Puroresu

It's been another brilliant day here in Tokyo.

Each day has been different, with new areas to explore and fun stuff to try.

Today's destination was Bunkyo, which I know well having stayed there on my last visit to the city in 2012.

The district has lots of nice tree-lined streets, but most notably is home to the massive Tokyo Dome sports and entertainment venue, with the historic Korakuen Hall next door.

Both arenas have hosted major boxing, puroresu (wrestling) and martial arts events, with Mike Tyson famously losing to Buster Douglas at the dome in 1990.

You can probably already tell that this is going to be more of a George day than a Lucinda day!

After a quick and shameful McDonald's, we stopped in at the New Japan Pro Wrestling shop to geek out at merchandise and pick up a few things.

The shop has autographs of famous wrestlers on the walls and lots of t-shirts, hoodies and other bits available to buy.

Next, we went in search of a coffee shop called Mamekobo which seemed to have good reviews.

We managed to find the street, and a very friendly bloke pointed us in the right direction of the cafe itself. The shop offered a variety of different coffees, including a "daily explorer" option where you get the chance to taste a single origin bean from that country - in this case, Guatemala.

I spotted something a bit different on the menu so went for it - a cafe au lait with chai and fresh ginger. It actually had pieces of ginger through it. Lucinda kept the honeymoon sesh rolling with an Irish coffee, and we ordered some Loacker Napolitaner hazelnut wafer biscuits to top it all off.

Fully caffeinated, our next stop was the Japan Football Museum, which sits at the end of Football Avenue - right up my street!

Run by the Japanese Football Association, it's a well put together archive of the national team's fairly limited success on the world stage.

The trophy cabinet is dominated by FIFA Fair Play awards, with the main silverware of note being the 2011 Women's World Cup trophy.

It did however provide some great photo opportunities, and the chance to add a badly-drawn Stranraer FC badge to the hundreds of messages from all around the world.

We stopped in at Korakuen Hall around 4pm to collect tickets to that evening's New Japan Pro Wrestling show, before strolling around the illuminations at LaQua mall in the wider Tokyo Dome City area.

There wasn't long until the show started, so we plumped for a conveyor belt sushi place for dinner which was surprisingly good.

Between us we had nigiri with egg omelette, broiled pork rib, salmon and smoked duck and onion, plus side orders of fried chicken and crispy squid tentacles, all washed down with matcha tea.

On our return to the hall there was a long queue, and when we made our way into the building we found out we'd be watching from the balcony.

It provided quite a good view, but meant standing for a good few hours and peering over people's heads.

It was a great show, and featured some of the top guys past and present from Japan as well as wrestlers who've previously featured for WWE.

Japanese wrestling fans are completely different from those in the rest of the world - they can be completely silent at times, and are always very respectful and traditional in their reactions, with any noteworthy effort or performance receiving applause.

In the first match they were getting right behind one of their own wrestlers called Shota Umino by shouting out his first name. Every few seconds or so you'd hear "Shotaaaaaaa!".

Shota and his tag team partner were up against two big guys, one of whom was called Big Mike. Understandably I got some funny looks when I broke the silence in my non-Japanese voice with "GO ON MIKE!".

We'd noticed empty seats downstairs earlier, and as the evening progressed, the idea of sneaking down there and chancing our luck turned from a joke into reality.

We walked nonchalantly past two security staff, neither of whom blinked an eye, and plonked ourselves down on the comfiest seats ever, about 10-15 feet from ringside.

Luckily no-one came to claim the seats or ask us to leave, and we enjoyed the rest of the show close up, right in amongst the crowd, which was surprisingly raucous by Japanese standards.

The first match after we sat down saw a crazy masked wrestler called Takashi Iizuka enter from the audience, who seemed legitimately afraid of what he might do next - Lucinda included!

The match was wild, spilling over into the crowd, with Takashi escaping his mask and biting anyone who moved.

The fans went absolutely nuts for everything from this point up until the main event, and the noise in the building was deafening. We couldn't believe our luck at nabbing these seats and being right in amongst the action.

On the way home we picked up some snacks from 7 Eleven - karaage (Japanese fried chicken), a curried pork bun and beef and egg onigiri.

Tomorrow we've got more excitement and plenty of food lined up in Asakusa and Chiyoda, including the Nabe Festival which celebrates stews from all over Japan.

George