Sunday 13th May was a pretty epic day for English football. Sometimes living so far away from home means I can become a bit disconnected from English culture, that is not the case with the Premier League though. You can watch it anywhere and with the invention of the internet you can discuss it with people worldwide on services like Twitter or even stream BBC radio coverage. It was truly wonderful to listen to that last day of the 2011/12 season, I won’t go into the details but I feel that it is best summed up by this tweet from the phenomenon that is Danny Baker.

Football. Fucking football. Imagine not being into it. Those poor, poor half-alive bastards.

— Danny Baker (@prodnose) May 13, 2012

What I had missed out on was actually watching Sergio Aguero’s winning goal. Imagine my delight when a friend sent me a YouTube link to it with commentary that sounded very familiar.

The man you can hear there, making an amazing moment even more sensational, is Juan Manuel Pons. El Bambino, as he is known, is an Argentinian football commentator who works on FOX Sports’ Latin American Premier League coverage. He has built up quite the reputation because of the unusual way he calls goals.

Not content with simply yelling out “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL” like so many of his Latin contemporaries he often sings a little song too. These odes are pretty amazing and he goes to some lengths to bring them to the public, for the regular goalscorers he will even bring records to sing along to. Although if an unexpected player grabs a goal he does have to think quickly to come up with something.

I remember the first time I watched the Premiership in Colombia. It was a game between Arsenal and Southampton that had a rather unexpected result, Rory Delap had managed to score twice. The first goal was greeted in a normal fashion but by the time Delap had bagged the second El Bambino had thought of something. He repeatedly said “Ro-ry-De-lap” while rubbing the microphone. As you would expect, this grabbed my attention. For the rest of that highlights package I gleefully awaited each goal, if only to see what he would do.

Until I watched the clip above I had half forgotten about that commentator and as a fan of odd goal commentary I was so glad to find him again. I have searched YouTube high and low for examples of his work and I hope you enjoy this playlist as much as I do.

Previously I may have given the impression that I dislike Japanese TV. This was entirely the right impression to give, sometimes I have felt physically ill watching it. That is not to say however that I don’t like anything on TV. Some shows are unique and interesting, one such show is called Game Center CX.

Game Center CX is a show hosted by Japanese comedian Shinya Arino, who every week has to beat or achieve some sort of high score in an old retro game within a certain time limit. The games that poor old Arino has to play are some of the most frustrating in history and his crew never quite let him know what to expect. For the less well known games he has to learn the game from scratch and work out how to control the thing before he even stands a chance.

Long suffering Arino has the patience of a saint, no matter how hard the game is or how many times he has had to restart a level Arino never gets angry and continues to make little jokes as he goes along. He is not totally alone in his struggles, the ADs (Assistant Directors) will chime in with hints or draw up tactics on the whiteboard for him. They have even gone as far as to construct the scale model of a level.

If Arino gets totally stuck the ADs will play through a bit for him. This is all well and good but often they are no better than Arino himself. Other regular team members are the producer, who only appears to tell Arino time is running out and Cameraman Abe, who seems to be some sort of reformed gangster.

Generally the time limit is set to 12 hours and I have no idea how he can keep it up for that long. Each challenge takes its toll and by the end he usually has a reikyaku cooling patch on his head and heavy bags under his eyes. He does not always succeed in his challenges and it has not been unknown for him to give up or have to take the game home for ‘homework’ and try again next week. Game Center CX has become popular enough for live shows to broadcast, a 24 hour Lemmings marathon springs to mind.

One time, Japanese viewers were subjected to 5 hours of him failing at level 98 of Quest of Ki over and over. Rather than just cut the show off they actually extended it and fans sent many faxes and emails of support and tips throughout the night. This show is truly the definition of the Japanese concept of gaman. Both for Arino and the viewers.

The challenge isn’t the only aspect of the show, each week Arino also visits an interesting game shop or arcade and discovers all sorts of funky things there. He has also met many game industry luminaries for interviews. The more off the wall segments include one called “Everything Important in Life I Learned From Video Game Strategy Guides“. Here a Buddhist priest reads a profound passage from a strategy guide to the assembled staff. Other times the crew do dramatic readings of famous scenes from retro games.

I think this programme is wonderful. The phrase “This is the Top Gear of ********” has been banded about before but that really is a good description of this show. When he plays a game that I remember from back in the day the nostalgia factor hits the roof and when he plays an unknown one you have to wonder if it is as hard as they are letting on.

