Rugby World Cup 2019 Japan All Blacks Ben Smith, Ardie Savea and Sevu Reece try ramen noodles at Kyushu Jangara Ginza in Tokyo 23 September 2019. Photo / All Blacks.
Rugby World Cup 2019 Japan All Blacks Ben Smith, Ardie Savea and Sevu Reece try ramen noodles at Kyushu Jangara Ginza in Tokyo 23 September 2019. Photo / All Blacks.
If the good people of Japan didn't know 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 NewZealand 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 black-outs in 30,000 homes. In crime news, a man's body was found lying on its back on a riverbank in Tokyo; he'd been strangled with a thin cord.
Rugby World Cup 2019 Japan All Blacks Ben Smith, Ardie Savea and Sevu Reece try ramen noodles at Kyushu Jangara Ginza in Tokyo 23 September 2019. Photo / All Blacks.
But the biggest talking point is the performance by 26-year-old sumo champion Mitakeumi in 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 sell-out crowd. In fact, tickets had 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 of 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 known to be recognised now and then in certain parts of town at particular times of day, and the All Blacks, too, are starting to make themselves known.
Rugby World Cup 2019 Japan All Blacks Ben Smith, Ardie Savea and Sevu Reece try ramen noodles at Kyushu Jangara Ginza in Tokyo 23 September 2019. Photo / All Blacks.
I was waiting in line for lunch at the legendary Chūka Soba Benten ramen joint in Tokyo two days after the All Blacks-Springboks thriller when I got to 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 I was from.
"New Zealand!", he said and shook my hand. "What about that Julian Savea, eh?"
Rugby novice Steve Braunias is writing a weekly Rugby World Cup column. He is not in Japan.
