Loopers looped on `shochu'

I received the call-up last week for a quick trip to Japan with Paul Lawrie for the Casio World Open. As I boarded my flight bound for Tokyo at Heathrow, I was greeted by the bizarre sight of John Eales attempting to install himself into the toilet cubicle at the front of the plane. Anyone who's seen the Australian rugby captain's vast frame will understand the situation. It was like squeezing a grasshopper into a matchbox.

Flying with Japan Airlines is a good introduction to the attention you are likely to receive once you arrive in the land of the rising sun. Attentive, patient, polite and graceful air stewards make you feel as comfortable as you can possibly feel on a 12hour flight with a nine-hour time change.

My flight was delayed due to bad weather in Tokyo. This meant that I was going to miss the last flight from the domestic airport of Heneda, but fortunately Atsuko, from the Dunlop company, was waiting for me at the information desk. Jean Van de Velde was due in from LA shortly and she was there to meet him. She arranged a hotel for us for the night and got us on the first flight in the morning to Kagoshima. A series of deferential bowing sessions on arrival in the hotel left me spontaneously bowing in return. Of course, a gaijin (foreigner) is not supposed to bow, but jet-lagged and slightly delirious I found myself with head lowered as if looking for a stain on my shirt.

As a caddie on a budget I could well have gone through much of my wages on one night of survival in Tokyo, so with the hotel £200 and the taxi fare at some price equally outrageous, I realised why there was someone there to show me around.

At Kagoshima, on the southern end of Kyushu, the third biggest island in Japan, the pampering continued. Amigo and Johnny (the Japanese assume English names to accommodate our inability to remember their real names) greeted us, took our luggage and brought it on the 90-minute journey to Ibusuki in a van. We were taken by taxi.

Stealing through the streets of Ibusuki (it felt like there was a curfew, we met nobody, there was no sign of life) with Dean and Gary from Australia and Canada, who caddie here full-time, we finally happen upon the Ponta restaurant last Tuesday. A typical yakitori eatery, with those funny, colourful lampshade-like things hanging outside with Japanese characters all over them, the sliding wooden screen doors, the most unlikely looking place to make a connection with golf. It looked more like a samurai local than a golfers' hang out.

Inside, I am immediately greeted by a waft of festivity. I soon realise the source of the jollity - shochu, the Japanese poitin, made from sweet potato. Traditional cross-legged diners without their shoes, eating and drinking from low tables. The gaijins had seats reserved at the counter: despite their time here they have yet to master eating cross-legged on the floor.

This was also the photographers' hang out for the Casio World Open. There seems to be a reciprocal arrangement of photos for shochu, judging by the photos of Jumbo Ozaki on the wall and the amount of photographers on the floor looking the worse for wear.