While the author of the Magic Mountain talked about the complexity of time around World War I, in the 1990s time was compressed here.

CNN: Defterios: What I've seen in 20 years at the Magic Mountain

Here we were treated to a mirror image as Ferguson's concise answers to routine questions were made to seem like whole chapters from War and Peace by the time Fifa's Japanese translator had worked her magic.

BBC: Man Utd's Japanese adventure

For the majority of Japanese, the norm for centuries was grinding poverty, disease and incipient malnutrition until the post-war reconstruction, kick-started by the allied occupation, began to work its magic.

ECONOMIST: Japan observed