But like all sports, it has a time and a place (under the cherry blossoms, for example). You can’t just play soccer in the middle of the Ginza, after all….

Why do many foreigners dislike this? Judging from the video, and perhaps my own reactions as someone who is very definitely not FOB, it’s because the train is filled with newly-arrived young idiots who don’t know smeg about the place, don’t speak the language worth a damn (“let’s go to Way-no!”), yet somehow have invaded ‘our’ territory: the once-exclusive enclave that took dedication and sincerity is now open to any fool. Minor exaggeration for dramatic purposes (we were plenty nuts when I was first here in the late ‘80s, it’s just that no one else heard about it as there was no internet and cellphones were the size of a bus). Basically it’s the reaction of the old patriach lion when a new male arrives to try and take his harem. Only the new male is a total dickwad….

However it would be interesting to compare reactions to this with what you might generally call “Japan experience.” Most of the negative comments seem to come from people who know the place well – several years of residence, speak the language, etc. Are there any “old Japan hands” who think this is the coolest thing since Hikaru Genji first strapped on roller skates? Or is this as much as reaction against how foreigners are “supposed” to behave in Japan as anything else? Or is this simply a product of the internet age and the fact that the most fascinating subject for expats is other expats?

“check out the organizers’ assertion that the police showed up to protect the drunk foreigners from crazy organized otaku.”

That’s the standard line really: we need to restrict your freedoms to protect you. In this case, the cops were saying that they were to basically there to protect the HT people from the HT people, I think. I seriously suspect that despite all the talk about how creepy “2chan” is, not one of them could read a single 2chan post.

Anyway, it seems like there’s still lots of disagreement as to whether this actually happened. I took a pretty long ride around the north side of the Yamanote around 9:30 PM on Halloween and didn’t notice a thing. There weren’t even any visible police in Shinjuku, which I thought to be pretty odd. I mainly went to the trouble of looking this up because my companion at the time was very curious about the lack of crazed foreigners in weird costumes.

That said, I would not be surprised if the police were more concerned about homicidal otaku than drunk gaijin.