Day 3- Christmas Eve Part 3- Jet Boys

We hurried over to the club and they were already pretty far behind. I never got to figure this out but the first band on the schedule at the club was Melvins. There were a few foreigners, but an older one would be the only person possible who could have been with the Melvins.

The area with the actual stage was very small. I think you could fit maybe 50 people.

The show overall was alright. Thee Bait were an alright garage band. The next band called Pain simply brought me pain.

The Jet Boys, who we came to see, were next. They were good. The singer/guitarist's gimmick is that he always gets naked I guess. He got nude and played guitar with nunchaks (sp?).

We saw a couple songs from last band called Los Champions. They were a garage 60s style band, but they weren't nearly as good as their name. I had enough when they broke into Louie Louie & Do You Wanna Dance?

A very busy Christmas Day is now ahead!

Day 3 Christmas Eve Part 2 Ribera Steakhouse

The plan was to go to a rock show right after dinner. We were running late as it was so I don't have much photo wise of Ribera.

I don't know the roots of the wrestling tie in. Ribera Steakhouse has been the spot for wrestlers (especially foreign wrestlers judging from photos) to go eat a good steak and get a Ribera jacket.

There are lots of photos of current & past stars. The photo I took (photo 1) was from outside which I wanted because on the top was Bruiser Brody, Dick Murdoch, & Adrian Adonis. I'm not even sure who the girl is in the bottom row of pictures.

The food is simple as you order the size of the steak which comes with rice, corn & either soup or salad. They prepare and start cooking the meat, but then it goes on a hot plate to you. You then let it sit and finish cooking to the temp you want. (Photo 2)

It was a solid meal overall. I will back there next year and spend more time with plenty of beers & pictures hopefully.

Day 3 Christmas Eve Part 1- Union Pro Wrestling Show

Christmas Eve started off with a Union Pro Wrestling show at Shinkiba 1st Ring which is where we saw the 666 show too. Union Pro is a small indie group that does shows every other month.

We arrived right at bell time. We had free tickets thanks to El Generico again.

I'm not going to remember every match as I'm writing this several days later. I haven't seen much of Union so I didn't know several of the guys. There is a crossover of DDT guys who work these shows.

The 3rd match (photo 4) had Io Shirai in an inter gender match. They both had reindeer hats on. The match started and in seconds took the hat had Shirai on and he won I guess as the bell rang. Shirai then wanted a regular match. They had a pretty good match and Shirai won in the end.

The 4th match was the one I was most anxious to see (photo 6). It was a very mixed tag. One team featured female wrestler Cherry teaming with Gabaiji-chan who has an old man mask & walking cane. The other team featured a favorite of mine from Okinawa Pro Mensore Oyaji (plays a middle aged character, I can't say old with Gabaiji-chan on the other side) & Mr 6 (child wrestler). Photo 2 is a photo of me with Mensore Oyaji.

The match was a blast. Gabaiji-chan is very fragile. During the intros, streamers got thrown at him and he got knocked down (Photo 5). Gabaiji-chan was very slow and using the cane to help him walk and wrestle. Later in the match, they took his cane away and all of a sudden he became super fast running the ropes. He then pulled off a running springboard dive to the floor. After Mr 6 & Mensore won Mensore tried to give a beer to Mr 6.

I'm skipping around to the main which was Shuji Ishikawa & Ken Ohka vs Isami Kodaka & El Generico (photo 7). It was almost like an old school American type tag. Generico's team were the undersized underdog team fighting to survive. They had a damn good match which went to a 30 minute draw.

After the crew came out to give speeches since it was a year end show. Mr 6 it sounded like he said he's going to America next year which I would think would be for Chikara Pro. There was a guy who was doing an American gimmick getting the crowd to chant USA. El Generico in Spanglish thanked Union Pro for bringing him over & made it sound like he's going to be gone for a while. I had read just that morning about him being injured.

I met Mr 6 and got the pin & sticker shown in photo 8. I got the photo with Mensore that I mentioned. I got to talk to Generico for a few minutes as best as I could with my Spanish and get a photo (photo 1). He is in pretty rough shape it looked like. Let's hope for a speedy recovery!

Day 2 12/23/12- Part 4 Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum

This is simply a great spot. The basic gist of this place is there are 8 to 10 ramen restaurants from different areas of the country and the interior is a replication of a square block from 1958 Tokyo. This is because the instant ramen noodle was invented in 1958.

