The president of the FLYING HOPPERS, his Excellency, SIR Stefan Leuenberger -accompanied by his lovely wife, LADY Shoko - has recently paid a visit to Japan to oversee possible recruitment of capable players for the FORMIDABLE Flying Hoppers Team. This in view of the forthcoming trip to the Carribbean islands in the year 2002. (Rumours in the financial world also point out that Flying Hoppers are going dot-com and with a possible IPO, this trip was initiated to make the float an incredibly successful one, even by dot-com standards! Rumours, gentlemen, only rumours....)

Flying Hoppers' head coach, Roland Tartaglia (in Japan a.k.a. "Matterhorn-San"), was ably helping Sir Stefan in his difficult task to spot any talent worthy of the Flying Hoppers team in the Swiss National side.

For local knowledge (mainly finding food and drinking establishments and keeping everybody from remaining too sober), I was also allowed to participate in this highly enjoyable trip.

On a day to day basis a brief report:

Thursday, March 9th

Everything looked really great until half-time against Pakistan. The Pakistani cheerleaders were very silent, i.e. on their best behaviour. Never mind the second half, when they got really noisy....
After this, we did think that it was best to take Sacha out for an early dinner (or was this only a pretext for secret contract renewal negotiations between Sacha and Sir Stefan??).
After dinner (if my memory serves me correctly), the unruly crowd INSISTED on having to have a REAL German beer at a German Pub in Osaka. Hence, a great exploring trip did materialize, but we finally ended-up in a Japanese drinking establishment. The less said about the German Pub, the better! LORELEI GET LOST. Who on earth would close a pub at 10.00 p.m.????
Luckily, we still had the pub in Kobe as a fall-back position...

Saturday, March 11th

Rest day and the weather turned somewhat sour. LADY Shoko spent time shopping and we had some very fine sweets in a local coffee shop that wanted to recruit us as regular customers.
In the evening we had to go and check out the hardship of the U.K. Embassy staff. Real small housing space. Therefore, we retired to some local Japanese eatery in order to have the pleasure to really feel our legs after a while..... 

Sunday, March 12th

 Final day. Unfortunately another loss by Switzerland, but against a really top-class team (Spain).
We took the occasion to drown our grief  with beers and sake a plenty in several establishments. In the last one we ventured into, a welcoming and not too sober group of people gave us plenty to laugh about, not least the occasion at which some savvy client did give Roland his new nick-name "Matterhorn-San".

 Monday, March 13th

 Flying Hoppers' Top Management did fly off to Malaysia for some R&R, whilst your scribe had to hurry back to Hong Kong to follow-up on all the pending Flying Hoppers' merchandise deals.....

Let me re-assure any future/potential scribe: Travelling together with SIR Stefan, LADY Shoko and MATTERHORN-San is indeed a most enjoyable experience.
LONG LIVE the FLYING HOPPERS!

Your scribe,

Walter