{"id":1050,"date":"2026-09-26T20:36:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T11:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2026-09-26T20:36:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T11:36:45","slug":"going-drinking-a-walk-and-a-basketball-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/26\/going-drinking-a-walk-and-a-basketball-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Going drinking, a walk, and a basketball game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Things have been a bit busy lately! On Friday I had a “Papa Nomikai”, a meet up with other fathers at my kids’ school, out in Nihonbashi. That’s about 45 minutes away from where we live. I thought it would be fun to bring out my camera and take some pictures. So I did! It was nice, there were about 11 of us fathers there, and I had a good time talking with them. We had a course of 5 different sakes, and some light food to go with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"Papa<\/a>\n<\/div>
We had a nice setup<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I don’t drink a lot of sake, so I wanted to be careful not to drink too much. I did want to try each one though, so I had to pay attention and pour small drinks for myself. We had some light food provided by the venue, a place called 8go<\/a>, which is interesting. They are a “Culinary Innovation Center” and do research into food innovation. The shrimp we had was apparently not shrimp, but instead some sort of meat substitute. It was nice. They have a restaurant as well, so check them out if you are interested in something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"Papa<\/a>\n<\/div>
The food spread from 8go.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I stayed for about two hours, and had more sake than I had planned on. I decided instead of taking the train straight home, I’d walk a bit, from Nihonbashi to Yurakucho, and from there take the train to Oimachi, which is also about a 20 minute walk from home. On the way I wanted to see if there was anything interesting to take pictures of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
One of the five bottles of sake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
I wanted to get some kind of lit-up Tokyo street, and this one fit the bill.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’m sure I could find more photogenic places, but it was fun just to walk around with no real planning and take a few pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
This Karaoke place had interesting lights in the rooms – which didn’t really show up here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
The Tokyo International Forum is always an interesting building.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\"Pictures<\/a>\n<\/div>
I liked this Pachinko place near Oimachi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A basketball game<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, we went out to a Tokyo Sunrockers vs. China Jets basketball game. The Tokyo Sunrockers used to play at Aoyama Gakuin in Omotesando, where my kids’ dentist is at. From this year though, the Sunrockers were promoted into the new top Premiere league of Basketball Japan, and they needed a facility with more capacity and other fancy things. So they moved to the new Toyoto Arena Tokyo<\/a> which just opened in June 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"Tokyo<\/a>\n<\/div>
We had seats up on the 4th floor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lisa found free tickets for families – and tonight was the opening home game of the season. The seats were fine, but they were in the “Away” section which meant everyone was cheering for the away team, the Chiba Jets. The arena was quite full – they said it was sold out during the game, which is supposed to be 10,000 people. Nice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"Tokyo<\/a>\n<\/div>
They had fire and everything!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We got there about an hour before tip-off, and got some snacks to eat. The game was a good one – the Sunrockers <\/a>have Josh Hawkinson, who is on the Japanese national team, and the Chiba Jets<\/a> have Yuta Watanabe and Yuki Togashi who both spent some time in the NBA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"Tokyo<\/a>\n<\/div>
Momo liked the dancers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The game was a good one. It looked like the Sunrockers would lose in the first half, but they came back and went into halftime up one point or so. In the second half they turned things around and they won by about 16 points I think. It was fun! I was surprised that they also had people – well, young women – walking around with big beer backpacks selling beer – I thought those were only at baseball games. Looks like basketball games have them too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, it feels like I’ve been keeping busy lately. It’s been fun pulling out my camera and taking some pictures too. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been busy lately – I went out drinking with some other school dads, and took some pictures walking around Tokyo. Then the family went to a basketball game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,9],"tags":[27,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1052,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}