Chris England spent five weeks covering the 2002 World Cup, when football became Japan's newest religion, constantly on the lookout for the odd, the offbeat and the downright strange. He ended up not only seeing plenty of football by also getting buried up to the neck in hot black volcanic sand, serenading Lawrie McMenemy with a bunch of drunk British MPs, performing stand-up comedy to an audience who spoke no English and visiting a railway station under the sea.