Thursday, October 18, 2007
Three of us headed out early this morning to get a glimpse of a sumo wrestling practice. All we had was a map in Japanese with a circle around our hotel's location and the location of the dohyo.
This was our second attempt on the massive Tokyo subway system. The difficult part is not that it is huge, but that some subway stations are only in the kanji, Japanese symbols or characters. We knew our stop in Roman letters, not the kanji, so we literally had to follow the subway line on our map and then transfer it to the one on the wall. Luckily when we got on the subway the stops were posted in Roman letters. That was reassuring!
Once we came up to the street, we headed in the general direction. At one point we stopped in a Seven Eleven and asked for directions. Unfortunately, the two young men did not know about the dohyo about 3 blocks away. We ended up stopping a couple on their morning walk. The Japanese people are so incredibly nice and helpful. They walked us to the doyho instead of just pointing in the general direction.
The dohyo was a small one. We heard from others that they went to a much larger one in the same neighborhood. After seeing their photos, I am glad we ended up at this quaint dohyo.
One of the things that is difficult to get use to in Japan is the lack of vocal correspondance. When you watch the video below you will see that no one is talking. There are so few words exchanged. Now I understand where the comment, "Loud Americans" comes from.
I enjoyed watching the traditions and discipline of the Sumo wrestler.
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6 comments:
You could get a job in sumo filming.
Looks like you are having a blast!
So glad that you got to experience sumo! One of my most memorable experiences from all my time in Japan was actually seeing one of the big sumo matches/tournaments in Tokyo one year. It was a huge process just to even figure out how we were supposed to get tickets for it!
Keep enjoying every bit of this! I know you will.
On thing I forgot - one other piece of advice in your time there - whenever possible, pick up a copy of the Japan Times (it's in English). One of my greatest experiences the first time I lived in Japan was reading not only about local issues I'd never read about anywhere else, but reading about international happenings and issues from their perspective, which often is very different from how we would be writing about the same thing - that's cool and very memorable.
I think you should consider a job at ESPN for Sumo commentary ;)
hey ms.farries what you been up to in japan cause every body miss that is in your class this is harvey
Those Moobs rival my dads. I think they need a bro.
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