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We spent our last evening in Tokyo watching football. Pretty good way to say goodbye really.

The match was Manchester United to Urawa Reds, clever Patrick got us tickets before they sold out.

We got ourselves Urawa fan tickets and arrived an hour and a half early to get good seats, looking forward all the time to clapping and singing our evening away with all the mad Urawa fans.

Unfortunately, it took almost half an hour for us to get the ball, so for the first 20 minutes, the stadium was filled with silence, broken by the occasional boo and whistle.

Not quite the atmosphere we have become accustomed to.

After Urawa scored a goal (a bit out of the blue) in the 26th minute or so, we all cheered up and sang a little, but it soon became apparent that the majority of the crowd appeared to be supporting Manchester United.

Traitors!

A little disappointing for our last Reds game.

I got my closest yet to seeing Mt Fuji yesterday.

Patrick spent the weekend near the mountain to participate in the Saiko Road Race, and on the way home, he called me via video call and showed me Mt Fuji.

So at least now I have seen it “live”. Next, to see it in person.

Patrick is horribly disappointed because he came third in this race instead of winning. I think third out of 5000 or so entrants is not so bad.

We discovered some yellow watermelons in the grocery store this evening, really very odd looking things.

I wasn’t feeling brave enough to try one tonight after Patrick convinced me they would taste of banana, but we must try one soon.

Patrick saw a snake in Yoyogi Park this morning. A very large, black snake.

I am not sure if snakes are common around here, but I never expected to see one in central Tokyo.

We decided to have our lunch in Meiji Park instead, just in case…

I am loving our picnic lunches. The convenience stores here have the most amazing selection of fresh, packaged meals to choose from. It will be months before we run out of picnic menu options. This is one thing I will definitely miss when we leave, the simple, healthy and cheap meals from the convenience stores.

Today I had a silken tofu lunch box, which came with a little packet of silken tofu and numerous seasonings to mix in. It had tiny, tiny tempura fish, dried seaweed, pickled something-or-other and various other yummy things. If only we had this sort of snack option at every 7eleven in Melbourne, I think I would have eaten a much healthier quantity of Kettle chips and chocolate in the past.

Just as we finished our rather substantial lunch, an announcement rang out over the loudspeakers to remind us not to bring food or drink into the park, so as to keep it beautiful and free of rubbish. Oops.

A little embarrassing, but no so bad, as we weren’t aware beforehand, and are always careful to clean up after ourselves and make sure no litter is left behind.

Well… usually we are….

Not even a minute after the announcement, an ugly great crow appeared out of nowhere and flew off with our rubbish bag. Patrick leapt up and chased him off down the hill, much to the delight of all the other people sitting about in the park.

Unfortunately the crow casually flapped off across the lake and disappeared into the trees.

Now we understand the no-food-in-the-park rule.

After we had made a swift and quiet exit from Meiji Park, we headed off to Saitama to watch the Urawa Red Diamonds play Sydney FC. Patrick bought us Urawa fan tickets this time, so we were right in the middle of all the action.

I was enormously impressed by the singing ability of the Urawa fans; I don’t remember any Victory fans every singing so tunefully. A You Tube search of “Urawa Reds Supporters” brings up a few videos of these fans at work, they are pretty remarkable. I think Sydney FC did an excellent job of playing to that crowd.

La la la la Urawa red-suu…

We clapped along to the theme song of “The Great Escape” and to “We are Sailing”, and lots of other things I couldn’t quite recognise at the time.

I’ll have to learn the words for next time.

Patrick booked a table at Estadio again this evening so we could watch the final of the Asian Futsal Championships.  The staff there are so friendly.  We ordered too much food because I expected all the dishes to be the usual tiny entree size, but they were all a regular main size.  We didn’t have any trouble finishing though, they were so good.

The futsal wasn’t so interesting, but Patrick is clever enough to know that if he takes me somewhere with pretty decor and good food, I will sit happily and quietly eating and taking photos while he enjoys the game. 

We have had quite an eventful day today. I dragged Patrick and Michael off to Kameido this afternoon as I wanted to see Kameido Tenjin Shrine and its famed Japanese Wisteria. Unfortunately the signage around the area is about as good as the signage anywhere else is Tokyo, so we spent quite a time wandering about looking for it.

I thought the walk was interesting at any rate, and we came across another lovely shrine along the way that we wouldn’t have found if I hadn’t got us a little lost.

We eventually found Kameido Tenjin, but it seems that we were a little late for the Wisteria. It probably all fell off as we were walking about the place trying to find it. I was horribly diasppointed, as I had been looking forward to seeing it all week.

At least we did discover that the ponds at the shrine were full of huge Koi and lovely tortoises that all swam about looking up at us or sunbathed on the little stone islands in the ponds.

We went to watch a baseball game after the shrine-viewing, which was a first for all of us.

Its turns out that the game itself is very long and uneventful, but the crowds are fun as usual. At the first home run, every single member of the crowd produced a little green umbrella from out of nowhere and danced about with it. It was completely unexpected, and very amusing.

At one point in the game, a special golden umbrella was awarded to the man who had danced the most enthusiastically.

We were also impressed to see that the fans used dozens of real trumpets to play out the team tunes instead of the awful colourful plasic ones we are used to back home.

Finally, and most exciting of all, Patrick caught one of the balls that was thrown into the crowd. Now we are the proud owners of a real Tokyo Baseball!

We ended up escaping before the game finished as it was so long and really quite boring to watch.

We went to Pronto for dinner and had the nicest pizza I have had for a long time, as well as some fantastic tomato and mozarella salad. The food there is really nice, but it becomes horribly smoky in the evenings, and I can smell the smoke on my clothes even as I type.

Michael has collected his key to his apartment, so, seeing as we were in the area, we went and had a peek after dinner. It has a much better view than ours, and a bigger living area. We are a little bit jealous.