Rugby World Cup-related events

Hey peeps,

Since I'm in one of the host prefectures (and one of the towns where some of the various national teams (we've got Australia, New Zealand and Wales I think) will be having their camps) for the Rugby World Cup, I thought I'd make this thread since the rugby department next to me are starting to plan stuff now.

Rather than to give pointers to other people though, I'm looking for advice myself actually ^^;;

Cool rugby dept. guy just had a mini-meeting with me about what we can do to get foreigners visiting for the world cup to enjoy themselves and spend money (hue). The matches near us are mostly if not all in Oita City rather than Beppu, so they're running a shuttle bus from a park near the town hall but also from Beppu station.

The layout of the area, however, is (imagine this is on a piece of paper from top to bottom):

Sea

Hotels by sea

Ekimaedoori - a shopping/restaurant street with shopping arcade streets down a couple roads branching off to the right of this main road)

Beppu Station East Exit (which has an area outside it that we used for the 1-year-before-RWC event, which now has an information kiosk, and a RWC-related statue/installation thing, and the pika pika ojiisan statue). I am guessing this is where the buses will go from

Beppu Station -inside- - a fairly reasonable space where the public viewing was held

Beppu Station West Exit - also has bus and taxi terminals, and hotels. Buses may also go from here

Beppu Park - a very big park where the other shuttle bus stop will be

So most tourists will have to walk down Ekimaedoori to get to where the shuttle bus is.

Some background info: the shopping arcade shops off Ekimaedoori are almost always closed. I have been in daytime and in nighttime and there are always places closed. At daytime there are some stalls selling geta and such, and some restaurants you can't tell if they're open or closed, but other than that it's normally really empty and dead in the daytime (nothing like my beloved Osu Kannon in Aichi-ken). Then in the nighttime it's pretty much just izakaya and a couple restaurants (with a ton of KYABAKURA/SNAKKU type places down the side alleys off these shopping arcade streets)

I emphasized the point that if the shopping arcade shops could have more regular opening times or better advertise when they were open, that could really help it feel more inviting, and cool rugby dept. guy kept going on about selling beer down Ekimaedoori. He asked what I thought would be good and I said I thought it would be best if we could create a matsuri type of atmosphere to liven up the place, like decorate the streets and the shops etc. and maybe have food stalls, but I don't know what else to suggest.

So I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for stuff you'd want or expect to see in a town for something like the Rugby World Cup?