Their national team may have lost their World Cup game against Ivory Coast yesterday morning, but Japanese fans didn’t forget their manners, it would seem.

Like all good kids who remember to say thank you to their friend’s mother after playing at their home, Japan’s passionate football fans reportedly grabbed refuse bags and cleaned up after themselves before leaving the stadium following their team’s match against the African side.

During my first winter in Japan, I went up to Sapporo with some friends to check out the Snow Festival that I’d read so much about. As I was walking along taking in the spectacular ice sculptures with my fellow sightseers, the woman just in front of me suddenly stopped dead, making me almost trip over her son, who can’t have been more than three years old and barely came up to my waist. The woman apologised, then quickly squatted down to pick something up off the snow-covered ground.

Thinking that her little boy must have dropped something – a handkerchief or cherished toy, perhaps – I peered around him to see if I could help. It was then that I realised his mother was crouching down to pick up two ketchup-slathered french fries […]