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Published: July 14th 2007
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Clash of the titans! (The bums are back)
Hopeless night's sleep - floor 7 of the capsule hotel was peopled by drunks, power snorers and a chap suffering the long drawn out death rattle of a man dying from terminal flatulence. We were understandably groggy when the unwelcome tones of my alarm clock set us on our auto-pilot way to the queue for tickets to the annual Aichi Prefecture Grand Sumo Tournament, one of the 6 premier meets of the year.
Tickets secured, we faddled about relocating luggage to lockers, garnering the enduring image of a super-helpful cute metro attendant clop-clopping around the station in her wooden sandals at high velocity tracking down storage big enough for our clobber. The poor lass was so out of breath afterward that she could hardly speak (although it's not unusual for me to have that effect on women). You gotta love the Japanese, they literally go out of their way to help you.
Next stop: Robot Museum! The perfect blend of interaction and information. Cav fought out a drab nil-nil draw with a German on the footie bots, while I pipped Stace ina 3-2 thriller, although Stace stole the show with a cracking solo
run down the left wing. The players were sophisticated, agile robots, manoevred with a playstation-like controlled. Each bot had 4 angled wheels a clever dribbling mechanism which spun the ball back into the body of the robot, and a slap shot shunt, with which your narrator stunned Stace with a cracking volley from the half way line. Becks bot!
Next, some hilarious robot dancing lessons courtesy of a be-backpacked video youth. You'll have to buy me a few drinkies if you're gonna have a chance of me showing you the embarassing footage of me almost dislocating my should trying to do the 'botman. Cav was actually rather good. From thence over to a self-assembly line for kit robots, which we subsequently animated in with some stop motion software. My bot, known as "A Long Streak of P**s" was a lanky fella who I animated collapsing into an exhaused heat of twisted plastic. Cav's anatomically enhanced orangutang bot break danced. Stace's dignified and topic iGeisha fluttered its eyelasses. Digital full body brick bat ensued, at which I sucked. The Furlongs teamed up for an assault on the German couple's high score of the day, but after flirting with making it,
they Charltoned it in the end.
Quick lunch haunted by the pop stylings of Aqua, then off to the sumo, which we all agreed surpassed some pretty high expectations. Giant, rippling men stomp about the dohyo (a 2ft elevated 15ft diameter ring) and lob salt about for 4 minutes before spending about 5 seconds trying to bounce each other out the ring. Actually, I'm being facetious (what me? Surely not!) It's a terrifically skilled demonstration of superhuman strength combined with great agility and hyperfast tactical decision making. The accompanying ceremony ("shikeri") is the best kind of theatre as it's real - a process of psyching out your opponent. Each rickishi (wrestler, but they're more like Sillverback gorillas than men) brings his own attitude to the stamping and thunderous clapping, through which they warding off evil from the dohyo. We skipped the lower ranks, swotting on the rules watching the mid-level rickishi as the atmosphere and crowd built up, before feasting our eyes on the marvellous top ranked "maku-uchi".
The crowd rose to a giant in a green mawashi (which is the nappy-looking thing - actually 10 yards of heavy silt wrapped around the rickishi's considerably girth, doing little
to hide the ubiquitous buttocks)... where was I? Yes, the giant in the green mawashi whose enormous leg was cocked at a seeming impossible imbalance for an age before crashing to the ring. Another combatant chest thumped the spectators into a frenzy before lobbing his lucky salt in a huge graceful arc, before despatching his opponent with disdain. But the real action was saved for last as the champions fight last. Tournament victory banners are paraded during the preceding pomp, so when one has 10 and the other 6, you know you have a sumo rumble in the jungle on your hands - that titanic struggle was settled when the cocky guy in blue was hurled via a huge hefting spin. After roaring up out of a tense crouch into a bone crunching, flubber flapping initial clash, every bout seems to play out uniquely. Some are swift slap fests, over in seconds; you get nappy-grabbing bear hugs, flubber bumpers, stop-start attack-counter waltzes and the occasional CHARGE!-(sidestep)-splat!!, much to the embarassment of the splatee. Last on, the Mongolian megastar Yokozuna Asayoryu, who flirted with an upset for fully 27 seconds (ages by sumo standards) before driving his foe into the ringside
spectators.
Last shinkansen ride before our rail pass runs out takes us to Kyoto, where the ninnys at Ryokan Himamto had lost our reservation - not what you need with a typhoon following you across Japan. Quick fix business hotel (Western bed! Our backs are creaking with so many futoned nights) and a pizza.
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