I have only a attended one rugby match live. That was in Durban courtesy of my friend, Chris. I do not recall consumption of beer or anything else in more than moderation.
At the Rugby World Cup, It’s Japan vs. the Hardest Drinking Fans in Sports
The host nation is preparing for a beer shortage as the world’s powerhouses of drinking gather to cheer for their favorite teams
Japan had known for a decade that it would host this year’s Rugby World Cup. But only in the final months before kickoff did the city of Kobe grasp what it was in for. Some 36,000 fans from Ireland, England, Scotland and South Africa were on their way. And—these being rugby fans—they would be dangerously thirsty.
The Kobe tourist board needed to get the word out. At a seminar in May, it told restaurants, bars, and hotel operators to brace themselves for a run on all liquids hoppy, malty and cold. As it wrote on one fact sheet: “The world’s powerhouses of beer drinking to gather in Kobe?!”
Presenters at the seminar explained how Irish people drink more than twice as much beer than the average Japanese. And they warned that English, Scots, and South Africans weren’t far behind. For anyone in the business of pouring pints, the board had one rule of thumb: Prepare four to five times as much beer as usual.
“I stressed in the seminar that rugby fans drink all day long,” said Naofumi Machidori, one of the Kobe officials.
In a country that prides itself on preparedness for all kinds of natural disasters, a rugby-induced beer drought is no idle fear. Just two years ago, the beer taps at Yokohama International Stadium ran dry midway through a match. Not by coincidence, Japan was playing Australia.
So the host nation has taken serious measures wherever it can to make sure this six-week tournament meets the demands of the hardest-drinking fans in sports. Bars around the country are extending their hours on match days. Cities are throwing up emergency bars to keep supporters lubricated on their way to stadiums. And Kirin Brewery Co. has more than tripled production of Heineken, the official beer of the World Cup.
“We have talked a lot about beer,” said Brett Gosper, the chief operating officer of World Rugby. “For us, it was about educating the venues and the cites about what an international rugby event is all about. We have a great traveling audience and they drink a lot of beer.”
Beer is as much a part of the rugby culture as mud, bruises and cauliflower ears. There’s no getting around it. It flows freely in the stands during matches and the smell hangs thick in the air. At Twickenham Stadium in London, one of the game’s spiritual homes, the bars in the concourses stay full and rowdy long after the final whistle. Even opposing players traditionally gather for pints once they’re done bashing each other’s heads in.
Masaki Fujiu, a longtime supporter of the Japanese national team, experienced it up close during his team’s opener against Russia last Friday. After sipping a pair of pregame beers to unwind, he installed himself in the stadium and focused on the game. There was just one distraction. Hard-drinking Russia fans in his row were recycling beer at such alarming rates that they kept barging past him to get to the bathroom.
“We Japanese just can’t drink that much,” Fujiu said.
South African rugby fans, on the other hand, can. Inside Yokohama International Stadium during the World Cup’s opening weekend, Steve Evans and his two adult sons each carried six pints of beer to their seats in cardboard holders for the Springboks’ match against New Zealand—just to be on the safe side. They didn’t want to risk repeating the calamity of their flight over, which ran out of suds in midair. Especially, Evans said, when beer is so “crucial” to enjoying this sport.
“We all probably do eight during a game, and then take it from there,” he added.
Rugby fans don’t merely drink a lot. They also drink fast. Which is far from ideal in a country that often serves beer in small glasses. So to buy pubs and restaurants some time between refills, Japanese beer makers Asahi and Suntory have urged them to deploy bigger mugs for foreign visitors.
Not everyone will be able to cope. Yasunori Kanemura, who runs a rugby-themed bar in Kobe, knows he could be in trouble. His establishment only seats around 15 and has no room to stash extra kegs.
Which isn’t a problem they’re expecting at a British-themed pub called Hub in Yokohama. Having heard all about the potential beer drought, employees stacked kegs high around the bar area for the foreign and local fans watching Australia take on Fiji. Bar manager Hiroki Watanabe said he had 10 times the usual amount of beer supplies ready to avoid running dry.
“We’re making sure there’s no chance that will happen,” he said.
Watanabe said that over the first two days of the tournament, British fans seemed to be the most enthusiastic drinkers, with some knocking back as many as 10 pints apiece—a typical Japanese customer would only order one or two. Not that he was complaining.
“It’s a shame,” Watanabe added, “that the World Cup only runs until early November.”
Apple wants us to use iPads instead of MacBooks as our primary computer. They have said so and quietly killed off the MacBook a few months ago. I am going with the program and with the release of iPad OS yesterday, which among other features enables the iPad to recognize external drives, my transition is complete. Now the only thing I can’t do on my iPad is update my website with iWeb and that won’t work on the MacBook with the soon to be released OS Catalina anyway. I will keep Mojave and not update to Catalina.
An ad this morning in the NY TIMES declared “25% of seniors fall every year.” I’ve done my part. For the next three years it is someone else’s turn.
I can now lie on my left side, but not for long. I tentatively tried a crunch and a push-up yesterday. That did not go well. I don’t know when I will try again.
The number of workouts this year is going to be a pathetic all time low. So far I have only done 16. The previous lows were 43 in 2009 and 2014, both years I was circumnavigating.
You may have noticed a change in formatting. Actually two.
I am putting an extra space between different topics instead of a dash and I have surrendered to Blogger’s denial of indenting paragraphs.
