A lot of bleary-eyed faces to be seen on the street this morning, no doubt a result of last night's celebrations!

Keeping body and soul together...

Yesterday was a record—the first time I'd eaten three meals in one day since leaving Ireland. The general routine is brunch or an early lunch, and a snack in the evening. Yesterday's brunch was in a modern little Japanese restaurant in Ueno. Unfortunately the meal didn't quite measure up to the plastic model that was displayed in the window—what appeared to be a juicy paiella with all the trimmings turned out to be quite an everyday plain fried rice. The fantasy of the chef doesn't always measure up to that of the inspired artists who create these little plastic models! But that's the chance you have to take, since practically none of the restaurants has a menu in English.

Ways to economize: make tea/coffee/instant soup in the hotel and store it in the thermos; buy drinks from vending machines or shops; sometimes free green tea comes with the meal; shops, especially around stations, sell inexpensive little lunch boxes of selections of different foods, handy to take on the train or on an outing.

On the waterfront

To get to the waterfront I took the train to Shimbashi station. Passed all sorts of buildings on the way. What does the city development plan say—are there any plans? Any rare aesthetic feature is lost in the general jumble. Not a patch of green in sight—I suppose the instinctive reaction of a city official if a spot of green is reported would be to order in a cement mixer and a ton of ferro-concrete.

Anyway, this was the best part of Tokyo I'd seen so far—the Odaiba/Ariake waterfront and, situated on an inlet right on Tokyo Bay, the little patch of sand they call Tokyo Beach.

Built on silt dredged from Tokyo Bay in the bubbling 1980s, Odaiba is an island where creativity reigns supreme. There are theme parks, shopping centres (including Venus Fort, a "women-only" shopping centre), restaurants, amazing architecture and museums.

First, having bought a day pass (800 yen), I took the elevated Yurikamome monorail from Shimbashi right around the Bay area. The driverless train weaves around the tall office buildings and crosses to the island via the Rainbow Bridge. It's a great way taking in the interesting buildings and developments, into which a bit of thought has gone (unlike most of Tokyo!). It reminded me of Dublin's East Point, but a hundred times bigger, and of course the very creative architecture.

Returned to the Decks area next to the beach, where there is a number of interconnecting malls with trendy shops, cafes and restaurants. There's even a Statue of Liberty! It's 11.5m (20.5m including the base) high and was imported from France.

I first tried out the outdoor restaurant of a rather posh hotel on the waterfront, and who should be there holding court with a number of reporters (I presume) but Arsene Wenger (manager of Arsenal)! This place was a little outside my budget level, so I continued on to the mall. The next place I looked into, a theme restaurant called Shorefront Longboard Drive-in (or something similar) had practically all the space taken up with its props (surfboards, old gas-station pumps and memorabilia) and sold only spam. That's right, fried, curried, grilled, spam, with french fries, salads, just like in the Monty Python sketch. I wasn't surprised to find it empty. In one of the malls there's a fun Sega Joypolis virtual reality theme park and a micro-brewery, and the top two floors has been transformed into "Little Hong Kong", where I finally had lunch in one of the many Chinese restaurants.

The Beautiful Game

Along with a group of Ecuadorians and Brazilians, a group of English and Irish fans (with English accents), a couple of Israelis, and a TV crew from Argentina (who got totally drunk during the game and after filming us with a very wobbly camera promptly fell asleep), watched the Group D USA-South Korea game on a TV set up on the sea-front. Clint Mathis found the net for the US in the 24th minute and keeper Brad Friedel made a string of stunning saves (including a stop on Lee Eul-Yong from the penalty spot) that broke the hearts of South Korea, and allowed the US to hang on for a 1-1 draw despite a late equaliser from Ahn Jung-Hwan. Despite the alleged rivalry between the two host nations, all the Japanese around us were cheering on the South Koreans.

I could feel rain in the air. Tired, I retired to the hotel to watch the end of the Group H Belgium-Tunisia match (a 1-1 draw), then was surprised to see today's other Group D match, Portugal against Poland, was being shown live, and sure enough, it was raining. Portugal poured it on and crushed Poland in an authoritative 4-0 win that let them overcome some ghosts of their own (referee Hugh Dallas had been on the pitch in their controversial semi-final loss to France at Euro2000, and later suspended three players). The match belonged to striker Pauleta, who opened the scoring in the 14th minute and ended with a hat trick. Rui Costa came on as a sub - and had the satisfaction of adding the final goal by expertly finishing a cross from Sergio Conceicao.