HOW’S your week been? I have to admit I’ve had a memorable seven days. 
 
I was whisked to Cornwall by my wonderful girlfriend for a well-earned break. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say Cornwall is stunning. We managed to catch England’s evisceration of Ukraine, watching on an iPad on a Cornish hilltop during a storm of biblical proportions. 
 
As I stubbornly sat in the torrential rain outside our yurt watching England’s comfortable quarter-final victory, 300 miles from Wembley, my mind drifted back to events 19 years earlier. 

That summer I had sat in a stadium in Shizuoka, Japan, and the buoyant optimism of this week was in stark contrast to the feeling of being utterly crushed back then. 
 
I had just watched England lose 2-1 to Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup. I had spent the whole month sampling the delights of such an incredible country and was out on my feet, shattered, with nothing left to give after such an intense tournament as a travelling visitor. As were the Three Lions, going down to the eventual champions without a fight.
 
A few weeks earlier I had been to Saitama, a non-descript commuter town outside the intense city of Tokyo, to watch Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side embark on their doomed campaign to lift the trophy with a 1-1 draw against Sweden. 
 
My pals and I then headed up on the high-tech Shinkansen “bullet train” (complete with immaculate-looking staff in pristine white gloves) all the way to the northern island of Hokkaido, to cheer on our country to a memorable 1-0 victory over old foes Argentina. 
 
Hopes were high as the 250mph train, complete with the trademark bento boxes that included raw quail eggs, sped via what was then the world’s longest tunnel back to the main island and onto Japan’s second city, Osaka. 
 
I won’t mention stumbling into a pachinko parlour full of shady gangsters minus half their pinky fingers, a sure sign of Yukaza membership. 
 
The all-night Osaka karaoke bar where we ended up heard us sing everything from the Beatles to the Happy Mondays to England’s 1982 World Cup song, This Time (More Than Any Other Time). 

It was far more fun than the 0-0 draw that took place the next day between England and Nigeria, even if the objective of qualifying from the group had been secured, before visiting stunning Kyoto and sobering Hiroshima ahead of a knock-out clash with Denmark.
 
Back to the future. It was my birthday this week. On Wednesday. The day England beat Denmark 2-1 after extra time at Wembley.