There were shops to buy little toys, old black & white tvs showing old Rikidozan wrestling matches, fair style games, an ice cream shop/bar (weird seeing you can get both at same place) along with the restaurants.

We went to 2 different restaurants. You actually pay a vending machine and pick the button of the item you want. It speeds up the process since you're order goes the second you walk in.

I got a mini bowl & beer in each place in order to have 2 helpings. The first place I got a shoyu style with chashu (soy sauce flavor with pork strips). The beer was called original flavor.

The 2nd place was out of Sapporo. I got a mini miso flavored bowl which was pretty heavy with the broth. I also got a beer there. It was good, but the first place was my fave of the 2.

I finished the trip off looking at all the stores and got a picture of Rikidozan on the way out.

Overall a very successful day 2 of the trip!

Day 2 12/23/12- Part 3 Odaiba

Odaiba is an artificial island which has all kind of shopping areas primarily.

You cross the famous Rainbow Bridge on the train to get over there.

We first headed over to the giant Gundam Robot in front of Diver City shopping center for photos. We walked over to check out the Aqua City shopping center a couple buildings over. This was very much an Americanized mall. The vast majority of stores I saw were American stories.

Next was the Decks shopping center which was very cool. All of these centers, which are in many areas of the big cities, are all like 6 stories of shops. Some of these buildings are only 1 store that has 6 floors too.

Back to Decks:
This place had all kinds of gift shops. A big thing and throughout Japan are the little coin machines that you get toys in a little bubble from. The variety is from Thomas the train to anime to Eric Carle characters.

We found a Takoyaki (grilled octopus in a ball) museum. It's pretty much several vendors from different parts of country. It was a good yummy snack.

The funny part for us was we found a haunted house. The people there were very worried about us not knowing what to do. There is a story card in English though. The concern is because a teacher takes you the area directing you and telling you the story. They got I guess the girl who spoke the most English. She gave us one word commands so it was fine.

You actually get a toy gun and shoot targets through the house. The goal is to find and shoot DARK SANTA! We found him and shot him, but he took our teacher away. We escaped and shot him again and got a treat out of a treasure chest for making it through.

We walked around a bit more checking out stuff before our final stop of the day: Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum.

Day 2 12/23/12 Part 2- NOAH Wrestling Show

We hauled out of Korakuen Hall to Ariake for the NOAH show. On our way out, we saw the ring trucks for New Japan arriving as they had a show at Korakuen at 630 that night.  It was sold out so that is not on the agenda. It`s around 45 minutes or so away by train to Ariake. The building is around a 1500 seat arena and the NOAH offices. We got there during the end of the 3rd match which was our goal to catch the whole match.

The match was Taiji Ishimori vs Kotaro Suzuki.  We walked in pretty much as Ishimori did a dive.  We stayed by the aisle way until the match ended. A minute later, Ishimori nearly lands on his head off of a superplex style move.  I go ``Ai Guey!" All of a sudden, I hear someone behind me go, ``Hey, where are you guys from?`` I turn around and it`s Ricky Marvin. We talked to him for a couple minutes as the match completed the 20 minute draw.

We had pretty good seats, but the place is small and intimate enough that I don:t think there could be a bad match. The next match to me was a throw away with Maybach Taniguchi (masked heel) vs Mohammed Yone. They then showed a 15 minute video with Ricky Marvin & Super Crazy going around the Asakusa Temples (which is around where I`m staying so I`ll be going there soon). It was funny as they were talking to each in Japanese the whole time. At the end, Crazy did an interview in Spanish and they just put it on fast forward after a few seconds.  It kept going and going and going. He must have talked for several minutes which they fast forwarded to until the end when he said thank you.

Intermission was next. Green is the color for the promotion so of course Heineken is the beer of choice which was nice. They had several guys again selling wares. It took a minute to figure out but for 500 yen, you get a ticket out of a box. The item written on the ticket is what you get. They had shirts, autograph sheets, Christmas cards from various wrestlers like Crazy, Marvin, Zack Sabre Jr (I guess they wanted all the foreigners to do it),& a Jun Akiyama figure. I got a Christmas card from Jun Akiyama! My friend said he would get the figure, and he actually did.  There must not have been many as the look on the guy behind the counter was like OOH Akiyama figure.

