Ippoippo

Yuko and I has our usual Sunday morning trip down to Cardiff, down to Riverside market.

Now, quite often, Cardiff centre is a bit on the dirty side, with rubbish etc on the street… post Saturday night drinking.

BUT today!!! Bloody hell. It’s a complete pig-sty down there, and I don’t understand why the council didn’t have people out cleaning this morning.
Obviously, most of these was caused by the rugby game last night, in which France beat New Zealand. It was a full stadium, and I hear Cardiff Centre was completely packed even after those 70000 had gone into the Stadium to watch the game.

Must admit, Yuko and I wished we’d gone to see that game. Ahh well.

EDIT:
What the hell is going on in this world cup. Fiji just gave the South Africans a hell of a scare. Cracking game! Shame SA won, because it would have been great to see all three of the Tri-Nation countries go out at the QF stage.
I think all bets are off now for this world cup.

The bad… the rugby result.
The good… they sacked the manager.

The good Part 2… me and Yuko went to a wedding this weekend, and it was most enjoyable.
Gareth, Beth. Many congratulations.

We most certainly had fun, we hope you did too. It looked like everyone else did too.
I’ve upload pictures here…

It’s a beautiful part of the world, on the Welsh-English border, near Hay-on-Wye.
On the Sunday after, we popped over to Hay-on-Wye as well, to have a little look around.
If Yuko’s parents come over to the UK for a holiday, we’ll probably be heading up there as part of a quick Cardiff->Brecon->Hay-on-Wye->Cotswolds tour.

Last night, Wales played Japan in the Rugby World Cup. You can read about it at the BBC here, or in Japanese here.

It wasn’t a full stadium, with attendance at about 44000 people. Ticket costs had put people of I guess, and also some fans travelling from Japan maybe couldn’t justify the cost of going to both France (for three of their games) and Wales for one more game.
Still, there was a reasonable number of Japanese fans there. There were a few Japanese families there, some of which I think were those who live in South Wales because of the Japanese factories based in South Wales. Yuko spoke to some, and they said they had travelled down from the North of England for the game, again familes of people working at Japanese factories there.
The other main contingent of Japanese fans seemed to be older men (and the odd older wife in tow). One chap we spoke to ran a travel agency company, so he was pretty much mixing work and pleasure. Younger women though, it seems, don’t tend to support Rugby much. They all end up being Baseball and Football (soccer) fans.

The game itself was reasonably enjoyable, and the Welsh crowd got behind the Japanese side, appreciating their playing style (running the ball a lot) and their ‘never give up’ attitude.
The Welsh side played pretty poorly in the first half, and the first Japanese try was a corker. The 2nd try the Japanese got in the second half was pretty good too.
In the end though, in the second half, Wales started playing better and we started to score a lot more.

Yuko enjoyed herself though, and now would like to see a proper 6 Nations game. Wouldn’t mind using the 6 Nations as an excuse to go up to Scotland for a game.

I’ve got some pictures… over here in my gallery. I’m putting together a small video too, if I get the time.

For once, we had good weather on Bank (Public) Holiday weekend. Fantastic.

Saturday was spent down in Cardiff Bay. Yuko and I were not overly impressed to be honest. The Millennium Centre is quite an impressive piece of architecture, and there happened to be a small market on there… but that was it really. The rest just seemed to be over-priced restaurants.

Sunday and Monday was spent back at my folks place, where we enjoyed a rather big BBQ with the parents and sister, bro-in-law and niece.

Soon, the World Cup is upon us… and Bogue found this rather amusing little video about “Football/Soccer vs Rugby”