Last night I met up with Antoine for a guy’s night out in Kobe. It was the first time it has been just him and me for months, and so we had lots to catch up on. He is still wrapping his head around the idea of being married, but is liking his new place and new lifestyle.
It turned out that one of Antoine’s coworkers had a Japanese ex-student that was (1) a professional wrestler, and (2) wrestling in Kobe that night. Antoine’s coworker offered us free tickets, so we ended up heading over to “Dragon’s Gate”, a professional wrestling “studio” in town. Antoine and I met up with three of his coworkers, all ALTs like Antoine in Takarazuka. We joined a surprisingly long line of people waiting to get in. Surprising as well was the mix of the crowd – almost all girls.
The first culture shock was that everyone was required to take off their shoes upon entering and wear slippers. Upon entering we stood around a small wrestling/boxing ring. The room was tiny but the place was full – maybe about 100 people watching. The room was so small that the audience could only stand around two sides of the ring, but the good news was that we were very close to the action.
Things like this are a lot more fun when you have a friend participating – tonight we were rooting on a good-looking young kid named Fujita. His outfit was remarkably plain, which put him in the “good guy who gets unfairly beat up by a mean guy” category. The wrestlers had to run by us to enter the ring, so we got plenty of high-fives in, and then Fujita got to work getting his ass convincingly kicked.
He was quite good at it. Afterwards we all agreed that his best talent was making his face look dazed and barely conscious. After his defeat he limped off to the cheers of the crowd, but he managed a smile for us as he went by. The crowd itself was surprisingly quiet, and I could never really tell if they were believing it or if they were there to admire the bodies of the wrestlers. Maybe a little of both.
There were about 10 wrestlers in four matches (even a tag team match), with good guys, bad guys, mask-wearing fat guys, and even three foreigners. The foreigners were quite good at making a dramatic show, and they were pretty popular. The crowd around us had assumed that we were there to cheer on the foreign guys, but in fact we were the loudest for Fujita. Still, the foreign wrestlers were surprised to see us, and hammed it up even more for us. One of the Australian wrestlers took a slap to the chest from his opponent and fell to his knees shouting “Heavens to Betsy!” which got some big laughs from us and quizzical looks from the Japanese fans. When the British guy was in a headlock one of Antoine’s coworkers shouted “God save the Queen!” which actually made the wrestler giggle a little. We got extra high fives from the foreigners as each one left.
At the end of the show we saw Fujita working the ticket sales booth for the next event, and he seemed to have recovered fully from his injuries in the ring. He gave us a big smile and wave, and we thanked him for the free tickets. It was a really fun night – another strange but interesting experience in Japan.