The rest of the show was the best matches. Well, the first was Takeshi Morishima (who is like 320) against little Genba Hirayanagi (fave of mine for sure). It was pretty much a 4 minute squash. KENTA vs Ricky Marvin was a really fun match.  They started really fast, and in the end KENTA won in like 4 minutes. Go Shiozaki vs Takeshi Suguira was the semifinal.  It was the best match on the show for sure. It was almost as good as Kenny-Generico at the DDT show. The main event was Jun Akiyama defeating Naomichi Marfuji in over 20 minutes. It was another good match, but it was hurt by the fact the crowd was pretty dead. It was their last match against each other so I thought the crowd would be pretty hot for this.  They gave speeches back and forth after.

The significance of this show is that this show & tomorrow`s show (which I`m not attending) is the last shows for several of the top guys in the company. They didn`t renew Kenta Kobashi`s contract. Several guys who are loyal to Kobashi are leaving as a result which include Jun Akiyama, Go Shiozaki, and a few others. It`ll be interesting to see the lineup for their next show on the 6th at Korakuen Hall.

Day 2 12/23/12- Part 1 DDT at Korakuen Hall

The show was at noon, and we made a couple wrong turns. We arrived only a couple minutes late. An old friend El Generico was able to get us in for free.

Show opened with a tag match featuring Danshoku Dino. He plays a caricature of a homosexual with an elevated libido. He kisses wrestlers during matches & male fans in the crowd to give an example. Shigehiro Irie became my new favorite wrestler as he went to get Dino before he went looking for fans to kiss. It was a good fun match. Couple highlights were one of the guys dropping a bucket (same type as Crazy SKB used) out of the balcony on an opponent & Dino's partner trying to ram his opponent's head into Dino's ass (who had his trunks down revealing a thong).

I'm writing after the fact so I'm not recalling everything. We had a 4 corners tag featuring Michael Nakazawa & Gorgeous Matsuo among others which was fun.

Third was a tag with the team of Kota Ibushi & his fat version Gota Ihashi. Gota is pretty impressive for his size. Theater started slow but ended up being good. They did a great double team attempt where their opponents were on the mat a couple feet apart. Gota sat on the middle with Kota on his shoulders. He threw Kota off towards opponent further away while jumping on closer opponent. Unfortunately, they both missed.

Before intermission was a 4 vs 3 match with The Monster Army vs Sanshiro Takagi, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, & Satoshi Kojima. The Monster Army has been stealing wrestlers gear & trying to sell on Yahoo auction. Tenzan had his head horn piece stolen along with Kojima's tape backstage. Fun match with Takagi's team winning to get all the stolen gear back. The Monster Army got roped and cuffed together and taken away.

The semi was a 3 way for DDT Hardcore Title. It was after intermission. It started slow and got pretty good with Keisuke Ishii retaining.

Intermission, preshow, and postshow reminds me of US indies because of all the guys selling their wares.

Main event was El Generico defending KO-D Title vs Kenny Omega. This was a well paced 25 minute match. They started with test of strength! Eventually it built up to bigger moves. The story at the end revolved around each guy going for their finish. Generico kicked out of Kenny's finisher. At the end, Generico finally hit the top rope turnbuckle brain buster. Kenny kicked out which is first time I've ever seen that. They were both exhausted at this point. As Generico was pulling Kenny up, Kenny hulked up & hit his finish out of nowhere to win the title. GREAT MATCH!

Kenny did a post match interview in Japanese. Everyone came out to throw gifts but I had to hurry out as it was past 230 & had tickets for NOAH at 3.

Tokyo accommodations

I'm at a hostel over by the Asakusa Temples.
It's pretty nice and inexpensive. The room makes my apartment look big. It's the bunk bed, table, & chair. Showers &
toilets (with bidet) on each floor. Free wifi is nice too. The photo is my spectacular view.

Day 1 12/22/12 Part 4- 666 9th Anniversary Show

This is the 1st wrestling show I attended in Japan. 666 is a smaller indie group that runs a few times per year and does some strange things as you can see from the cover photo.

We ended up in 2nd row as that's all that was left. It was pretty expensive but we got a free shirt too!!

