Kurume Sports Garden Skating Rink
This video can only be of interest to English-speaking crazy skaters like myself who enjoy skating at different rinks around the country and the world. Each rink has its own facilities, atmosphere, and characters (skaters/coaches). And these, of course, shift with different times of the day, days of the week, and seasons. My brief visits only can provide a glimpse of each venue.
In March of 2010, I skated at 7 different rinks in 6 Japanese cities from Northern Honshu to Western Kyushu. These trips were enabled by my Japan Rail Pass and allowed me to combine my interests of trains and skating. This video reports on my visit to Kurume Sports Garden - the fourth stop in my series.
About 1:30pm of this day I left Nagasaki and took two trains to Kurume. I had hoped to skate at Kagoshima next, but I was unable to find a rink there still open at the end of March. Arriving at Kurume JR Station (taking a Relay Tsubame train that connects Sanyo and Kyushu Shinkansen routes), it was raining mildly. I had budgeted a little over three hours to find the rink, skate and get back to catch a train into Kagoshima for the night.
Forgetting to check my roller suitcase at the station, I set out in the rain (with no umbrella) to follow my GPS for an estimated 30 minute walk. Along the way , two remarkable people helped me. The first was a woman who wanted to walk along with me, holding an umbrella over my head. I was afraid that if I let her do this, she might feel obligated to walk the whole remaining distance with me. So I found an excuse to go off on my own. I walked further until I arrived at the GPS coordinates I had set, but there was no skate rink in sight. I asked a woman standing next to me at a cross-walk if she knew where Kurume Sports Center was, and she gave me (correct) directions. Several minutes later, still walking in the rain, I heard someone shouting to me from the street. It was the woman from the cross-walk, now in her car. She had been looking for me, concerned that she had given me the wrong directions. She had directed me to the Kurume Sports Garden but started to worry that maybe I had really wanted some place called the Sports Center instead. It was my mistake, but then she offered to drive me there! So I loaded my two bags into her car, sitting next to her kindergarten-aged son, and off we went. Picking up some unknown, soaking wet strange old man this would never happen in urban America! Thank you Okaa-san, whoever you were, for your kindness!
This rink definitely had some good figure skaters. I could barely keep up with some of the tiny young girls. After a while, an instructor, who struck me as Russian, showed up. Anyway, the ice was good, large (Olympic size?), and it was a nice venue for skating.
My trip back to the station was exciting for a different reason. I couldnt find a taxi, but at last found a bus headed to Kurume Station. Unfortunately, there are two such stations, and I arrived at the wrong one with only 25 minutes to catch my train departing from the other station!
The price of skating here was ¥1500 for adults and ¥1200 and for kids. Not sure of the skate rental fees. Supposed to be open all year. Hours were 10am to 8pm on weekdays, opening a couple hours earlier on weekends. Phone number is 0942-34-7007. The rink is a straight (but long) shot from the JR Kurume Station. It is a little back from the street, however, and maybe hard to see from the main street (there is a Mr. Donut close to both the rink and a major intersection). The building seems to be called Spoga Kurume (スポガ久留米).
Address: 福岡県久留米市合川町2125
(Correct) GPS coordinates are: 33°18'52.56N 130°31'51.81E
Web site (in Japanese):