Sumo in Nagoya!!!!!!

Yeah!!!!!!!!!! I went to see sumo on this past Thursday (the 20th). It’s been raining like crazy here. Today’s the first day in almost a week that it hasn’t rained. So of course I started to feel fluish on my first day off (Weds.). I had been planning for quite a while to go to sumo on Thursday so I stayed in bed ALL day on Wednesday, took a ton of vitamin c, and drank lots of Kagome (my new favorite drink – blended 100% juice). Felt ok on Thursday but of course it was drizzling a little. So I took a sweatshirt and Lisa and I were on our way!! Sumo tournaments happen 5 times per year in Japan. Once in Nagoya, Osaka & Kyushu, and three times in Tokyo. Each tournament lasts 15 days – Sunday to Sunday. This Sunday (the 23rd) is the last day. So if I didn’t go on Thursday I wasn’t going to get to go…. We hopped on the subway to Nagoya and in about 2 stops a sumo wrestler got on!!! He was wearing Yukata – which is a cotton kimono for summer. So we got off on the same stop and pretty much followed him to the Nagoya Gymnasium. There were TONS of people heading there as well as a bunch of sumo wrestlers in pretty dresses, I mean, yukata. :) I wasn’t brave enough to take pictures in their face……

The gym is just north of downtown Nagoya (get out your maps) and is right next to Nagoya castle. So the big walls that you see would have surrounded the castle. There was also a REALLY neato moat with big walls on each side and super thorny bushes growing on all edges. Back to the tournament. It starts everyday at 8:30am and goes until 6pm. The non professional guys wrestle first and then at about 3:30 the popular, professional wrestlers come on. The amateurs don’t get to do any of the neat foot stamping they just come out and do some bowing, one or two movements (lift the arms to show you don’t have weapons, one foot stamp each side to scare away evil spirits). It’s still very ritualized. There’s a great big shinto shrine that hangs over the wrestling “ring” – it looks like the top of a house with big tassels hanging from each corner. The tassels symbolize the four seasons. So here are some pictures from earlier in the day – you can see that a lot of the seats are still empty. We arrived at about noon.

So after all that excitement we decided to take a little bit of a break before the big guys went on. I had seen on a map that the Nagoya Noh theatre was just down the way so we went for a walk:

So I got the full schedule of upcoming Noh performances in Nagoya – but it’s a bit cheaper in Toyota. Super cool though!! And back to sumo we went. The big guys were about to come on. They get to do more of the ceremonial stuff. They all walk out from the wings in a line and then stand in a circle around the top of the “ring”, walk around it once, and of course they say a few things in Japanese that I didn’t understand. They also wear ceremonial aprons during that part. PLUS, they get to throw salt in the ring before their individual matches to purify the ring. There’s a lot of staring down; they crouch down, get back up, take a drink, throw some more salt, crouch again, back up, towel their face off, and back down again. And then they fight and it’s over with in a minute or so. There’s many different ways to win, but basically, if you touch the ground with anything other than your feet or if you go outside of the ring then you lose. They go at each other full force and some of them slap each other in the face or throat area to force the other person backwards or off balance. Looks painful. For one match, one guy went straight forward (like normal) and the other guy JUMPED straight in the air so of course the first guy fell on his face! That was unexpected!!! So here’s some pics of the bigger/professional/higher ranking guys:

So that was my exciting day at the sumo tournament. I had lots of fun – even more than I expected to. :) I didn’t understand anything that anyone said but it was really neat to watch. Plus there was a little book (in english!) that explained sumo’s history, rules, etc. SUPER COOL!!!! And last but not least I took a short video of the very last match if you want to download it and check it out: Sumo Video