* This essay column is written by a longtime foreign resident of Japan.

Sunday is sports day in our house. No, not undokai, that annual ritual of embarrassment at my son's school where I am required to give my all and risk a myocardial infarction for aka gumi. It is the day my 10- year-old and I find a field of dreams somewhere in Setagaya and relive our great sporting memories, which in Tom's case are usually only 24 hours old.

My wife joins us, if only vicariously. She spends the day dozing in front of the television, "watching" the latest marathon or ekiden -- don't the Japanese love to run; soccer in all it guises from schoolboys to the pros; baseball, softball, gateball; oba- sans playing volleyball; "salarymen" playing rugby; even Bob Sapp beating the c*!p out of someone or more likely on recent evidence, having the c*!p beaten out of him in K-1. I'm not sure what her great sporting memories are, but I'm sure they certainly involve a kotatsu, senbei and lashings of ocha.

Come Sunday, Tom and I are up early and off to a swimming pool in Kamimachi where for an hour he is Ian Thorpe winning his 37th Olympic gold medal and I am Duncan Goodew -- with hair -- stroking my way to gold for Britain in the 100 meters breaststroke at the Moscow Games. After a quick high-protein, low-carbohydrate or low-protein, high-carbohydrate lunch, whichever is the in sports diet -- although strangely it always seems to be yaki-soba -- it's off to the park.

We're fortunate to have four parks within walking distance of the house. Three of them have fenced-off areas where a ball can be kicked, thrown and hit without endangering too many lives. But when the weather's good they resemble Shinjuku Station at rush hour, so Tom and I head for the sports field at Nihon University, which has a campus just behind the house.

If we've been to a J.League game on Saturday or watched a game on TV, then Sunday afternoon is for soccer. For a couple of hours, Tom is the star striker, midfield creative genius and defensive rock of the Yokohama F. Marinos. For 120 glorious minutes, he can swerve it like Shunsuke (Nakamura), man-mark like Naoki Matsuda and take all the scoring chances that Tatsuhiko Kubo spurns. With my soccer shoes on and the ball at my feet I slip back to a beautiful summer day in 1966 and I'm Geoff Hurst firing an unstoppable left-foot shot inside the right- hand post of West German goalkeeper Tilkowski to complete my hat trick and win the World Cup for England.

If we've spent Saturday evening watching baseball then on Sunday Tom is brought on to win the Japan Series for the Kintetsu Buffaloes. He's in a tough spot: the Buffs are leading 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game of the series, but with two out and the bases loaded, he's facing a full count and the Yomiuri Giants' Hideki Matsui. However, Tom's 190 kph "snake ball" quickly sends Matsui back to the dugout and transforms the loathsome Giants into nothing but a bad memory -- until next Sunday. The Buffs win! The Buffs win! Hososeki, Hososeki, hero interview.

Being English I have no baseball memories. But as I throw the ball back to Tom, it doesn't take much -- a trick of the light, the smell of new mown grass, a twinge of homesickness -- to transport me back to an overcast Saturday morning at the Oval cricket ground in London in 1964 where England is playing Australia, and Fred Trueman is steaming in from the pavilion end.

Sunday afternoon is a wonderful time when you can be anyone you want to be. And for an all too brief moment I am "Fiery Fred," pushing the hair out of my eyes and smiling wearily as I watch Neil Hawke trudge back to the pavilion, realizing that I am the first man to take 300 wickets in international cricket.

If you have any comments please e-mail me
at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp .

The Japan Times Weekly: May 2, 2003
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