SUMO

This morning at 6:30, we went with our friend Glen and his 3 year old daughter Mya to a Sumo stable, where the Sumo wrestlers (rishiki) train before a big match. This month begins the Nagoya Sumo tournament, so the wrestlers are all in town training. We went to a teeny temple a few miles from our apartment to see them train.


Outside of the temple, the sumo team's (not sure the whole team thing, or if they train with one coach... will ask) flag flies. If you click on the image and enlarge it, you can see the cases of beer. I'll spare you the description of what we saw that revealed the amounts they eat to stay "in shape" (hint... it rhymes with comet and was the size of what I would expect from a hippopotamus on an eating binge)


Every morning beginning about 6:30, they suit up in their belts called Mawashi (they look like thong underwear made out of thick rope) and stretch under this tent attached to the back of the temple. The floor is made of hard dirt with a center circle ring of rope. When we walked in, there were about eight or nine sumo counting in Japanese as they did their stretches. Itchi, Ni, San, Shi (1, 2, 3,4). They kind of just swayed back and forth putting their weight on one leg, slapping their massive thighs and then leaning toward the other leg and doing the same.


At the bottom left of the above photo, you can see a green coil. That is incense.

This is Mya. Isn't she delicious? Those wrestlers could eat her up in about 30 seconds.

After about half an hour of stretching, they started bouts in the sand ring you see above. There are two main rules to Sumo. You lose if (a) another part of your body besides your foot touches the ground or (b) you get pushed out of the ring.

The wrestling was very intense. They squat down and look at eachother and then use all of their power to spring forward towards their opponent. Like football, but with no protective helmet or padding. Their heads hit like cantaloupes with big loud thumps. They never shook their heads or put their heads in their hands (or asked for a kiss to make it better).

We saw one pair fight for about half an hour, then a new pair started. Somebody sweeps the ring after the match. When Carlos saw the sweeping, he shouted "Basura!" (trash!) because he thought someone was cleaning up.

The three photos below I took within seconds of eachother...




Here is Carlos checking out the action.

Here is another match (same guys)




Pretty brutal, no?
We left after this... the natives (kids) were getting restless. According to Glen, the famous wrestlers associated with this stable had not come out yet. I guess this was the Junior Varsity squad (or the Petite Section, as I called them). We have tickets to the finals of the Sumo tournament on July 22nd. I think we will check out this stable one more time before the tournament. So much fun.