During each Olympic games, the likes of athletics and swimming are quite prominent which is probably because there are just so many events within those. After that, I reckon gymnastics is the next most important Olympic sport as it too has many disciplines under it’s banner.

Last year I attempted to attend as many different sports as possible. Overall, I saw 21 including 15 that I’d never previously been to. Athletics and swimming were among that sizable list but one sport that eluded me was gymnastics. Of course there were some gymnastics events in and around Tokyo but they either bypassed my attention or took place at inconvenient times.

However, a couple of months ago I saw on a ticketing website that there was a four-day gymnastics event taking place mid-May with the first two days not costing anything to attend (the final two days cost a few thousand yen each which was why they were on the ticketing site) which certainly appealed to my tightfisted nature.

This event was not in Tokyo though. Neither was it in any of the surrounding prefectures which make up Great Tokyo. Instead, it was in Gunma Prefecture in a place called Takasaki which is somewhere I’ve been to a few times in recent years, and so I knew that it was actually easy to get to via one direct train taking about 90 minutes from Akabane station. Takasaki Arena is a ten minute walk south of the station.

Takasaki Arena is a pretty cool-looking architectural building which has only been in use for about seven years. It can hold around 6000 people, and is the regular home venue for local B-League basketball team Gunma Crane Thunders.

I arrived just in time for the 2:10 pm start and it felt a little strange to just be ushered into a place without any ticket exchange. Flags with some of the gymnasts lined the wall leading to the interior doors for the arena.

Inside, it was actually busier than I expected and finding a seat in the middle section of the main stand was not so easy. There were plenty of empty seats but as it was all unreserved people like to put their belongings on the seats next to them to stop people from sitting there. Unless you’re brave enough to ask someone if anyone is sitting in a seat with a bag on it you’re not gonna be able to find anywhere. Instead, I had to settle for a seat a little further along to the side which meant the mat was a little too far away but that is probably my least favourite of the gymnastics events!

I was in attendance for the second of four days activity which was men’s day. My knowledge of modern-day gymnasts is not good at all which is not to say I knew many in the past. In terms of Japanese, I certainly remember gold medalist Kohei Uchimura from London 2012 and the only name I recognised going in to this event was Daiki Hashimoto but I never heard his name mentioned on the PA system. Not knowing what he actually looked like certainly didn’t help either!!

With an elder sister as a gymnast, I grew up accustomed to watching the sport on TV, particularly during the Olympics of 1988 and 1992. This was of course in an era long before everyone had their own choice of vieiwing on tablets and smart phones. Seeing the gymnastics in person though was a little overwhelming with multiple apparatus often being used at the same time! I didn’t know where to look!

When you’re watching from the comfort of your own home you only see one discipline at a time, and the commentators tell you all you need to know. When you’ve got poor knowledge of the sport though, it’s difficult to know what kind of moves they’re doing, and how good they are! For me, it all just looked hugely impressive! I couldn’t really tell you who was better than who!!

On the plus side, when you’re actually watching it live and in person, your viewing options are not solely in the hands of the TV director which must be nice for those wanting to watch a specific event or gymnast.

This gymnastics competition involved six different apparatus of sorts; pommel horse, vault, rings, parallel bars, horizontal bars and the floor. Sometimes there were four or even five of them going on at the same time.

The pommel horse was the closest apparatus to my seat so that is maybe what I focused on more than any other.

My sports posts aren’t exactly known for going too much into detail about what actually happened, and it’s not as if anyone comes here for a play-by-play report. That is just as well as I have absolutely no idea who did what! That doesn’t matter though as I was there to just enjoy the spectacle of seeing a sport I’d never seen before. Hopefully, I’ll recognise a name or two the next time I watch gymnastics at the Paris Olympics. On TV of course  and I’ll have a far better understanding of what’s going on!

Click here to read ‘I Watched 15 Sports In Japan For The First Time In 2023’

Click here to read ‘I Had A Golden Time At This Athletics Event In Yokohama’

Click here to read ‘Gettin’ Down With Da Kidz At The World Street Skateboarding Championships In Tokyo’

Click here to read ‘What It’s Like To Be A Spectator At The Tokyo 2020 Olympics’