Last Friday, the city of Kagoshima set up an "omotenashi town" in Central Park. Effectively, this was a food and running apparel booth area, in preparation for the second annual Kagoshima marathon. This is a full 25 mile run from Dolphin Port, up to Aira, and then back to finish in front of City Hall. The cool-down chute funneled the runners to Central Park, where they were given a certificate of accomplishment, and the option of sitting in a foot bath for a while. The main stage was still being set up on Friday, and there wasn't anything I wanted to buy. On Saturday, I had to work from 1 to 8 PM, and the stage events ran from 1 to 5. Naturally, the weather was perfect both days. On Sunday, there was a heavy downpour in the early morning, and then drizzle for the entire rest of the day. The run wasn't canceled, but it did put a damper on the activities in the park. Although, there were still about 100 people in front of City Hall to watch the runners come in at 2 PM (the winning runners had finished long before that.
(Stage schedule for Sunday.)
It rained last year too, but there were still more people in the park then. They didn't have the big screen TV showing the race results this year, either. Since I didn't know anyone participating in the run, I stuck around only long enough to take a few photos, mainly because I had to do food shopping afterward.
They had the timer board in the park, for anyone that wanted their photo taken with their "official" times.
The park was almost empty at 2 PM.
Jun-ei Ohsako is a concert violinist. I've seen him at a few events in the past. He's good, but I'm not a big fan of classical violin. He was supposed to start at 2 on Sunday, but he and the rest of his trio were just beginning their rehearsal at that point. I decided to record that, and then the rain started coming down harder, so I gave up and went to City Hall to watch the runners crossing the finish line.
DJ Pocky and Yuki Arima, announcers at Myu FM radio, were at the finish line, cheering the runners at the end.
There were more people in front of City Hall than in the park.
View of the finish line.
There was another set of booths on the boulevard in front of City Hall, but almost no customers. I considered getting something to eat, but all the food was overpriced and nothing looked particularly special.
I thought the mobile foot bath was an interesting idea, though. Unfortunately, the runners had to follow the chute to Central Park, 6 blocks away. Unless they had planned to come back here to meet someone, there wasn't a reason for them to keep walking to come here specifically for the foot soak. Kind of poor planning on the sponsors' part.
Direct youtube link
No comments:
Post a Comment