One of the most traditional sports in Japan is sumo wrestling. It’s kind of the authentic version of wearing a fatman suit and then having a fight. But the wrestlers here don’t wear a suit, they are mostly just fat, but at the same time also very strong and agile.
There happened to be a tournement here in Tokyo, and even though the ticket prices are a bit steep I decided to go. The priciest tickets are more than €200, but then you’ll have the chance to have a 150 kilo wrestler thrown on your head.
A sumo arena is a quite beautiful place and the sport itself is filled with traditions. Hornoring the gods and getting rid of bad deamons are part of the game, but most importantly – at least from the spectators point of view – getting rid of the opponent by either pushing him out of the circle where the battle takes place or tumble the adversary over.
Having found my place in the big hall, of course being guided by the friendly staff as they just seem to have no clue of logical number systems, I notice that there weren’t that many people around. However, it was only the second best league fighting and more and more people arrived during the next couple of hours. One of these were Takemaro who sat besides me, a young university student with an interest in sumo, even though it’s mostly the older generations that are generally fans of the sport.
He was nice to have around whenever a question about what was going on in the arena came up, and there was a lot of questions, which he happily tried to reply in a rather good English considering the standards down here.
Each match last typically no more than 10 seconds, sometimes it’s over in a blink of an eye, and each fighter has only one match each day. But there are a lot of them. The record for a match duration is about three minutes, Takemaro told me. In between the fights men are running around brooming the sandy arena to make it ready for the next fight. Therefore there are some waiting time, but I didn’t feel bored, actually it was fun to watch.
The matches weren’t over when I had to leave, because I’ve made an appointment with Zen, who wanted to take me sightseeing. Sun was shining, perfect weather for a tour. I met him at the local subway station in Nakano and from there we went to have a look at the Tokyo Skytree and surrounding buildings, and at the Senso-Ji temple, a big, beautiful building surrounded by a beautiful park-like area and smaller beautiful buildings, including a five story pagoda.
However, when we got there weather had changed drastically and soon the rain was pouring down and thunder rolled. Zen said that he hadn’t seen anything like it. Most appropriate our shelter was the Kaminarimon, or in English “Thunder Gate” which is the main entrance to the temple area.
Rain stopped and the weather improved. Afterwards we went to a restaurant and ate traditional roasted chicken and other delicious foods on sticks. A nice thing about the Japanese kitchen – except for the good food – is that they are open, meaning that you can see what’s going on. No chefs hiding in an off-limits area where you have no idea of what’s going on.
My attempt to pay for the dinner was a failure. As a guest you don’t pay.
We went around a bit more, but as it was getting late we decided to go home.
The Senso-Ji can be found here:
Sumo tournament is here:
Learned today
- Japanese are very generous
- Sumo wrestlers are surprisingly flexible
- You know what’s going on in the kitchen (but not necessarily what’s cooking)
Tokyo Report 