Once again...2009.01.05

Once again, Happy New Year everyone!!

Monday the 5th of January. I guess this is the day that a lot of people head back to work, school and so on? How was the break? I hope everyone had plenty of rest, plenty of fun, and made the most of the holidays, building up physical and emotional energy for the year to come!

As for me, like I mentioned in an earlier mail, I injured my right arm, so I spent this New Year period doing less of anything than I have ever done before in my life (except reading manga, of course!! Haha!!)! Knowing that being still all the time would drive me crazy, and I tried going running with the cast on my right arm, and when that didn't satisfy me I tried snorkeling in the beautiful Maldives ocean, but I have to say swimming one-armed is pretty tough!

I ended up spending the majority of my time on the sundeck reading the manga I brought on the trip, so as you can imagine I'm now tan from head to toe!! To look on the bright side, this has been a long-awaited opportunity to tidy up all the unread manga I had been stockpiling in Japan, and by brining a whole suitcase full, I have completely caught up on my reading (you may remember from me mentioning this before, but I subscribe to Shukan Jump, Magazine, Sunday, Young Jump, Young Magazine and Comic Punch - that means every week without fail!!) But spending almost two weeks doing next to nothing, your body and mind start crying out for some action. It's a bit like the niggly feeling I would get when I couldn't wait for an upcoming match back when I was playing football professionally. In that sense, I feel like this has been a good chance to recharge, both in terms of physical and emotional energy.

I have now actually already left Maldives and am in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. My first work for the year is with the football magazine Super Magazine's Super Award that I have mentioned before too. Tomorrow night here at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, awards for Best Asian Player, Best Arabic Player and Best African Player for 2008 will be presented. I think Endo, who won the AFC Champions League with Gamba Osaka, has a chance at the Best Asian Player award, but we won't know until tomorrow. The good thing about this Super Award is, unlike France Football's Ballon d'Or, players are credited regardless of whether they attend the ceremony or not to receive their awards. To me that seems really fair. Categories for this award will stay as they are for the next two times, but after that are set to be expanded to world-wide, which will be really interesting to see. Anyway, I wonder what tomorrow night has in store for us...

Coming to Abu Dhabi, I first travelled to Dubai, and actually when I arrived there I had a really negative experience at the airport. What happened was, in the customs inspection area, I was all of a sudden taken to a separate inspection space (despite almost every other person going straight through no questions asked, or at most just having their stuff x-rayed). So I had my luggage inspected - fair enough. The way they carried this out was the problem - the inspector was chatting away to a friend while slowly and aimlessly going through my stuff. They would take out clothes and shove them back in any old way before finally returning my stuff. It had been a while since I had such an experience in customs. It's surprising how strongly your experience at an airport can dominate your image of that whole country. In fact, I would say it can often be the strongest impression you have of a country. I guess that makes sense, given that the airport tends to be the first and last destination everyone passes through. In my personal experience, airports in the USA and UK unfortunately seem have some of the worst service in the world. To the extent that, even though I love London and New York as cities, I generally avoid going to either of these countries unless it's for work. For no reason other than that their airports are terrible... And after this trip, Dubai has made it into the worst three alongside them. However, as well of course as positive experiences I have, I am hoping to put such negative experiences to use in future, as a tourism ministry advisory board member, towards improving Japan's image.

Well, my injured right arm is making good progress, and is finally almost ready for the cast to come off... I might have to do a little training. Anyway, once again, all the best for 2008!! Talk to you soon,

Hide.