We’ve continued to keep busy lately. On Friday evening, the family went to the Lion King play at the Ariake Shiki theater. Lisa’s sister recommended that we get tickets about six months back since they planned to go, so we did. We all met up for an early dinner at about 4pm Friday afternoon, had a nice dinner with the whole family, and then went to the theater. I didn’t take any pictures, but since you can’t photograph or film the play there isn’t too much to show anyway.

The play was very nice! It was my first time seeing The Lion King. It came out at a time when I wasn’t a kid, and did not yet have kids, so I just missed that one. This particular version was a bit tough to follow because I had to concentrate a bit to understand if they were singing in Japanese I didn’t understand, or some other African language (which happened surprisingly often). Even not having seen the movie, it’s surprising how much of the story I had some knowledge of.

I thought it was too bad that the kids that played the young version of Simba and Nana weren’t able to come to curtain call due to child labor laws.

Another basketball game

Last week we went to see a Shibuya Sunrockers game at Toyota Area, a part of the Japan Basketball Premier League. That was lots of fun!

This weekend we went to a Tokyo United game, which is in the league below the Premier league (the “One” league I think). We met up with Momo’s friend’s family for this too. Tickets were free (Lisa found them somehow), and general seating, so we went about two hours early and got some really nice mid-court seats.

Ariake Arena is a nice venue, I came here a while ago for the New Order concert. It isn’t as big as Toyota Arena, but it is nice! Before the game started the President of Koutou-ku, Okubo Tomoka, came out to address the crowd, since Tokyo United is their local team. That was nice to see.

Tokyo United has Shinnosuke Tokugawa on the team. That got me really excited – what team has someone from the Ieyasu clan? Or the Nobunaga clan? I want someone to make a Nobunaga’s Basketball Ambition game now.

I tried to get a good action shot of the t-shirt sling, and this one went like two feet.

The halftime entertainment was D-51, a Japanese group that had at least one song used in a popular anime.

The Tokyo Unite Dancers had a guy on the squad who was really good too.

By pure chance, Lisa ran into the husband of a good friend of hers from university, and he came over so we could chat for a bit. I don’t think I’ve seen him for five years at least, so that was really fun!

Unfortunately, Tokyo United didn’t win the game, but they kept it close, and they had many chances to win. They just couldn’t get the baskets when they had the chance. They lost by 5 points.

After the game, we headed out. Before that, there were some brief interviews with the players, and the team president. On the way out, the team president was at the exit doors, thanking fans for coming. That’s very Japanese, and nice to see.

We walked over to Ariake Garden, and had a slightly late dinner. I really didn’t need to get anything because I had snacked at bit at the game, but I got a whole Umami Burger which was really good. We didn’t get home until about 9:30pm, but it was another fun basketball game. Being a league down from the top league was interesting. We have a whole bunch of basketball teams pretty close to where we are, so I think I’ll try to get cheap tickets and go to these more often. It’s fun!