Mike Williams

 

/ Nagoya

Nagoya

Pics from Nagoya

Hotel room in Nagoya isn't quite as big and nice as Tokyo's, but it'll do fine.
Breakfast in Nagoya consisted of finding a bakery shop and picking random pastries that looked good. Success!
This seems like way too much information to cram onto a sign meant for people actively driving cars.
Best ordering system ever! Just touch what you want (pictures!) and it shows up a few minutes later. They know what your food costs and you pay on the way out.
Food from sweet ordering system was pretty great too.
Saw some "shrine" labeled on google maps so we walked by it. Not super impressed...
Oh, I guess there's more. But we're on our way to sumo tournament so we skip it anyway.
JUST
Yes, let's.
Castle wall, empty moat.
Better pic of the wall and empty moat. (or maybe the moat defenses are cleverly hidden below the nice-looking grass??)
Sumo venue (Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium)
The sumo wrestlers get out of the car then walk down a walkway surrounded by fans.
Also they're very large people.
And I thought I was big in Japan!
Seats lower than this are flat "box seats" where you take off your shoes and sit on a pad. Seats above this (like ours) are normal stadium-style folding chairs.
Typical sumo match consisted of 5-10min of ritual/ceremony and 5-15sec of wrestling.
Some of the rituals seemed to serve a purpose (stretching, warming up), others not sure (they always lined up as if to start the match, then all of a sudden they'd both get up and go back to the corners).
Sumo official, I think.
Scoreboard - each column is a match, top vs bottom, and the light indicates who won.
Ready to start!
Oops just kidding. Back to the corners.
There they go!
Doesn't look good for blue guy
This drew some loud cheers.
At about 3:40pm, they switch from the second division to the top division sumo matches/wrestlers. Not surprisingly, there's a ceremony for this. We timed our arrival well because we got to see it after not too long.
Of note, Sumo has no weight classes, so no matter your size you're fighting for spots in the same top division.
Stomp
Looks nice. Too bad it was closed.
The gate that they closed as we walked up. I guess we looked like invaders. It was an effective defense, we left.
Translated: Nagoya Castle. We close as soon as you arrive.
After the castle, we went to a Nagoya (Chunichi) Dragons baseball game! And super conveniently, their old stadium is what appears when you look for them on google maps! Here we are, all the way across town at an old, empty stadium.
Get a picture of the logo by the empty stadium because we're considering giving up on the baseball game idea.
No pictures in between, but we booked it to the trains, then speed-walked and eventually found the new and much bigger Nagoya Dome!
We may not have found it without that group of jersey-wearing locals, who we followed for about 2 blocks, then into a mall, almost lost them in the mall as they went up escalators and disappeared, then saw them at the last second as they turned on to this elevated walkway. Thanks, helpful "tour guides"!
They had their best 12 year old with MSPaint design their logo.
We made it to our seats! Only walked around the entire stadium first. Still the first inning!
Interesting note: that video screen was totally blank during pitches and most other times.
Home team fan section (away team section is left field corner).
Dome (also microphone)
That's the away team fan section (they were very loud even from across the field, and had their own band)
Best pitcher
Yep, home team starter was a submariner
Look at that release point! (you can see the ball just leaving his hand from like 2" off the ground)
Cheerleaders and terrifying mascot came out in between innings. They had a tshirt launcher but I think they maybe launched one shirt, and not at us.
Hard to read, but after home team got a hit the screen would say "NICE BATTING!"
The vendors always walked all the way down the aisle, turned around, and bowed towards the fans before beginning to sell their beer or food.
Typical ballpark food.