As you can see I've once again gone and checked out the action in the squared circle, this time while Kate and I were visiting Akita City last weekend. After watching this video about Akita I didn't really have many high expectations for the place. Not surprisingly I was pretty much underwelmed by Akita once I got there and saw it for myself. There isn't much of downtown to speak of, and the rest of the town was about as generic as Japanese cities come.

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There were however a few nice things about the place. There is a nice wide river flowing through the city, plus many examples of interesting mordern architecture scattered about. This photo is of some sort of public gymnasium. It was hosting a badminton tournament at the time we were there and was really hot and stinky inside.




In addition to this building there seemed to be lots of other structures all over town that looked like they belonged in Tomorrowland. Along the waterfront there were also quite a few curious tall monolyth style towers that seemed to serve little purpose other than as tourist traps.


While we had a hard time tracking down any interesting stores or restaurants, we did find this charming little cafe.



While cruising around town Kate spotted this cool dekotora parked next to a used car lot.




We revisited our friends from Michinoku Pro-Wrestling in a small conventional hall at the beautiful new ＡＬ☆ＶＥ Center. This photo is of a very over-exposed Taka Michinoku standing on the ring apron. All our favorites from Onoe's show were there including Rasse the Aomori Nebuta luchador, Ooma the nearly naked man, and the wrestler formerly known as Hakushi, Jinsei Shinzaki.



Like both previous wrestling matches we watched, there couldn't have been more than a hundred or so people in the crowd. It was so quiet in the room that I had to whisper to Kate so as not to disturb everyone else in attendance. The small conference room was certainly an unlikely venue for a wrestling show.




This time everyone in the front row seemed to have come with (or perhaps were given) colored streamers which they tossed into the the ring at the beginning of each match.



Pineapple celebrates in the ring after deafeating his tag team partners Mango, Minamino and the lovely singer Kesen Numajirou in a fatal four way match.




Luckily Mister Pogo didn't make a surprise appearance and start tossing knives into the crowd. Aside from a bloody nose on Gaina, there wasn't anything too gruesome going on in the ring this time around.



Instead of young hoties and scary looking teenage weirdos, Michinoku fans seem to be made up mostly of senior citizens, families with kids, and big beefy old guys.




Time for the main event! Tohoku tag-team champs The Great Sasuke and Dick Togo face off against former WWE star Taka Michinoku and GAMMA.



A death-defying leap by everyone's favorite Japanese wrestler/politician.




After Sasuke and Togo left the ring in victory, the lower status wrestlers had to quickly tear down the ring.



After the show Kate catches up with her old pal Mango.




Don't feel bad for Taka even though he's not wrestling in front of 20,000+ people anymore. He's busy cashing in on his fame all over Japan by selling autographed photos for 500 yen a pop. With the average ticket price around 4000 yen, going to a wrestling match in Japan is a pretty expensive prosition INDEED!