Okey dokey so honourable Mister Koto

REGULAR readers of the Irish Examiner's weekly television sports column - a big hello to Brendan and Irene Blennerhasset, Old Youghal Road, Cork - are doubtless both suffering intense withdrawal symptoms, what with its author obviously being entirely preoccupied with dossing around the Far East, under the pretence of "covering" the 2002 World Cup.

To be honest, I’m suffering the odd withdrawal symptom myself, and I don’t just mean the distressing habit of Japanese ATM machines ever so politely telling me where to stick my card whenever I’ve tried to favour one with my custom.

No, the truth is that I do miss Bill, Gilesy, Liamo and the Dunph, and the way they might look at you, or even throw something at you, on those frequent occasions when they start hearing the strange music.

In normal circumstances, I would accept no substitute, but since the RTE signal doesn’t quite make it here to Japan - those damn cutbacks, I suppose - I find I must make do with the local version. So, here, for one week only, is the Irish Examiner’s Japanese TV sports column.

Or, as wee George might put it, "oh, weirdness here."

The first thing to be said is that there is a fair bit of the footie we don’t get to see live since, for some unfathomable reason, the networks of the tournament’s host nation provide handkerchief rather than blanket coverage of their very own World Cup. And there appears to be no rhyme or reason to their match selection. For example, on the day Brazil debuted against Turkey, the main NHK channel ignored the game completely until their highlights show late in the night, forcing those of us with an urgent craving for samba soccer to occupy every available inch of floor space in the Irish team’s hotel, where the big screen was carrying live satellite transmission from the BBC, complete with Hansen, Lawro and wee, feisty Martin O’Neill.

For obvious reasons, wee would not be an unreasonable word to apply to their Japanese counterparts but feisty? No way. As in all things Japanese, an almost manic politeness characterises the presentation style of presenters and pundits, so that each broadcast comes complete with a furious barrage of bows, nods, smiles and approving hand signals.

Only on the night when Japan gained their first World Cup point, did the three presenters push the boat out, and then merely to offer a choreographed clenched fist salute before the final credits.

Otherwise, it’s all deference and courtesy, and not a pen fired in anger.

If a typical exchange on Japanese TV were translated straight into an Irish context, the results would go something like this. "Mr Eamon, would you be so kind as to share your analysis of that goal with us?" "Why, thank you for asking Mr Bill, but first I would be most eager to hear the opinion of my estimable colleague, Mr John." "Okey dokey, Mr Eamon."

But fairly secure in the knowledge that your correspondent’s Japanese extends no further than a mispronounced "konichiwa", how, you ask suspiciously, could I possibly know what the presenters are talking about? The answer, my friends, is one of the minor joys of the Japanese World Cup experience for English-speaking visitors, an ingenious button on the TV remote control, called ‘Bilingual’. Yes, yes, I know that finding cheap laughs in well-intentioned native attempts at translation is the last refuge of the mono-linguistic foreign scoundrel - and Bill Bryson - but for sheer rib-tickling surrealism, it would be hard to beat the ‘Bilingual’ button.

Activate this and, at certain times during the nightly round-up, you are rewarded with a live voice-over translation of proceedings in the studio. But, with the poor overworked translator literally taking things literally and also desperately playing catch-up, the results tend to produce a pleasingly Pythonesque effect.

"Here is Mr Koto, the commentator. Welcome Mr Koto. The Brazils, Mr Koto, a very aggressive positive?"

"Yes, see the deviation on the shooting from the Rivaldos, and the speedy ways of offence. And the play was exciting among the toply hot temperatures. That is the Brazils."

"Thank you, Mr Koto." The boys in Apres Match really need to get their hands on this gizmo. Simply press the button and it will produce reams of scripts for Frank.

From the low of Roy Keane to the high of Robbie Keane, the Irish have been pretty conspicuous in Japanese coverage of the World Cup. On Thursday night, one of the news programmes screened a clever package about how the previous night’s Ibaraki contest had played in two bars in Tokyo, one an Irish stronghold, the other populated almost exclusively by German supporters. Scenes of despair and joy, so familiar to us from previous World Cups, made for some atmospheric footage, but clearly of more interest, not to say fascination, for the programme makers, was the prodigious alcohol intake of their European visitors.

To this end, they stuck a little digital scoreboard in the corner of the screen, which registered the pints consumed in both bars as the night wore on. By half-time, the yoke was flipping over at a rate of knots, by full time it was just a speeding blur and by evening’s end, the final score showed that in this liquid World Cup showdown Ireland had had emerged triumphant, beating Germany by 248 to 201.

Two hundred and forty-eight pints, say you dismissively. In just the one night? Pints? For the love of god man, that makes no sense. Surely they were kegs?