The show opened with a tranny geisha girl doing a speech. The play by play announcing was over the house mic featuring special guest Mens Teioh.

The first match was a 5 vs 5 challenge of singles matches between the two teams. The thing was though that they all were wearing diapers! You could win by taking off the opponent's diaper. Highlights include someone winning by biting the diaper off his opponent & a woman won by kissing the opponent and he passed out as he didn't want the kiss.

I don't remember every match sorry. Other undercard matches included a tag with Kenichiro Arai & K-Ness from Dragon Gate , a male vs female match with Yuko Miyamoto & a guy from 1st match (both wearing a female singlet) vs Ayako Hamada, & Ikuto Hamada vs Onryo.

The main was quite the spectacle. They had wooden posts attached to the ropes which I think were grave markers. The teams had Jun Kasai & Crazy SKB one one side & female wrestler Kana with 2 other guys on other team.

Crazy SKB uses firecrackers as his weapon of choice. He threw a bunch in a bucket, lit it up, and tried to put his opponent's head in. The big climax (in the cover photo) is he puts on a jacket with a lot of firecrackers on the back. He climbed to the top rope, someone lit the jacket, and he did a swanton on the opponent.

He got pinned though by Kana as a result of his jump. Some weird aftermath with lots of speeches including a fake Tarzan Goto & fake Atsushi Onita coming out.

Photos are- Crazy SKB getting ignited, 666 entrance way, bucket with firecrackers, aftermath of the lighting of the jacket, front & back of shirt, diaper match.

Day 1 12/22/12- Part 3 Tokyo Station

As a result of not making it to the Ramen Museum, we explored some of the Tokyo Station. This station appeared to be way bigger than Penn Station & Grand Central Station.

We found an area called Ramen Street. I officially had my first real meal at Mutsumiya. I had what I believe was Spinach Ramen featured in the 1st photo.

I finally found a store that has several different types of Kit Kats. The flavors include shoyu (soy sauce), blueberry cheesecake, hot Japanese pepper, orange citrus blend, apple, strawberry, & wasabi. Needless to say, I'll be coming here at end of trip.

We also explored Character Street which feature stores of different Japanese characters. Each TV network has their own store selling their characters merchandise. I bought stuff featured in 2nd photo from the Ultraman store. I got an Ultraman IPhone case & an UltramanTaro figure that fits on your finger.

Day 1 12/22/12- Part 2: Tokyo Dome City

Tokyo Dome City is a pretty massive area. There are a multitude of stores, restaurants, amusement park rides, etc etc.

After walking around for a while just checking things out, we did a Haunted House based on the movie The Lady In Black. This was fun as you have to write down clues and when you find them, a scare happens. The people working were concerned we wouldn't understand, but we got through it with little difficulty.

The next thing on the agenda ended up being a Power Rangers live action show. I couldn't completely follow the story due to language barrier, but it was fun watching the action.

The last stop in the area was The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame. There was a history of baseball in general, baseball arriving to Japan, and the history of the different leagues in Japan. My feelings were kind of hurt seeing the Los Angeles Dodgers 1988 World Series trophy. Someone from Japan worked with the Dodgers then which is why the trophy is on display. They had an area where you can try to virtually hit off a pitcher. I struck out like a fool.

The 1st photo is the entrance to the Hall of Fame. The 2nd photo is a base signed by Rickey Henderson to the all time Japanese Stolen Base holder. The 3rd photo is the Sadaharu Oh plaque. The final photo is me inside the Power Rangers theatre.

Day 1 12/22/12- First Stop: The Wrestling Shops

The first place we were heading was the Tokyo Dome City. During the walk there, we went by the 3 wrestling shops in the area to check them out.

The first store is comprised of almost entirely wrestling masks. Most of the masks are variations of Mil Mascaras & Tiger Mask. They have all kinds of others ranging from Great Sasuke to Alushe.

The 2nd store is called Champions which features all kinds of stuff from many different groups. We got out tickets for NOAH's show for the 23rd while there.

The last store we saw was The New Japan Pro Wrestling Store. We only had 2 minutes before everyone had to leave. I walk out and a minute later Hiroshi Tanahashi arrives for a signing. It was raining pretty bad so we headed out.

The first photo is the mask shop and the 2nd is me in front of the New Japan. You can see the line to meet Tanahashi behind me.