Sumo!

The morning before leaving Nagoya, I decided that I had to check out a Sumo tournament that just happened to be be going on while I was in town. A few people at the hostel had said that they checked it out and that it was definitely worth going.

The tournament goes for about two weeks, and there are sumo matches all day. Usually the lesser known participants go in the morning, with the highest skill level bouts in the late afternoon. I only had time to go in the morning, so I had to settle for the unknown guys. The benefit to going early, though, was that the crowd was much lighter and I could actually go up and sit in the 2nd or 3rd row with no problem. It was great to be so close to the action. Also, my Australian friend from the previous night just happened to already be there when I arrived, so we hung out and placed bets on who would win each match.

We got a good assortment of wrestlers, from scrawny guys who should probably find another sport to huge monsters who would just manhandle opponents. We were so close that we sometimes had to bail out of the way if a wrestler got knocked out of the ring on our side of the platform.

I also found it amusing how around the area of the city near the arena, sumo wrestlers could be seen carrying their equipment to work, or just taking the subway home.

I was glad to check sumo wrestling off my list of things not to be missed in Japan. I only had one more day, after all.