"I wasn’t at the stadium in Lyon. I was watching the game on a not-so-big TV screen in a pub near Soho Square in central London, and Japan still went out of the tournament as the bottom of the group losing all three games. But there, I witnessed Japan making a mark, albeit a small one, in the world of football. After going 2-0 down, we scored a goal, the greatest joy in the game of football – our first World Cup goal.

"To non-Japanese eyes, it might have looked a mere consolation late in the second half. It was quite a simple goal, too: a cross from the left was headed back across and the ball was met in the six-yard box. Yet, to us, it was a goal screaming, “We’re here in the World Cup!” I also happened to make my presence known in the pub as soon as the ball was in the back of the net by shouting, “Yeah!” and punching the air with delight… alone."

In episode One Hundred and Eight we take a look back at "At Home" by Shinobu Yamanaka, first published in Issue Twenty Nine in June 2018.

Read the full article here: www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/at-home

Issue Twenty Nine, like all issues of the Blizzard, is available for £12 plus postage on www.theblizzard.co.uk. Since we’ve relaunched the website, all our articles, including this one, are available to read for free. Non-subscribers get 3 free articles a month, while subscribers have unlimited advert-free browsing, as well as access to digital downloads of all our issues in eBook formats.

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