A lucid Japanese woman goes straight to the heart of the matter: "No, please, no penalties." Another who is dressed as a samurai with a white scarf tied around his head looks at the ground, he must be praying. One in a Take Kubo shirt, with four empty beers on the table, seems to be reciting haikus like the mother who gave birth to him. Perhaps from watching so much anime, and after the first penalty missed in the shootout by Takumi Minamino, I'm sure there will be a flashback of the Japanese footballer to his childhood and, flying through the Qatari sky that I saw you, he will pick up the rebound from the Croatian goalkeeper and with the power of friendship he will correct the error of the pathetic launch. And, of course, no one will have seen the visual trap and Japan will be on track for the World Cup quarterfinals.
Don't say it was a dream but it was. A hundred Japanese will leave Belushi's, a magnificent soccer concentration bar, to cry in silence, which is how they always seem to see soccer. They clap with both hands together and without making too much noise. They only shout when the ball approaches both areas, much more so when it is in the rival's, as Mariano Rajoy Brey demands in his brilliant nihilistic comments.
Belushi's is on Bergara street, a span from Barcelona's Plaça Catalunya. It had been years since I had been here, probably since I was a member of one of the best video stores in the city in the 90s. Now there is a hotel.
In the large bar, papered with concert posters from around the world and from all the well-known bands, young Japanese (the average age must be 25) have internalized the outcome of Empire of the Senses, strangled before reaching the orgasm after an hour and a half of sex. An ending that should be happy and has ended up being torture.
They were heroic, shouting above their chances with Daizen Maeda's first-half goal or sweetly applauding Toni Padilla, brilliant World Goal commentator, when they heard him say “the Japanese are very smart”. And they are. And good people, or at least those who have been watching soccer summoned through Instagram by Megumi and Ryo. There is only a Japanese flag in the room on the shoulders of a boy, two shirts with the names of soccer players (Kubo and Mitoma) and a child with his parents. Little else would distinguish the followers from the rest of the audience if it were not the oriental features.
"Nippon, Nippon, Nippon" is the only rallying cry. At the end, next to me, four kids at a table are talking in Japanese, I guess about the elimination. I remember when Chiquito de la Calzada was asked, in an interview in Interviú magazine in October 1994, if he had learned the language in the two long years that he lived in Japan. Chiquito replied that he spoke it worse than them, "which is already saying." I don't understand anything if it weren't for the kindness of the Deputy Consul General Shoko Igarashi and the cultural manager Anzu Maekawa who translate and report that the majority of young Japanese who have come to Catalonia are studying for which many pay for themselves by working as cooks. (The word sushi doesn't appear, I swear).
And among so much sadness I am about to ask the efficient director of Belushi's to put the lyrics of Pretenders' Brass in pocket on the bar screens and, grabbing the microphone, I would sing like Scarlett Johansson in Tokyo karaoke in Lost in translation. Because all of us present thought that this afternoon was one of love.
