's Rich: Goodbye Japan and thanks for the great memories

It’s Monday morning and the day that was dreaded has arrived. The World Cup is over, and it is time to leave Japan. But what a way for it to finish, and boy did the Springboks enjoy their celebrations on Saturday night. As they should have.

Big Lood de Jager’s arm is strapped up and we all saw the pain he was in when he left the field prematurely during the final at Yokohama Stadium. Try tell him that he should be taking it easy though. He doesn’t care about the pain. He cares about only one thing.

"I don’t feel any pain, I only see this," he told some of us as he brandished his gold medal in front of him just as the party started to get going at the team hotel on the fringes of Tokyo’s Disneyland. Ah, Disneyland. It takes me back to the start of the tour, all those questions at press conferences from journalists who, because it hadn’t all started yet, didn’t really know what else to ask. So players were asked what it was like to meet Mickey Mouse. I think it was Beast who was asked that question.

Poor old Dan Cole, the England prop who was so badly mauled by South Africa’s most capped current player, must wish Beast had met Minnie Mouse in that first week and disappeared with her. It was easy to feel sorry for Cole. I agree with Bok coach Rassie Erasmus - he’s not a bad prop at all. But he will forever be remembered now for the part he played in a scrum disintegration that eventually conceded seven penalties.

Not that he’s alone. Let’s not forget Phil Vickery, who when he is out working his farm in England must occasionally stop dead in his tracks as he is revisited by the nightmare of what Beast did to him in the first British and Irish Lions test in Durban in 2009.

Apparently Cole has struggled against Beast before. I don’t remember it, but he is a player that Beast likes playing against, and who he likes mangling into different bodily shapes. The good news for Cole then is that it isn’t likely to happen again. Mr Mtawarira told us on Saturday night that an announcement on his future will be forthcoming in the next little while. He’s done all a player can now - he’s beaten the Lions, he’s won a Tri-Nations, a Rugby Championship and now the Holy Grail of rugby achievements, the Webb Ellis Cup.

What remains missing from his list of achievements is a Super Rugby trophy, but it is understood he will be finishing his career overseas so he won’t be adding to his record number of caps for the Sharks. Not that the Durban union would have a realistic chance of giving Beast the farewell present of becoming a Super Rugby winner. He’d probably have to relocate to Christchurch if he wants to do that.

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I admitted on Friday that I was tense. It remained like that. At least until the game. Somehow you can tell quite quickly when a team is going to win or not. And that was the case in the final. Once the Boks destroyed England in those first few scrums, it was pretty clear that the Webb Ellis Cup was coming back to South Africa.

That didn’t mean that some of us South African journalists didn’t forget we were there to work when Makazole Mapimpi went over for that sublime try to break the long Springbok try-scoring drought in World Cup finals and confirm their victory. Several of the guys were up on their feet, pumping their fists in the air, before remembering where they were. There is a code of ethics in the press box. We are not supposed to cheer. As I once told a Springbok player who took me on about something I had written in a New Zealand newspaper and who accused me of lacking patriotism, I am a reporter and not a supporter.

Well, on Saturday there was maybe a little too much patriotism in evidence. But who can blame us? We come from a country that really needed that win. Indeed, looking at some of the scenes sent out on WhatsApp groups and other social media, it is almost possible to say the main story wasn’t in Yokohama, it was back home. Watching the township people in Port Elizabeth celebrate underlined just how huge this World Cup victory, achieved by a Bok team led by South Africa’s first black captain in Siya Kolisi, is to both the sport and the country as a whole.

I’m looking forward to witnessing those celebrations myself when the roadshow rolls into Cape Town early next week.

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I am actually looking forward to being back in Cape Town, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t sadness at leaving Japan. On Sunday my mood could almost have been described as morose, though I am happy to settle for melancholy. After all the tension of the build-up and the celebrations of the night before, Sunday just seemed a bit anticlimactic, probably not helped by having to say goodbye to many colleagues that I have travelled with over the last seven weeks but who had flights home scheduled rather too close, in my opinion, to the final.

I’ve been there, in that melancholic mood, before at World Cups or after a long tour though. You arrive with six or seven weeks ahead of you and you think it is a long time, and initially time does pass slowly. But then as the business end of the tour or World Cup arrives time starts to accelerate and it is time to say goodbye.

I was back in Tokyo Bay until Sunday because I wanted to be nearer where the Boks were staying (I returned to central Tokyo on Sunday) and on Sunday morning, even though there hadn’t been much sleep, I took a walk out along the beach road towards the club rugby ground that, exactly seven weeks earlier, I had visited for the first Bok press conference of the tour.

I’d flown in from South Africa in the early hours of the morning, and everything was new and strange. A lot changes in seven weeks, it is enough time for what was strange to become familiar. I remember writing in an earlier tour diary of my fear of getting lost on the Tokyo underground system.

Well that couldn’t happen now. Indeed, one regret is the fortune in Yen that was forked out on arrival for the taxi fare to Tokyo Bay from Haneda Airport. Some helpful person had suggested at the airport that I just take the one train line that would lead me to Tokyo Station and the Keio Line, which would take me straight to Shin Urayasu, near the hotel I was going to stay. But it seemed too much to get my head around back then so I forked out nearly 15 000 yen for a taxi ride. Now I could probably get to Shin Urayasu from almost anywhere in Tokyo blindfolded. Not that I’d want to try it.

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It is going to be interesting to see if the culture shock experienced arriving in Japan is going to be repeated in the reverse direction when I get home. Okay, so I’m not expecting anyone to bow to me as a sign of respect. Just so you know. But if you happen to be a waiter, waitress, work in a bar, mind or guard cars, anything like that, please don’t take it wrongly if I don’t tip you. In this city I have had people walk me many hundreds of metres, in the days when I did still did get lost, to show me the way to go. But dare suggest they get anything in return for bending over backwards for you, and the reference is to people in the service industry now rather than the helpful people in the street, and you will get a stiff rebuke.

