Sumo Wrestling

Before I ever came to Japan I had been told by someone that I should try and visit a sumo tournament. And I was told that they had one in Nagoya (the city I live outside of) every summer. First, a little background on sumo, very little, because I don't know much. Anyway there are 6 tournaments a year in Japan. Three in Tokyo, one in Nagoya and one in Osaka and one in Fukuoka. The sumo wrestlers go to all of these events and at the end of the year the wrestler who has won the most matches gets a huge trophy. Here is a winner receiving his trophy. I found this picture on the internet. I did not see this, myself. So each tournament lasts for 15 days, beginning on Sunday and also ending on Sunday. Each sumo competes in one match each day.

Rules: Walk into the ring, bow, do some leg lifts and slap your legs, bow, squat, leg lifts.Throw some salt to purify the ring, clap, bow. Then knock the other guy down, before he can knock you down. The winner is the one who gets the other guy to either step out of the ring, or touch any part of his body to the floor besides the soles of his feet. There is only one weight class in sumo, so a small guy could compete with a guy twice his size. We saw a few of those matches. And surprisingly enough the bigger guy isn't always the winner. There is not a weight requirement, but there is a height requirement (173 cm, 5'8"). I am told that would-be-sumos will have a silicone implant put at the top of their head to allow them to reach the height requirement.

Sumo is very popular in Japan and the tournaments sell out pretty quickly. Last summer I didn't plan far enough in advance to be able to go. And this year the same thing almost happened. But we learned that you can go the day of the event and they have cheap seats in the back that are not reserved. So I got up ridiculously early and put on my yukata (Japanese summer cotton kimono) and rode the train for an hour to get to the place where the tournament would be. They were going to start selling tickets at 8, we got there at 7 to make sure we would get tickets. This is us waiting in line. Left to Right Kelvin (Margo's friend from Indonesia I think) Margo (my American co-worker) me, Yuka (my Japanese co-worker).We were able to get tickets yippee!!!! Since it was so early and we were hungry we went back into the city and got some breakfast at Mickey D's. They do have sausage biscuits in Japan. It was good. Then we headed back to the tournament hall to watch some big ole Japanese guys push each other around.

There are different divisions with the highest ranked fighters competing at the end of the day and with more ceremony than the lower ranked fighters earlier in the day. We were there pretty early, so we didn't see the great famous guys but it was cool all the same.




At one point these guys high ranked wrestlers came out. The one on the left is not Japanese. There is a significance to their aprons, but I don't know what it is.

As I said before, we got the cheap nose-bleed seats, but since we were there so early in the day, the people who paid for the expensive seats hadn't arrived yet. So we decided to keep their seats warm for them. The box set of 4 seats sells for about $300. At the end of the day, if something happens that the audience doesn't like people will throw the purple cushions that we are sitting on at the ring. It would have been cool to see that, but we left at lunch time. So that was my morning at the sumo tournament. It was pretty fun. And the Japanese people liked it that we wore our yukata. People don't usually wear them to sumo tournaments, but
that didn't stop us. I'll take any excuse to wear it. I think its fun. Here are a couple of videos for your enjoyment.