When Geoff visited last year he had taken the time to learn a song in Japanese. I was very impressed. I have been here over a year and only recently managed to get the whole way through an Angela Aki song without stumbling badly over the words. So far I haven’t tried to do this in front of any of my Japanese friends. Though I do sing in Japanese for my language teacher – but then the Japanese version of “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” is a bit easier than an Ayumi song. Marty can’t sing Japanese songs. Once he makes a mistake he stops dead and gets completely lost. But still it’s amusing to listen to him try.

At the weekend Tony impressed us by singing the Romanian song “Dragostea Din Tei”. He also managed to find the Holly Dolly song “Dolly Song” but the “lyrics” were only written in katakana and none of us have a hope of reading it that quickly.

It is always good fun but sometimes we spend more time laughing than singing. Andrew’s version of “Take on Me” was probably much more amusing than it was supposed to be. I don’t think he realised that Morton Harket had such a wide range and watching Andrew raise his eyebrows in a vain attempt to hit the high notes certainly made me laugh. I think though that the funniest performance so far has been Norwin’s version of “Wuthering Heights”. I really does have to be seen to be believed.

The venue was impressive. It’s an aspect of living in a big city that I love – great venues to hold great events. We had seats on the arena floor putting us really close to the action. The seats weren’t tiered and when the crowd jumped to its feet, which happened a lot, I couldn’t see anything but the backs of all the tall people who stood in front of me.

I still don’t know what to make of the whole thing. It’s obviously staged – yet the crowd screamed and yelled with every fake punch. I was close enough to see a lot of the missed punches and kicks. However, they still throw huge men out of the ring and the acrobatics are amazing. It felt like a rock concert crossed with pantomime only the audience was more excited. I assume it’s because they have villains as well as heroes. Imagine how much fun a rock concert could be if the bands you thought sucked got hit over the head with chairs by the bands you thought rocked. O.K. some people would love that – I’m still not sure about the violence part.

Marty seemed to know in advance who would win every match. This puzzled me – why is it still fun if you know? He told me that no titles would change hands because the event wasn’t being televised. For the non-title events he could tell who would win by how the crowd reacted to the performers – apparently there was no way that Umaga was beating Triple H tonight. Or that Ric Flair would be beaten (something about a plot). The crowd went mad when Ric Flair came on. He is nearly 60 years old and he still was able to throw his competitor out of the ring and allow himself to be tossed about.

The crowd was fascinating. There was a little boy sitting close behind me. He yelled and yelled until he couldn’t yell any more. My favourite yell had to be, “you suck, forever and ever and ever … and when I die and I’m in heaven you will still suck”. He was also very cute when he realised that in his excitement he yelled that one of his favourites sucked. He would scream, “Jericho sucks – em no he doesn’t really suck, Y2J, Y2J…”.

I noticed that the losers get cheered as much as the winners. Even when the loser was someone the crowd was booing just minutes before. When I mentioned this to Marty he told me that this might be peculiar to Japan.

I didn’t enjoy watching the two female wrestlers. They were acrobatic and the crowd loved Mickie J but it didn’t have the energy or power that the men had. Some of the male wrestlers, like Jeff Hardy and Chris Jericho, have great charisma and had the audience hanging on every move they made. I really wanted to see a woman that made me think “warrior” and not “playboy bunny”. There is nothing wrong with woman looking like playboy bunnies but I felt that the emphasis on sex appeal stripped away some of their power in this forum. And I’m not saying that the men didn’t look good – Randy Orton was gorgeous – but the emphasis was very much on his skill and not on his beautiful body. Nor did I get the feeling that conventional beauty was a prerequisite for the men.

I can’t imagine this becoming my favourite sport or pastime but I am considering taking Marty to see one of the big American televised events – at least then he wouldn’t be sure who would win.

Alaskan tundra -
a dog finds his inner wolf.
White snow turns yellow.

[One Hundred Great Books in Haiku, David Bader]

• Emperor: The Gods of War (Conn Iggulden)
• The Gold Falcon (Katharine Kerr)
• What Colour is your Knicker-Elastic? (Sean Orford)
• Sword in the Storm (David Gemmell)
• The Hidden Language of Your Handwriting (James Greene & David Lewis)
• Gods of Management (Charles Handy)
• Spellbound: The Improbable Story of English Spelling (James Essinger)
• The Human Mind: and how to make the most of it (Robert Winston)

I have been waiting 6 years for Katharine Kerr to release book 12 in her Deverry series and now just need to decide whether a should re-read the first 11 books before reading the new one.