Yesterday, in the middle of the World Cup match between Japan and Germany, I received a call from a junior colleague of mine to review my column.

He is a soccer fan, so to speak, so I asked him, 'For What?', I wondered.

I told him, "You won't be able to concentrate on watching the game, so you can review it later," but he said, "In a tense situation like this, I feel more comfortable talking to other people".

Well, sometimes the response to the review did not come back for a minute or so.

-----

I sometimes think that for soccer fans, watching such a sweaty game in their hands must be 'a kind of torture.

However, I believe that the more one understands soccer in detail, the more one can look at the whole game from a bird's eye view and see its strengths as well as its weaknesses, and hence the more frustrating it can be.

I only have to shout out my admiration for an athlete's fine play, so the psychological load is much smaller than for someone who can see the whole picture.

-----

Writing this story reminded me of--

One of my American friends whom I met during my assignment in the U.S. said that when he stayed in Japan for several years, he never thought about learning Japanese perfectly.

He was a capable man, and I wondered, and asked him why, and he said

"To maintain peace of mind while in Japan by not understanding Japanese"

Well, I was impressed with that way of thinking.

-----

When I came down to the living room at the end of the Japan-Germany game, my wife was crying in front of the TV.

I was happy to see my wife happy.