No matter what though you will find yourself being swept up in the excitement and genuinely happy when he overcomes a particularly difficult obstacle. I think I have even cheered out loud at one point. Most importantly this show is simply very, very funny. It has had such an effect on me that I even bought a Super Famicom (Japanese Super Nintendo) the other week. Game Center has made me want to relive some of those old games for myself.

If you’ve got time please check out the show yourself, it has been subtitled and loads are available on YouTube or from this website. If you prefer officially licensed DVDs a set will be released in the US by Discotek in September. If you want to see it on Japanese TV it is on Fuji TV Thursdays at midnight. For more information check out The Game Center CX Episode Guide. 

It’s not often I miss English food. Given that my mother wasn’t British, I never really grew up eating standard English meals. As a result the food I like most is usually readily available here. Occasionally I do miss things I can’t get in Japan. After a particularly vicious bout of tonsillitis I found myself craving Heinz tomato soup only to find a distinct lack of it in my local supermarket. There were lashings and lashings of corn soup but the tomato soup was conspicuous by its absence. Also, there only seemed to have canned soup of the condensed variety on the shelves. This caused a great deal of confusion when I came to prepare it, not having tried to decipher the instructions beforehand.

It’s not just soup though, enter a branch of Mr Donut, the most popular doughnut repository in Japan, and you will notice a vast amount of ringed doughnuts and no hole-less doughnuts at all. This didn’t affect me for a long while but one day I went into a bakery and saw a vast amount of doughnuts that looked as though they were deep-fried.

This seemed quite exciting to me, by this point in my Japan adventure I had realised food that I was used to in the UK can have a completely different version here. Japanese curry is different from curry sold in the UK, for example, which in turn is different from that which is sold in India. Well, I assume that is the case, I’ve never been to India. Anyway, I took this deep-fried bun to the register, paid my money, bit into it and got a shock.

I had discovered that Japanese curry is not only a different taste but it is often found inside deep-fried doughnuts. Known as curry bread, these buns are never referred to as doughnuts at all. That would just be silly.

This terrible tale put me off eating any kind of filled doughnut until I could read the little sign next to them that told me what is inside. Once I could, I began to discover something shocking. I began to realise that there are no jam doughnuts in Japan. Raspberry, strawberry, blackcurrant nor even gooseberry varieties are available. Instead the Japanese prefer beans inside their doughnuts.

Not just any bean though, azuki bean. Azuki is a sweet bean and the paste inside the doughnuts is further sweetened by adding tons of sugar.

Happily I have found one regular flavour of filled doughnut while here. It may not be my favourite but it has its fans.

Lovely. Yellow. Custard.

Due to a ridiculous visa problem which I won’t go into here, I have found myself unable to start my new job until I get it sorted. This means that I have been unable to work for the last couple of weeks. Finding myself between jobs during hanami season hasn’t been the worst thing in the world, drinking in the park under the cherry blossom with friends has been relaxing. However my favourite thing about it is that I can now call myself a ronin.

Think of the word ‘Ronin’ and what does it mean to you? To the average westerner it is bloody cool, isn’t it? It conjures up images of a wandering samurai, two swords in hand. Wandering from town to town, no fixed address, nobody knows his name. Maybe he is wearing a kasa straw hat, covering his face, people talk in hushed voices as he passes them. He is an enigma, dispensing his own unique form of justice before moving on.

If I describe myself as a ronin, that is what I want people to imagine.

Unfortunately, the word’s meaning nowadays is nowhere near as cool. It just means someone who has failed their university entrance exams. In Japan, if you fail a university’s entrance exams you don’t simply go to a different university, you wait a whole year and then try again. As a result people may be doing this for years before they get in or give up and it can be quite shameful. People without a job are also tarred with the same brush.

In fact ronin has been a badge of dishonour since feudal times. According to samurai code, if a samurai loses his master for any reason they are supposed to commit suicide, so anyone who failed to do this was discriminated against. While some became mercenaries or bodyguards they often became bandits or involved with organised crime.

It has been quite fun describing myself as a ronin for that last couple of weeks but while I have been imagining Rurouni Kenshin or Robert De Niro, the look on people’s faces shows they are thinking of Arnold Rimmer.

So if you ever meet someone who calls themselves a ronin, they are not trying to be cool, they simply are trying to get into Oxford when somewhere like Hull would suit them better.

Learn about some funky transforming kanji toys.