No buts, Nicky's our boy from Brazil

They were all men of the match, though. It was an extraordinary England performance, the first time in the modern era that we've beaten a first-rank footballing nation at the World Cup finals other than on our own soil, and at a competition in which the opposition are the favourites.

At the back, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and even Danny Mills played out of their skin, and David Seaman was - well, his hair may be as stupid and surreal as the T-shirt on the fan at Ireland-Germany which said "Hands Off Ulster", but his hands were safety and sense themselves.

Trevor Sinclair, when he came on, played like a man possessed, a man with a point to prove, which he did admirably. Michael Owen, as ever, appeared able somehow, with two men on him and his back to goal, always to turn and to get shots in and on target; he also proved, for the second time in the World Cup against the Argentinians, that he's a fantastic diver, making the brilliant Pierluigi Collina give his one wrong decision of the game, thank the Lord.

David Beckham still wasn't fit, of course. I'm wondering if that haircut isn't just mapping out the continuing line of his fracture. But it didn't matter: he only needed one foot to score the penalty, and even if it was placed almost perfectly for the keeper to get in its way if he'd just stood still, it was hit hard and true enough to go through him.

You could feel the years lifting off the England fans as they rose to celebrate with their captain, kissing his shirt, too, all of them, the relief audible in their cheers: that's for David Batty's terrible penalty; that's for the sending-off when Diego Simeone crumpled in a heap; and also, in the mix, somewhere, that's for a hand lifted above Peter Shilton's outstretched arms, the hand of your dark and bitter god.

This week, I have been mainly - as I believe the saying goes - travelling as part of a special FA trip, an excellent journey, which included an eclectic cast of characters and led me into some unusual situations.

On the way to the Ireland-Germany game, for example, the FA coach had a toilet stop. Now I've never been very good at public urinals, having a bladder particularly prone to shyness, which gets much worse if anyone intimidating stands next to me.

So there I am, desperate to go, about to release, when who should come and stand next to me but Jack Taylor, the man who gave a penalty in the first minute of the 1974 World Cup Final. Shy? My bladder became about as forthcoming as Osama bin Laden.

Also on the trip has been David Platt, who told me - this is a scoop I feel - that the England team have at last been practising penalties this time. Didn't show in the way Beckham placed it but never mind. Oh, and after Beckham scored, I found myself celebrating in the arms of no less an England fan than Nancy Dell'Olio - a lovely woman, although with just a hint of Dorian from Birds of A Feather about her - which felt, for a moment, like I was practically hugging Sven himself.

Talking of celebrations, the England fans may have enjoyed themselves in Sapporo on Friday but it was nothing - nothing - compared to the outbreak of joy in the streets here following Japan's victory over Russia on Sunday. I was in Paris when the French won in 1998, and their celebrations were like a tea-dance in Woking in comparison to the mentalness in Roppongi - the Leicester Square of Tokyo - following this group game victory.

I saw men dancing on the roofs of speeding cars; a bride and groom, in full traditional gear, who had diverted their entire wedding to join the party; and thousands of blueshirted maniacs, crossing and recrossing the the same streets, over and over again, arms in the air, shouting "Nippon! Nippon!", while the police and the older generation looked on as if the entire fabric of society was falling apart. It was fantastic. Although someone should tell the face-painters that a Japanese flag on the face makes that fan look like Charlie Corrolli.

It's not a clichè I ever imagined myself using, but for young people in Japan football really is the new rock and roll. They want footballers to be pop stars: the reason that the Japanese fans have adopted England as their second team is that we've got our own pop star, Beckham. Their team are all pop stars: they have all, you'll notice, got dyed hair - one of them looks like Freddie Ljungberg if his dye had run. And the team buy into this: I saw one of them being interviewed on TV the other day who, when asked about other players he liked, said "Gabriel Batistuta - because he's got a very pretty face." This isn't something I can imagine Niall Quinn saying.

The FA party have left now, so I was back watching Japan-Russia in a bar with ordinary fans: Sid and Dennis, to be exact, two pensioners from Belsize Park, veterans of nine World Cups who bought me beer and offered me "snout" - something I thought only happened in Porridge.

Sid told me that he hadn't been in any of the pubs in Belsize Park for ages - last time he'd been in my local, The Steeles, Twiggy had been in there, which I thought was a great colourful story of London life in the Sixties, until he told me it was 1994.

He also gave me, amid much coughing and laughing, a leaflet which he received from a man outside the stadium in Saitama, advertising a place offering origami, tea ceremony, flower arrangement and calligraphy.

Sid was correct in thinking that the man handing these out had been given a slightly incongruous impression of the common interests of the average England fan. If only it had offered origami, tea ceremony, flower arrangement and smashing up bars.

That's a gag, actually, because in fact I've been proud of the behaviour of the fans here so far. Most of them are bowled over by the friendliness and hospitality of the Japanese, given that they've been fed the "all English are hoorigans" propaganda for four years.

Only the continuing failure of Japanese TV to show all the games has led to irritation and, even then, not much. Me and about 300 England fans stood crushed like Tokyo rush-hour commuters in a bar in Sapporo - a place the size of a capsule hotel room - in the sweltering heat for two hours because it was one of only two bars in the city to be showing Sweden-Nigeria; but it was dehydration that was the problem, never violence.

At the match itself, the fans really did their bit, including me (I wore my lucky England pants, which now, of course, I'm going to have to wear to every game - and I'm not paying 5,000 yen to have them cleaned at the hotel, either). I was especially proud of the amount of noise we made - aided by the acoustics we almost raised the indoor roof.

Maybe it's right that the Japanese play more than one verse of the national anthem: at the end of Friday's night's game, it felt, for once, as if the tired old tune deserved a bit of repetition.