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Okay, let’s not tempt fate, but the one that really worries me is zebra crossings and traffic lights. In Japan, you can cross the street if you see the green person (it is a person, not a man, let’s be PC about this) flashing on the traffic light and you don’t even need to look if a car is coming. It won’t be. Or it might be coming but you know it will stop. Which isn’t always my experience in South Africa. And if you start walking and there is a car in the turning lane on the other side of the street, it will wait for you to cross even though the driver could easily press through without there being any danger of hurting anyone. I haven’t driven in Japan, but if I did I wouldn’t be watching out for jay-walkers. There just aren’t any of those. Well, there has been one this past seven weeks, but he’s flying out of here for Cape Town via Dubai tonight.

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Which reminds me, because someone else reminded me yesterday, about that Springbok jersey I saw at the Dubai Airport on the way over. It generated such excitement. Back then it seemed unlikely there’d be much support for the Boks at this World Cup.

Well, think again. That was something I got horribly wrong. The green jerseys were outnumbered about two to one at Yokohama at the weekend, but the Saffas were very present and also very loud. As they have been for the whole tournament. Where the money comes from goodness knows for this country is hellishly expensive. But the Boks don’t lack for passionate supporters prepared to travel long distances to see them play.

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Why am I so pleased the Boks won the World Cup? Well, part of it can be sourced in the mood I fell into when overhearing a conversation between two overseas supporters in a beer garden before last week’s semifinal. The one was telling his mate that he had another mate, clearly a South African expat, who told him that when he lived in South Africa he couldn’t tend to his garden without having a loaded gun in his back pocket, and that it was common to do that. Really?

Hopefully, the Boks winning the World Cup will be an advertisement to the world that the great little country on the southern tip of Africa isn’t falling apart to quite the extent that some would like us to believe.

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Not everything about Japan is easy and I do suspect there may be some people who could be in for some frustration when they head over here for the Olympics next year. That isn’t just a reference to the humid conditions that will be anticipated, although having experienced the end of summer humidity that greeted us on arrival in Japan, that could be a formidable challenge. The Olympics will be staged in mid-summer, and it is going to be unbearably humid.

My reference is to the inflexibility you sometimes (often/always) encounter in Japan. If you are a westerner who thinks that if it says last serving for breakfast is 9.30, with the doors closing at 10am, it means you can swan in at 9.32am and expect to be served, think that one through again.

In the one hotel I stayed in, much of my time was spent in the lobby area, which was on the 20th floor overlooking Tokyo. I chose to work there just to have a break from my room. I lost count of the number of times people came in thinking that they could be checked in only to be told that check-in time was 3pm and there was no flexibility over that. There were many arguments from people who obviously are used to a different approach to check-in times, meaning if the room is ready you should be allowed to move in.

At the hotel I stayed in this most recent Saturday night, I begged them to let me check in earlier as I had to get to Yokohama for the World Cup final. Eventually, they relented, but only on the condition I parted with payment for early check-in. It was so easy once the payment was made, the room was clearly ready for me to occupy it. They just wanted to stick by the rules.

Perhaps it is like that elsewhere, but I haven’t encountered it. It’s quite possible to be told in one breath that the hotel hasn’t been full for a week, which commits you to your stay, only to then be told you have to wait until 3pm to check in.

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I know others have written glowingly about the toilets in Japan. I don’t write about toilets. Just in passing though, mention should be made of the fact that I have never really figured them out. My brother is an airline pilot. Maybe he could do it. Just too many buttons. It will be weird getting back to a country where it is easy to figure out because there’s just one flusher. Which is all I’ve used on this trip. When there is one. Some tell me I’ve missed out. Too bad. Maybe next time.

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I would love there to be a next time. I was slightly negative about what might happen here during the Olympics next year. But let it be said, if anyone wants me to come out and cover the Olympics, I will be here in a flash.

This is an amazing country, the people are incredible, the culture is something you need to witness yourself. I am tempted to do one last diary when I get home, for I want to do my awards for the tour, both on the field and off it. And I need to pay the good people from the Kobe city council back for the great excursion complete with a lunch of Kobe beef that we were treated to during that week. That was the best lunch of the tour, I’m just sorry I didn’t head into the spa and the onsen and experience that. I was just too timid to take my kit off, which is compulsory in the public steam baths. Someone tried to tell me that it is compulsory to be naked in all swimming pools over here, but I don’t believe that. If it was I can’t imagine the Olympic swimmers would be rushing to get here in July.

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One thing that hasn’t been done yet is getting to Mount Fuji, so with my flight only scheduled for midnight tonight, I intend going out in that direction in the Skinkansen, just to say I went near it. The weather is good for it, apparently, it often isn’t and the top of Fuji is only seen 40 percent of the year, even if you stand right next to it. But otherwise this tour is over, this incredible experience is over (well almost).

I’m not sure I want to rank the World Cups I’ve been to, but this one was unique and a stand-alone. We arrived here in the humidity, we’re leaving in chilly weather that at times wouldn’t feel out of season if we were in Scotland. Along the way, we witnessed all the drama of Typhoon Hagibis, and unlike me, some of my mates didn’t drink enough red wine in Omazaeki to sleep like I did through the earthquake that hit in the middle of the night. That might be one place few of us would venture back to. But like everywhere the people of Omazaeki were fantastic. Indeed, there isn’t a single person I have met on this trip that I could complain about. Thank you Japan. Or as I say now, arigato.