The bowing exchange is out of control. At Yokohama station, a burly Scots man in full tartan has stepped back to allow a Japanese couple to pass in front of him. Everyone's in a rush somewhere but courtesy must prevail. They give him a bow of thanks. The Scotsman bows back. The Japanese couple meet that bow.
The Scotman's smile begins to falter as he offers another dubious bow. He's starting to wonder if he will make the game. The locals back away, still nodding their thanks and the Scottish fans rumble on. There are hundreds of these odd little brushings and international dances of courtesy occurring all over Japan. They'll put manners on us yet.
Hours before Ireland’s World Cup adventure begins now and near the stadium, a Scottish fan wearing a David Sole-era jersey and a regulation tartan cap decorated with flags has stopped for a breather with his lady, who wears tartan trousers and is wheelchair bound.
They’ve been approached by a young local family who ask for a photograph through the international sign of pointing enthusiastically at their phones. The Scotsman hands his scarf so the Japanese can hold it aloft for the snap and together they pose.
Afterwards, they bid goodbye – amid much bowing and smiling and thank-yous in both Japanese and English.
And then, as the Scottish couple make their through the crowd, the little boy from the Japanese family runs after them and hands the Scottish lady what appears to be a lucky charm and then vanishes again almost before the woman has time to examine what she is holding.
The gesture takes all of five seconds. But it is very sincere and moving and cuts to the genuine eagerness with which visitors have been welcomed in Yokohama and Tokyo where, for one month anyhow, they are willing to indulge this global fascination with a sport which, for many, must seem strange and alien.
But then, so too must the sight of Scotsmen knocking back cans of Asashi in their kilts or gargantuan Springboks fans wandering through the shopping district of Yanaka Ginza or the New Zealanders’ visual fireworks in Electric town or the Irish fans scattered across the city.
Tokyo’s scale is overwhelming. In places it looks as if was built by a bunch of sugar-rushed five-year-olds given a free run in Legoland: multi-storey buildings plonked down here and then jaw-dropping constructions like St Mary’s Cathedral or the Prada building there.
It goes on forever but it’s the sheer number of people it contains that is hardest to fathom. Forty million people in the greater Tokyo region: it’s quite the spot for a Kiwi from farming country or a Springbok family from the Highveld to dive into after a mind-numbing flight.
Orderly intent
Shinjuku station, for instance, is the busiest train station in Tokyo – their Heuston Station. You can spot the rugby visitors by their jerseys and their quizzical expressions as they try and figure which train they need to get. It’s a ridiculously vast place, with 36 platforms, 200 exits and, at last count, just the one busker.
Three-and-a-half million people go through its doors every single day. And if you happen to be there at half seven in the morning, it will feel as if all three and a half million are intent on breezing through all at once.
At rush hour, the Tokyoites move in shoals of silent, orderly intent, bombing up escalators and whooshing through turnstiles at dizzying speed. If anyone – a dumb, clueless Irishman say – stops to stare in blinking incomprehension at the station’s names in hirikana, the potential for chaos would seem enormous.
But the locals simply move around all obstacles without adjusting speed or batting an eyelid. And once you are stuck in the middle of thousands of Tokyoites ghosting by at great speed, then there’s nothing to do but stand there and let the murmuration pass through. All of this happens very calmly. There’s none of the noise or frantic energy you’d get in the major thoroughfares of London or New York.
On the platform, the locals queue in orderly lines of two directly where the train doors open. They patiently wait until everyone who is exiting at that station has left the carriage before boarding. After that, though, all bets are off. The train itself becomes, in the viral phrase of the Rugby World Cup, "absolute carnage".
There’s no such thing as a full carriage. If the doors are open, then the locals keep piling in. Within seconds, yes, each carriage is full to capacity. Then it is uncomfortably wedged and seconds after that, it’s just mental. Law, order and much of the ritual courtesy around which Japanese society revolves is abandoned.
Pensioners are the worst. Tiny Japanese ladies who look as if they may have been around when the original Shinjuku Station opened in the late 1800s, wield sharp elbows. If this went down in any city in the western world, there would be a full scale riot. But again, everyone stays completely chilled. As chaos goes, it is incredibly restrained.
The thing is, through all of the speed of the city, you can see the local people taking time to notice and help any rugby visitors.
It’s the one thing that any rugby fan you meet here is surprised about: that for all the Japanese formality and the restraint and the customs they’ve been reading about, there’s a warmth about the locals and as they welcome rugby’s global fans and their fascination with this bizarre and violent oval ball game which must confirm for many the pure oddness of the West.
