Sumo, behind the scenes part 1

Last weekend we spent two days enjoying Sumo! One of the quintessential Japanese experiences we bought tickets way in advance in order to assure that we could go with a group of our pals. However, when the day of our sumo fun drew near we had a bit of a surprise.

About 6 months ago Danielle’s Vice Principal said that when Sumo came to Nagoya he wanted to take us. This Vice Principal has since retired, so we though this probably would not come to be. Not so, on Thursday he called up Danielle’s school and invited us out. We had plans for later that day, but undeterred he told us we could enjoy sumo just in the morning, early in the morning! So we met him at 7:30 that sunday for a day of sumo fun.

First we headed to kakamigahara, the next city over from gifu, to meet up with the VPs friend with connections. This friend was a huge fan of Sumo and the owner of a Chanko nabe shop (the stew that Sumo-san eat in order to bulk up). We were told that this person knew people, little did we know how much he knew.

We started the day at Oshimabeya. Or the Oshima “training house”. This is one of many “practice houses” for the wrestlers. (The word heya or beya actually translate as stables. That kind of seems derogatory so most western translations use practice or training house.) We unfortunately arrived just after the wrestlers finished practicing. But this gave us plenty of time to get our pictures taken with some of the Sumo-san.

Sumo Wrestlers sure are big!

A lower ranked wrestler

Kyokutenho Masaru a high ranking wrestler in the makuuchi division

We then stuck around to watch them play with some of the neighborhood kids.

Watering the kids so they can grow into SUMO

Sumo cleaning a little girls dirty shoes KAWAII

Sumo girlfriend (we think) she was hit by the hose too…

Posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 8:00 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Sumo, behind the scenes part 1”

  1. Ben-san says:

    So, how many of them did you take on?

    When will you be posting a picture of you in your sumo uniform?

  2. Chris says:

    I think I can take ’em!!!!

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