AN UNLIKELY FOOLIGAN

An autobiographical account of the writer’s experience and feelings whilst being in Japan.

It is a chronicle of two trips to Japan, the first being a week or so before the World Cup in 2002 and the second trip being a year later. The story is told through the experience of the second visit with reflections of the trip a year earlier.

By looking at another culture with no agenda but just a desire to have a break, the traveller developed an awareness of his own society by comparing it to Japan. Quite inadvertently the traveller’s idle musing took an informal sociological perspective. The telling is not academic but subjective with tongue firmly in cheek as feelings and observations are recounted for the reader to share and hopefully enjoy. ‘Fooligan’ is a mispronunciation of the word given for the English football ‘hooligan.’

This unlikely fooligan makes his own way, but because of his physical presentation he incurs the attention of the indigenous people who respond to what the media have given and see him as one of the ‘fooligans’ that will be arriving for the world Cup. Yet this traveller is no fooligan as he seeks out pastry shops and meets people of warmth and good humour, being welcomed by the ordinary Japanese person, and even being sworn in as a Girl Guide in a late night ceremony in a bar in Kyoto. In conclusion the observer casts a look at his own society, evaluating methods of control, dominant perceptions and the construction of prejudice, and he doesn’t sit on the fence in giving his feelings to the way of things.

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