July 31, 2009, Sports Center in Hakodate: Round 1

Today I went to a sports center. It was called Round One. One of the most amazing places ever! In NY, you chose to either go play arcade games, or karaoke, or bowling, or baseball (batting, pitching, and throwing cage), or basketball, or volleyball, or tennis, or soccer, or golf. And you have to pay for everything separately and sometimes you have to pay extra to borrow something from the center or use some equipment. But, at this place in Hakodate, all the sports, karaoke and more is in one building. All you have to do is pay $15 for 3 hours, or $20 for unlimited and you can play as much as you want as long as you want. Things included besides the already above mentioned were: fishing (with real fish and bait), curling room (a game that you play in a room with a huge strip of ice that you use to slide these really heavy metal objects across), archery, darts, roller skating (with a rink), and riding on small motorcycles and racing. This place also included a room full of massage chairs. We had so much fun in those 3 hours we didn’t even realize until the end that there was so much more to do: take a shower, get a massage, a huge bowling alley (I played miniature bowling) and something else I forgot already. It was fucking amazing!

We played tag while rollerblading in circles, bumping into each other and falling. I thought it was weird though, how they made sure we were geared up before we could get the rollerblades. We had knee, elbow, and wrist guard protectors. A helmet and chest protector, however, was optional. I have never felt so safe in my life, and since I thought I was accident prone I had even more incentive to do something stupid because there was no way I could get hurt, right?

We fished in the small indoor pond that had tons of fish (that I couldn’t see because the water looked dark and so did the room) but I caught a fish! It makes you feel so accomplished because it’s so easy to do. You can catch a fish within a number of minutes, but only to throw them back in the pitiful pool from which they came.

My favorite thing to do was the motorcycle race. We each had to gear up with a helmet, some padding, and a colored shirt with a number on it. Then we picked which motorcycle we wanted. Then we went into the rink where we rollerbladed and waited at the start line until the on your mark, get set, go (in Japanese). The woman who announced this stood in the middle of the rink near the start line and basically served as a commentator as the race was going on. She has the checkerboard black and white flag and an official jacket that she put on too just for this moment. We raced twice (because we insisted to do it again) and I bumped into my friend and slammed into the wall, giving myself a bruise on one arm. Then I tried to make a sharp turn with max speed and ended up skidding and sliding off my bike. Then I bumped into another friend toward the end and we both fell off and rolled on the floor. FUN! The best part is that there were so few people there. It was especially fun because it was not crowded at all.