Japan 2024 Trip 2 Day 8: NJPW at Saga Karatsu City Cultural Gymnasium

Woke up in the morning to news that the non-reserved seats on Nozomi shinkansen are being reduced! Noo! I like using tthem because they are slightly cheaper than reserved. I would not pay reserved for Hakata to Kokura.

Arriving at Karatsu station.

Dropped my bag and off to Karatsu castle

Nice to see autumn leaves still around.

Beautiful.

Karatsu castle.

Beautiful views.

Anyway, I did not go on this trip to watch NJPW. After I booked my flights, I started to look around for any events I could go to and what do you know?

This place is so retro, especially the signs.

Got the yakisoba which was nothing special.

I love how retro this shop looks.

UNESCO heritage Kunshi floats.

I originally booked a hotel in Saga city since I assumed that the event place must be near the capital city of Saga prefecture.

Then luckily my friend told me that Karatsu was not easy to get from Saga. Looked it up and there was a bus to the gymnasium from Saga but it only ran until a certain time and and might take close to an hour. Luckily managed to book a hotel in Karatsu.

So the question is why would NJPW run a show in a small town like Karatsu when they could have run it in a bigger town like Saga?

The answer lies in this promo video from NJPW promoting Karatsu-shi that they played at least twice before the show started. Do not watch this video if you do not want this song in your head and it basically became the soundtrack of my trip. lol

Tomoaki Honma was the shilling his own t-shirt. First thing I noticed was his biceps were crazy huge.

Tanahashi and Liger book promoting Karatsu.

Tanahashi came out and talked about how Karatsu approached NJPW during the pandemic to do shows in Karatsu and that this was the last year of the 3 year deal. The pandemic really screwed up NJPW because they rely so much on tickets for revenue. In the end Tanahashi asked if it was ok for NJPW to come back to Karatsu again.

It took me 40 mins to walk from my hotel to the Karatsu City Cultural Gymnasium. 

Gabe Kidd got a decent reception from the crowd.

The 2nd best thing of the night was Gabe Kidd putting the beatdown on a young lion and then asking for a microphone and singing the Sagaken Karatsu-shi song and purposely ending it badly. Hilarious and it got him over with the crowd.

Heel SANADA dragging Yoshi Hashi around. When you are watching on tv, it looks boring but when you are at the show it is exciting because you get to see the wrestlers up close.

Umino Shita doing his 5 minute high-fiving, baby kissing entrance.

I did not sell out and high five Umino Shota.

The funniest thing was Umino Shota getting a beatdown but the crowd was not reacting. Then Honma's raspy voice reverberated shouting Shota! Shota! before the crowd joined in. Honma does a great job helping Shota get cheers but Shota's clean babyface shtick doesn't work.

At least I got to see Tanashi before he retires in a year plus. He can't run properly and he has got no lift anymore.

The main event had Hiromu doing a fake heel turn. I could not believe I was witnessing history because I starting this that HoT has too many Jrs already.

The highlight of the night was of course, Naito's daigasho or roll call. So good to be able to chant along live!

Walking on narrow inaka streets with limited lights and cars passing you closely can be scary. I walked to the nearest train station and then took a short ride back to Karatsu station instead of walking all the way. My friend said don't worry because there are no drunk drivers in the inaka but inaka roads are just not made for walking.