The route to friendship is often via a tall glass filled with a cold beverage. And so it was on a dark night in Hiroshima in 1994 when five Japanese strangers decided to adopt us. We, three journalists covering the Asian Games, ask where we can get Asahi and they escort us to a bar, order that beer, organise a fine meal, stay for two hours and frown when we reach for our wallets.

We can't speak a word of Japanese. They don't know a sentence of English. But hand signals about athletics and semaphoring about tennis suffice. Sport is an international glue.