Unlike most of Africa, cricket and rugby are sports of massive importance to South African culture and its national identity. Like most of Africa, however, this is also a nation fanatical about football, and that obsession is most evident each year when the famed Kaizer Chiefs take on their hated crosstown rival, the Orlando Pirates. Today is the 43^rd anniversary of the first of these meetings.

The Soweto Derby, as it has come to be known, annually pit two of the Premier Soccer League’s teams against each other. That their home grounds are located just 10 kilometers apart adds fuel to the fire. In 36 all-time meetings to date, the teams are aggregately separated by just one goal, and also separated by just one game in the standings. Kaizer has won 13 of the meetings, Orlando 11, and 12 matches have resulted in a draw.

The first Soweto Derby took place on January 24, 1970. Adding to the rivalry, the Chiefs were actually formed by Kaizer Motaung, who spent much of his career as the star of the Pirates, who were one of South Africa’s first professional football clubs. While many South African Premier League matches fail to draw well, this match is a full house every year, with bragging rights extending throughout the year. Recent tilts have been televised throughout every African country and 43 countries in Europe, speaking to the magnitude of what the rivalry has become.

The last Soweto Derby, this past December, ended in a 1-1 stalemate. The next one takes place March 9^th.

Italy and football go together almost as fittingly as Italians and pasta. The Azzurri (national team) are a national obsession, and the fans are just as fanatical about the top professional league, Serie A. While names such as Internazionale, Juventus and AC Milan have a major global presence, every club has its share of passionate supporters. I wonder, however, if they are aware that what they are watching is actually athletic theatre. Given today’s significance as Super Bowl Sunday in America, where players are supposed to perform “on the biggest stage”, I figured the timing is good!

What, you thought these games were actually contested on the field? I love Serie A as much as the next guy, but in the country that gave the world organized crime, it would be irresponsible to think that that activity has not trickled down onto the football pitch.

Match fixing became front page material (again) in 2011 when it came out that several former Italian footballers were involved in fixing matches across several leagues in the country.

To detail the extent of it, look no further than the autobiography of Matias Almeyda, an Argentine national who played for eight years in Serie A with Lazio, Parma, Brescia and Inter. Almeyda outlines stories of performance-enhancing drugs being fed to players through IV tubes before games: “They said it was a mixture of vitamins, but before entering the field I was able to jump as high as the ceiling.”

Perhaps more disturbing than the potential long-term health effects of these suspected steroids (Junior Seau, anyone?) are the close ties Almeyda talks about between some clubs and organized crime families.

After a disagreement with Parma owner Stefano Tanzi, Almeyda claims that his house was broken into, his car was stolen from his own garage, and a message was left on the wall with machine oil. That’s kind of like opening a box on your doorstep only to discover a pig’s head inside—well, maybe not that bad, but you get the point. What’s worse, Almeyda said the exact same thing happened to teammate Savo Milosevic after a similar issue with Tanzi.

Long live Serie A as a form of top-flight entertainment, but I’ll side with a few centuries of Italy’s organized crime culture over a few hodgepodge efforts of Serie A to clean itself up in light of some international media attention. And, I’ll keep watching, too!

For whatever China lacks in cleanliness (seeing children peeing on the street is a common sight here), it makes up for in freshness. In the West, it is common for families to go grocery shopping once a week, if that, and stock up on preservative-packed food that can last them through a storm. Here, though, people are likely to buy whatever they need for one or two meals, and then return to the market the next day.

While there are traditional supermarkets (here called hypermarkets), meat, produce and a variety of other things are typically bought and sold at wet markets. A stroll through one of these is not for the faint of heart, so we’ve put together a little list of tips to help you navigate the wet market like a pro.

How to Navigate the Wet Market

1. Make sure you have small money with you:  If you are a foreigner, you’re likely to get ripped off a little (or a lot)—more on this later. But things are still generally very cheap at the wet market, and vendors won’t make change for large bills. They don’t need your business that bad.
2. Bring your own bag:  Yes, vendors will give you small plastic bags. But they are likely to break, particularly with all of the elbows and shoulders you’re likely to receive, so best to bring your own.
3. Listen closely:  Yes, if you aren’t Chinese, you will be expected to pay more. If you’re really concerned about this and want to get a fair price, then either go with someone local, or try your best to listen to what other people around you are being charged. Everything is negotiable in China, so if your listening skills are good (and you can muster up the courage to speak a bit of Mandarin), you’ll save yourself a few yuan.
4. Look outside for fruits:  While you may only see vegetables, meats and fish in the actual market, there are still plenty of fruits available. These are only sold seasonally, and may be more prominent being sold on the streets adjacent to the wet market.
5. Wash EVERYTHING:  And then wash it again. While everything is amazingly fresh here, everything is also amazingly dirty. The bushels of rice have people running their hands through all day in deciding which rice to buy. The pork you buy will likely still have hairs and bone fragments in it—understandable considering it was probably alive earlier that day. The produce is likely to have flies touching it all day. Just wash everything.
6. Stay cool:  Don’t be alarmed that the meat isn’t refrigerated. It was likely alive earlier that day, and is meant to be eaten immediately. Fresh is the key word here.
7. Eat with caution!:  There are no boneless pigs or chickens or fish in the world. And there are no boneless pork or chicken or fish dishes in China. I can’t emphasize enough to be careful before you dig in—don’t choke on a bone!

