Tokyo: Day 3-5
Day 3 wasn't much of anything, I wandered around a bit, saw a few different neighbourhoods, but I was pretty exhausted from the running around and sensory overload of Day 2. My Day 2 covered almost all the touristy stuff I really really wanted to do while in Tokyo anyway.
Day 4, of course, was Dynamite!! (Technically, "K-1 Dynamite!! Power of Courage 2009" -- gotta love auto-translate.) The Dynamite!! New Year's Eve events are always huge in Japan. It gathered a 16.7% television rating in Japan over its time slot (which would have been about 3 PM-11 PM). I got to the arena around 11 AM and already the pre-fight spectacle was on.
Here's a partial shot of the lineup TO BUY EVENT MERCHANDISE. Seriously, Japan?
Some thoughts on attending live MMA shows
My seats were great. For my 30000 yen ($322), I was in the 20th row of "Royal Ringside Seating", which is the second section behind "VIP". The VIP section was only about five rows deep though, so you can consider me around the 25th row or so. However, I'm starting to come around to the idea that if you cannot get really supremely awesome kick-ass tickets (in most venues, the first 10-15 rows or so), it might be better to watch at home. This was an exception since I might not get another chance to attend a Japanese MMA show live, but at MMA events if you're not really close, you end up watching a lot of action on the television screens. MMA is also a sport where necessarily the action is always happening in one place. Unlike most team sports, there is never a play developing "behind the scenes". There is never a bigger picture, as it were. There are only two guys to watch and they are always facing one another and always within a few feet of one another. I'm convinced that with the exception of venues that use a really highly elevated platform, the closer you are, the better. This is not necessarily the case, of course, in many team sports.
This is the third time I have attended an MMA show where my tickets were worth solid triple digits. However the best experience I have ever had at an MMA show was a show that was held basically in a warehouse in Costa Rica, but I was sitting right beside one of the ringposts. I could see action standing, on the ground, and get a great sense of the violence that was occurring. When you attend an MMA show and sit way back, everything seems kind of abstract as the smallish figures in the ring are punching and kicking each other. And forget about watching the ground game without the help of television monitors.
So if you've never attended an MMA show and want to, don't just try to save money and get yourself in the building. Wait for an event you really want to go to, and buy some excellent seats. And it's probably better to go to a small local show where maybe you haven't heard of anyone, but you can get great seats without breaking the bank.
Despite this, going to Dynamite!! was a fantastic experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
The longest New Year's Day
I realized today that I am probably in like the 99.999th percentile in the world for time spent on January 1st, 2010. I boarded my flight out of Narita at 7 PM and landed in Honolulu at 6:45 AM. So including being in the air, that is about 42 hours in which it was January 1st for me.
This is cool in theory but I would not do this part again. Reason being is that Tokyo is incredibly dead on New Year's Day! Remember crazy, congested, busy, packed Tokyo? Here's a subway station at 1 PM on the 1st:
Shops and restaurants everywhere were closed. New Year's Day is apparently a family day in Japan, so after all the craziness of the 31st, there is little to do other than recover from hangovers. Honolulu was much the same story today, though not nearly to the extent of Tokyo. Another thing that was lame about a flight leaving Tokyo at 7 PM and arriving in Honolulu at 7 AM is that a) it was too early in Tokyo time for me to fall asleep on the plane and b) once I got to Honolulu and was actually tired, it was too early to check into the room. So a useful note for anyone else planning to make that trip: book something that departs in the early morning, if you have the option.
Also, taking the first available flight after celebrating New Year's Eve in the East and arriving in time for a second New Year's Eve in the West? Now that would be pretty awesome.
Day 4, of course, was Dynamite!! (Technically, "K-1 Dynamite!! Power of Courage 2009" -- gotta love auto-translate.) The Dynamite!! New Year's Eve events are always huge in Japan. It gathered a 16.7% television rating in Japan over its time slot (which would have been about 3 PM-11 PM). I got to the arena around 11 AM and already the pre-fight spectacle was on.
Here's a partial shot of the lineup TO BUY EVENT MERCHANDISE. Seriously, Japan?
Some thoughts on attending live MMA shows
My seats were great. For my 30000 yen ($322), I was in the 20th row of "Royal Ringside Seating", which is the second section behind "VIP". The VIP section was only about five rows deep though, so you can consider me around the 25th row or so. However, I'm starting to come around to the idea that if you cannot get really supremely awesome kick-ass tickets (in most venues, the first 10-15 rows or so), it might be better to watch at home. This was an exception since I might not get another chance to attend a Japanese MMA show live, but at MMA events if you're not really close, you end up watching a lot of action on the television screens. MMA is also a sport where necessarily the action is always happening in one place. Unlike most team sports, there is never a play developing "behind the scenes". There is never a bigger picture, as it were. There are only two guys to watch and they are always facing one another and always within a few feet of one another. I'm convinced that with the exception of venues that use a really highly elevated platform, the closer you are, the better. This is not necessarily the case, of course, in many team sports.
This is the third time I have attended an MMA show where my tickets were worth solid triple digits. However the best experience I have ever had at an MMA show was a show that was held basically in a warehouse in Costa Rica, but I was sitting right beside one of the ringposts. I could see action standing, on the ground, and get a great sense of the violence that was occurring. When you attend an MMA show and sit way back, everything seems kind of abstract as the smallish figures in the ring are punching and kicking each other. And forget about watching the ground game without the help of television monitors.
So if you've never attended an MMA show and want to, don't just try to save money and get yourself in the building. Wait for an event you really want to go to, and buy some excellent seats. And it's probably better to go to a small local show where maybe you haven't heard of anyone, but you can get great seats without breaking the bank.
Despite this, going to Dynamite!! was a fantastic experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
The longest New Year's Day
I realized today that I am probably in like the 99.999th percentile in the world for time spent on January 1st, 2010. I boarded my flight out of Narita at 7 PM and landed in Honolulu at 6:45 AM. So including being in the air, that is about 42 hours in which it was January 1st for me.
This is cool in theory but I would not do this part again. Reason being is that Tokyo is incredibly dead on New Year's Day! Remember crazy, congested, busy, packed Tokyo? Here's a subway station at 1 PM on the 1st:
Shops and restaurants everywhere were closed. New Year's Day is apparently a family day in Japan, so after all the craziness of the 31st, there is little to do other than recover from hangovers. Honolulu was much the same story today, though not nearly to the extent of Tokyo. Another thing that was lame about a flight leaving Tokyo at 7 PM and arriving in Honolulu at 7 AM is that a) it was too early in Tokyo time for me to fall asleep on the plane and b) once I got to Honolulu and was actually tired, it was too early to check into the room. So a useful note for anyone else planning to make that trip: book something that departs in the early morning, if you have the option.
Also, taking the first available flight after celebrating New Year's Eve in the East and arriving in time for a second New Year's Eve in the West? Now that would be pretty awesome.