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Published: January 30th 2007
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Our first proper day in Japan started bright and early as we headed off to the Grand National Sumo Tournament at Ryoguku Stadium. When Linda and I originally decided to go to Japan I had one wish. Well two actually. Number 1 - Become a professional snowboarder (obviously!) Number 2 - See some Sumo. Luckily for us we were in Tokyo right in the middle of one of the six annual Sumo tournaments and I was determined to get in as much wrestling action as possible!
Not wanting to miss anything we arrived at the Stadium fairly early in the morning. We'd even got our helpful concierge man at the hotel to write down what kind of tickets we wanted in japanese in case we ran into problems but we managed to score some B reserve tickets with ease. The stadium is arranged so that the main clay ring is right in the middle and the rows of seats ascend up from there. Right next to the ring are the prime seats which are sold out weeks in advance and can be quite costly but you can score tickets up in the back rows for $10 or so. I must
say the appeal of paying several hundred dollars to sit right next to the ring and deal with the possibility of a BIG man getting thrown out of that ring by another BIG man, and one (or both) of them possibly landing right on top of you is not something I completely understand. The referees that sit right on the edge of the ring must get paid some big bucks and have some mighty hefty health insurance policies!! We went for the middle level tickets but actually spent most of the day moving around the stadium and sitting wherever we wanted so we got some pretty great views of the matches.
Sumo itself is an ancient sport which dates back some 1500 years and is steeped in tradition. The first matches were based in religion and part of the ceremony before a bout today involves throwing salt onto the clay ring to purify it and lots of stamping of feet to drive out evil. The ceremony itself tends to last longer than the match but both Linda and I thought it was all pretty fascinating to see the different moves and strategies of the players. The official webpage of
the Grand National Tournament has some great stuff on the traditions of sumo and the meaning behind a lot of the ceremony if anyone is interested (http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/).
There are six sumo tournaments each year in Japan and each one runs for 15 days with most of the wrestlers competing each day. The junior trainees start off in the morning and gradually the more senior wrestlers come out until the top ranked competitors finish off the evening. As the body weight of the competitors rises so does the amount of ceremony and the size of the crowd! Getting there in the morning we got to see most of the junior matches and it was interesting to see the people file in and the excitement grow as the bigger players came out.
And man do these guys get BIG!! Particularly in the trainees you can see all the muscle under all the bulk and how much strength the wrestlers use in their legs. They're also all very flexible in the hips and lower limbs. But the bellies on some of the senior guys are truly phenomenal. They must do some SERIOUS eating and I would hate to have one of
them sit on me. Particularly in those sashes.
People in Japan just revere the wrestlers. At lunchtime we went to sit outside and noticed crowds of people lining the entrance of the Stadium - a bit like some movie premiere. Only this was crowds of people waiting to see the wrestlers arrive. The guys all came clumping round from the train station in their wooden sandals carrying their little bags and onto the red carpet whilst everyone yelled and took photos. We were just waiting for the Hollywood papparazzi to arrive!! Naturally we joined in. Linda even chased one guy down the carpet for a good photo. We don't know who he was.
Sadly not one of them wanted to marry us. Maybe they feared our cooking would not be up to standard. Maybe they realised we didn't know how to knot their wrestling sashes. Maybe we were too tall. But much to our sadness no marriage proposal was forthcoming for either of us... We'll keep working on it.
But there was always shopping. Naturally there are souvenir stores galore inside the stadium where you can buy any number of things with pictures of the top ranked
wrestlers on them - playing cards, magnets, pens, dolls (complete with body hair!), wigs... Even our lunch Bento boxes were named after wrestlers!
The Sumo also marked my foray into the world of Japanese vending machines. They are seriously EVERYWHERE in Japan - usually lit up with neon. I wouldn't have thought people actually drank that much fluid to justify a vending machine on every corner - but maybe I'm wrong. It must be some job to refill them all on a daily basis. You can get everything from coke to beer to cigarettes to whole meals. In one lot of machines in Kyoto we even saw some Thorpedo water! (Now you know why there's no Thorpy water on the Australian shelves - its all in Kyoto) For my first attempt at negotiating the vending machines I decided a nice cool iced coffee would be a lovely refreshment after lunch. No problems. I put the money in. It was the right money. I pressed the button. It was the right button. The right can came out of the slot. I even got change. The right change. But my can of iced coffee was hot! Of course! Hot coffee in
a can! Naturally!
Unfortunately our day at the sumo went all too quickly and before we knew it we were headed off to Hakone to see Mt Fuji!
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