Once upon a time, in the lovely Japanese village of Kyoto, an ogre dressed up in disguise and approached the home of an old widow. He had with him a magic mallet, and with it, he made a beautiful kimono—the most beautiful kimono she had ever seen. While she knew it was wrong, the beauty of the kimono got the best of her, and the widow decided she would steal the kimono. So she got the ogre drunk, making him lose his wits, and made her move on the kimono. Except that she didn’t stop with the kimono. Since that was so easy, she figured, why not go for the magic mallet also?

Surprised by the woman’s overzealous greed, the ogre got himself together, and then decided to shed his disguise to reveal what he really was. The old widow initially froze with fear, and then was overcome with hysteria. She grabbed the first thing she could find to start throwing at the ogre, a bunch of beans she had handy in the kitchen, and he fled. She didn’t get her kimono or magic mallet, but she learned learned an important lesson about greed, becoming healthier and wiser as a result of the ogre’s lesson.

And so a tradition began. The Bean Throwing Ceremony, or Setsubun, occurs every year in Japan on the day before Spring (Risshun). Throughout the country, people throw dried soybeans out their front door while chanting “Demons out! Luck in!” It is believed that these tossed beans purify the home by eliminating evil spirits. To bring the luck in, they then pick up and eat the exact number of beans to correspond with the person’s present age.

Bean throwing is the main event of Setsubun, but there are others as well. First, everyone will eat a special nori maki, or sushi roll, while facing a particular “lucky” direction, which varies year by year (last year was Southwest, this year is South-Southeast). To add to the fun, the person cannot say a word while eating the entire nori maki, which isn’t as easy as it may seem. In most cases, the roll is about 20 centimeters long, and think as well! But it is believed that those who complete this task are promised good luck with their business and health.

Getting ready for Setsubun in Tokyo…

Germans are earth-conscious. They recycle…a lot. And that’s good. What’s not so good, however, is the process of figuring out exactly how to abide by the strict recycling guidelines if you aren’t from here.

Being one of the world’s pioneers in recycling, Germans have it down to a science—evident in the many colors of bins you’ll see for recycling throughout any city you walk through. One for plastic, one for metal, one for tin, one for a different kind of plastic, one for green-tinted glass, one for yellow-brown tinted glass, one for clear glass, one for paper, one for…it can be quite a confusing ordeal. And with the army of recycling men running around collecting and managing these things, not to mention the “observant” locals not-so-subtly shaking their head at your ignorance as you make your bin selection, quite an intimidating one too!

Make sure you know what goes where…

And don’t let the size intimidate you!

And that’s just at the park. Let’s not forget the refund machines in many supermarkets that collect certain types of glass bottles for some money back. You have to look for a particular logo on your bottle, and if it’s not there, no matter how much all the glass may seem alike, you won’t get your 50 cents for it. But more importantly, you’ll draw the ire of the people lined up behind you, who just lugged 10 kilos worth of bottles to the store to walk away with their euros!

Try to navigate the instructions…’

Put the bottle in…

And collect your cash!

I’m glad the Germans are this way—we should all learn from their example. But perhaps a tutorial on the flight over would make life a little easier for all of us :).

Even their clothes donation bins can be intimidating!

An interesting garage off of Avenue du Mont-Royal…

As we outlined previously, French people do not necessarily dislike their American counterparts. In fact, as with most of the world, many young French people are heavily influenced by American pop culture, given the prevalence of American music and film on the global stage. This wasn’t always the case, though, and I wanted to share a really interesting story I remember my Strategic Marketing professor telling me about how McDonald’s began the infiltration of American culture into France.

When McDonald’s emerged in France in 1979, the country didn’t have fast food. It was a new concept. As highlighted in another post, the French and eating fast typically don’t mix. Secondly, the audience McDonald’s market research team found that the people it should target initially were those old enough to remember World War 2, as they were the sector of the French population who liked America, which McDonald’s represented, the most. These older people simply didn’t understand the concept of eating with their hands. So the marketing task became a matter of educating their target market first on the process of ordering without being served by a waiter, then seating themselves, and finally that they could actually touch food with their hands—a huge taboo in traditional French culture.

So when McDonald’s first started marketing in France, their advertisements introduced an elderly couple demonstrating a range of “firsts” in the country: walking into the McDonald’s lobby (which was vastly different from competing cafes), standing in line (a new concept), reviewing the menu (French cafes at the time—besides obvious tourists ones— didn’t have a menu, as the French genetically understand what is on a café’s menu), ordering with a smiling server (French restaurant staff rarely smile), and bringing their own food back to the table (French cafes always had a gausson, or waiter). When the couple was set to eat, they realized that they didn’t know how to eat the hamburger, reaching for a knife and fork (as touching food was unthinkable in France). Finally, a group of teenagers spotted the couple, approached them and demonstrated how to pick up and unwrap the burger.

McDonald’s became popular in France, and the French had become American without even knowing it!