Treated to another fine day in Nagasaki with scattered clouds across the blue sky I considered how to spend my last day in town. Cramming four locations into one week's worth of travel isn't exactly ideal in terms of enjoying a place to its full potential, but I have always been a fan of scouting around multiple locations, and I'd rather return for a longer stay once I know the place would appeal to me. Nagasaki is definitely one of those places. At first sight I immediately took a liking to it, although I quickly came to question my judgment once I got down to work the city center. However, as with most things, once you learn them you begin to appreciate them the more, and although a bit seedy the local entertainment district certainly warrants ... read more

My fifth and last consecutive Kyushu basho visit, you should know the ropes by now, so let's take a look around the arena to see if there is something else to catch your eye. Being a friday afternoon, the Kokusai Center really started to fill up with people coming straight from work, as the last bouts went the mood was quite high. For me it was a bit of each, tomorrow morning I'll be off to Nagasaki so I made good use of my last day in the arena.... read more

For those of you who don't like sumo; tough luck - we're turning up the temperature a couple of degrees today, so you might as well stop reading and hit the next journal link a few times... I started out a little bit earlier this morning (which translates to approximately 1 pm...) with the intent of having a "chance encounter" with some rikishi on the way to the arena. I had noticed a few lower ranking rikishi leaving after their bouts, walking down the street in their robes and sandals. Rikishi waiting at bus stops, sending SMS on their cell phones or waiting to cross the street. There is something appealing about how they blend into the cityscape. So with a little bit more time on my hands it didn't take long until I could zoom ... read more

I've been wondering how to approach this segment of the blog. How can I possibly succeed in keeping the interest up among the hapless population making up all those blog readers indifferent to the grand tradition of sumo? I considered step by step introductions, a combined entry with highlights of the five days or presentations of the various rules and the most famous wrestlers right now. In the end I came to the conclusion that nobody bothers to read the blog entries anyway, so I might as well just type what I want and you'll just have to deal with it! Therefore, I'll simply present the most interesting shots from each day with some random commentary or ranting in general. Let the good times roll! First of all, finding the Kokusai Center was not very difficult. ... read more

Ten long hours after boarding the Scandinavian A340 we dove into the thick overcast hanging over Tokyo. As usual I hadn't spent more than an hour or so slumbering between the itching and boredom of being stuck in a rather cramped seat. Beware of the window seats on Airbus A340s carrying inflight entertainment systems as there is a boxed in computer stealing some of your legroom. For ten hours I didn't really know where to put my right leg in a comfortable position, and it started to drive me nuts. The captain finally made an announcement regarding our arrival time. We had gained 30 minutes but were still more than two hours behind schedule. I had allowed for four and a half hours to transfer smoothly between the international terminal at Narita and the domestic terminal ... read more