- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_T A L K London lodging: Give tips on where to stay and what to avoid in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Tara and Michelle are great and I am a worthless protozoa clinging to their skates By Cintra Wilson (02/23/98) Lost in Nagano By Cintra Wilson Our correspondent's innocent search for the men's slalom turns into an amazing half-day odyssey (02/20/98) Figure skating shocker By Jonathan Broder Lipinski upsets Kwan to take the gold. What happened? Skating expert Christine Brennan analyzes events on -- and off -- the ice in Nagano (02/20/98) Flying away By Cintra Wilson I sold my soul to the scalpers to watch mechanized super-teens Michelle and Tara kiss ass? (02/20/98) Flying away By Gary Kamiya Triumph on the slopes -- and parties all night long (02/19/98) Scalpers, skiers and cultural schizophrenia By Cintra Wilson Our woman in Nagano checks out deluxe slopeside port-o-lets, "child hornet" snacks and other Olympic oddities (02/19/98) Browse the Feature archives		A r i g a t o ,__N a g a n o _______IN HER OLYMPIC FAREWELL, CINTRA WILSON _______WALLOWS IN WEIRD TV, MOONS THE SKI SLOPES _______AND FINDS THE BIG HEART OF JAPAN. BY CINTRA WILSON | NAGANO, Japan -- Saturday, Feb. 21: I used my last set of tickets yesterday, for the bronze medal hockey event. This turned out to be a match between my old pals, the Canadian team, and upstart Finland. Finland clearly had the superior chi in this game. Canada had slowed way down; they were somnambulant and clearly depressed, they'd had enough of Japan and the Olympics, and even with Lord Gretzky, they didn't seem to be doing anybody any good, least of all themselves. Finland was a bunch of rogue mongrels with nothing to lose; nobody expected them to win a medal at all, and the thought of kicking ass over famously important Canada obviously had them jacked up out of their skulls for a crazed, adrenal cockfight. Canada rolled over like a sick lion and let the smaller animal humiliate it. In the past 10 days, I've watched more hockey than I have in my entire life before (or probably ever will again), and while the finer points of the game finally became clear to me (the Kafkaesque mystery of the penalty box, the little red and green Christmas lights over the goal), I still found myself wishing, John Watersesquely, for more violence. Every time Finland's No. 24, Sami Kapanen, started scowling and rassling with Canada's No. 27, a Mr. Shayne Corson, I kind of woke up and got involved. The high points of the game for me remained the shoving and mad-dogging at the boards and the swatting and tripping with sticks, the teeth spit out into gloves and the guys going fetal with pain in the corner. All the art is in the brawls and injuries. Everything else just seems like so much overrehearsed skill and luck. Unless, of course, you happen to be Russia and the Czech Republic, who played each other for the gold medal, and then you have the extra added bonus of hateful political tensions. As I was running into the Finland-Canada hockey game, a TV cameraman ran up to me with a sign written out in English that said, "Who do you think will win? Russia/Czech Republic?" I said, "Hmm. It's hard to say, both are very strong teams, but I personally favor the Russians because they're uglier!" The news team sort of laughed nervously. I don't think I got on TV. All hockey games in the world should adopt Japanese speed-metal music for the face-offs. It features a bunch of Biohazard-style electric guitars and a group of Japanese guys yelling, "Face-OH! Face-OH! Face-OH!" This needlessly aggressive power rock nicely counterbalanced the preschool routine, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands (clap-clap)," whose 4-and-under charms apparently made the most sense to the Swedish fans, who learned all of the lyrics in Swedish and howled them out drunkenly from under shoulder-length blond wigs. Above: Czech Republic star Jaromir Jagr lies injured during his team's first game against Russia on Feb. 16. The Russians won that game, but the Czechs won the gold medal with a 1-0 win over Russia Saturday. I overheard one of the professional scalpers talking to his girlfriend in a restaurant last night. Her: So wait, no really, you can't be doing that badly, you just bought a $35,000 car. Him: Lemme see ... I dunno, I got about a hundred thousand in a retirement fund, I got fifty stashed in other places, I got about eighty on me ... I guess I'm worth about $300,000 right now ... Her: Then how come you never pay for dinner? There are few things I will miss about Japan as much as the totally bizarre late-night TV, featuring stuff like "The Convoy Show," 11 orgiastically enthusiastic men in their late 20s, sort of like an elderly New Kids on the Block, who perform poorly synchronized Kung Fu-style solid gold dancing in matching leisure suits while lip-synching songs like "Love Phantom" with cordless microphones. Sometimes they even do it in Jolson-style blackface. Then they stand around after the big dance numbers and give humorous interviews about themselves, while sweating, to giggling show-host women in long skirts. This happens three or four times in a half-hour. I also love the weird craft shows, featuring older Japanese matrons painstakingly gluing beads to eggs and the audience clapping softly and saying, "Ahhhh." Today being my last day, and myself being ticketless, I'm going to try to make it over to Nozawa Onsen, the hot-spring public bath zone, and soak away some of the Japanese stress I picked up here -- regardless of the fact that all of the Nagano citizens politely wear little white surgical masks strapped to their faces when they are feeling contagious. "I'm sick of Tokyo, sick sick sick of it," said an Amway rep I shared a cab with on the way back from the bronze medal game. "I've spent 33 years here. I grew up here. I've been working here for 15 years. I still can't get a bank loan. I was born here, and they won't give me a passport. Thirty-three years, and they still treat me like an alien." I'm feeling a bit ready to go home myself. N E X T+P A G E+| The last day TOP PHOTOGRAPH BY SHAUN BOTTERILL/ALLSPORT CENTER PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG PENSINGER/ALLSPORT Archived images are provided by Allsport Photography USA, Inc. all rights reserved, any redistribution, resale, re-print or other use is strictly prohibited without written consent from Allsport Photography USA, Inc. directly.