The Japanese national team's head coach Okada was here in London.

Hello! It’s Ashishi

We got through the problems at Istanbul airport, and arrived safely in London on the same day. 

The reason for visiting England this time is to take part in a friendly match with a London-based Japanese Football club called Lonjapa. Kohki, a player of the team came to pick me up from the airport, and I went to his house at 10pm to be greeted by 15 members of the club.

Club members of Lonjapa and Lonjapa Ladies. 

They were already drunk.

It is the first time on my round the world trip to be greeted like this.

They held a Okonomi-yaki and Tako-yaki party for me because I was missing Japanese food.

It's been a long time since the last time I ate it.

There were many people from Hiroshima, 

so they cooked me some Hiroshima style Okonomi-yaki.

We ended up having drinks until 3am, which is 5am in Turkey time.

Then I slept for 5 hours and from 10am I headed to a friendly match between the Japanese club and an English club.

By the way, the head coach of the Japanese Football team Takeshi Okada has played at this club “Lonjapa” in the past.

Back in the day when Okada was still a player at his club side Furukawa Denko, he went to West Ham to train abroad. On his days off on weekends, he used to play at this team.

I have played against Takahito Suzuki in an amateur futsal league last year myself. 

Apparently professional footballers play with amateurs now and then.

So , I took part in a match with a club that has such history.

We played on a pitch with lots of leaves on it.

During the first half of the game, I was on the bench taking pictures.

You hear that Englishmen are gentlemen, but the Englishmen we played against were constantly repeating the F word every fifty-fifty.

Nill all at the break, I played from the second half as left side back.

I matched up with an Englishman about 190cm tall. 

No chance I could beat the tall guy in the air.

Club members of Lonjapa sent me some pictures taken by a better camera so I am adding them now.

The visibility is totally different when pictures are taken

 with such good cameras. Thanks a lot Hayakawa-san!

When I play futsal, I am a Goleiro (GK), which does not run around. 

As expected, out of breath shortly after I enter the pitch.

After all, my left side started to get broken in to, and we ended up losing 0-2.

Ken scored a hat trick in Switzerland (Read here about it), but I, Ashishi have again in England after Tunisia have been shown how hard it is to play against the world.

So, we took a picture at the end.

It makes me emotional thinking that Okada was in here back in the day.

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