Today was sumo wrestling day, so I got to sleep in a just a bit more before meeting Melanie and her friend Nancy visiting from London. She just got in a couple of days ago, so we are getting right down to the traditional culture stuff immediately. I met them downstairs in front of the apartment, and Nancy seemed really nice. She was definitely overwhelmed, but she’s got a good tour guide in Melanie. They’ve got lots planned over the next two weeks – they’ll be traveling all over the country.
We jumped on the train and headed to Osaka. Once we got to Umeda station we made a couple of wrong turns before finding the right way. There are miles and miles of underground shopping malls and tunnels leading from one station to another. We traveled a long ways underground, each tunnel looking like the last. I was able to recognize some kanji characters, so we followed those signs until we arrived at the right subway station. Once we got to our destination, I asked for directions every few blocks until we had it dialed in. Then we just followed the 500 pound guys in suits until we found the right place.
I’m not sure how the tickets worked, but the idea was that you had a “sponsor”. You give your tickets to one of the many booths outside the arena, and then they gave you lots of food, drinks, and led you inside to your spot. We sat down and looked through our goodies. There was so much food! They gave us a three story bento box with many strange and interesting foods. Nancy got her money’s worth on lunch, that’s for sure. Melanie and I dug in, but I think Nancy was skipping lunch.
They were doing preliminary matches, and so we watched with fascination as they went through the rituals, and then went after each other. Some of the wrestlers were huge, some were my size, and some were even smaller. The small guys seemed to do pretty well, making up for their size with speed and agility. The matches lasted only a few minutes each, and then the next one started. They were going through matches really fast, but there were so many wrestlers that day that they needed to move quickly.
I went walking around to get some better pictures, and accidentally strayed into the “no picture zone”. A very polite usher told me that I couldn’t take pictures there, and he even said it in English.
After about two hours of preliminaries, they got started with the “main attraction”, and some of the big names came out, did a parade, and then one by one squared off against each other. The wrestlers were divided into two groups, and each group sat on one side of the ring. The west side wrestled the east side, and in between each match a guy would get up and sing out the wrestler’s name while waving a fan in their general direction. The wrestler would “answer the call” and step into the ring, and then they would start bowing to each other, and to the judge. The judges were extravagantly dressed, and didn’t do much but get out of the way. At each side of the ring was another judge that sat and watched to see if a wrestler’s foot or any other part of the body comes out of the ring.
There were some really big guys, but the crowd favorite wasn’t a really big guy. He acted semi-retarded, slapping himself in the face to get psyched up for the match and throwing way too much salt around to scare the spirits away. People were eating it up, and it reminded me of the early Hulk Hogan antics that got people all stoked.
After five hours of wrestling with no end in sight, we decided to bail out. I went home on my own, while Melanie and Nancy took advantage of the shopping in Osaka. Before we left we bumped into a few amateur wrestlers going home, so I snapped a pic of Melanie and Nancy with the jolly fat men. I got home without having dinner, so I called Miss Kageyama and she drove over. We went to the okonomiyaki restaurant down the road and had a good time trying some new okonomiyaki flavors. They have an “all you can drink” soda fountain there, which I don’t see all that often in Japan. I drank a lot of Calpis and orange Qoo. I even mixed up the two in my glass, which surprised Miss Kageyama – especially when she tasted it… I think she’s a believer in drink mixology now.
Miss Kageyama helped me identify all my sumo loot – we figured out what need to be refrigerated and what was OK at room temperature. Lots of “old man food” in there, but some pretty good stuff. I’m going to have to be brave and eat it one of these days.
Miss Kageyama headed back home and I stayed up late packing for my trip the next day. I finally went to bed around 1 a.m.
