Today, Jin, Sachio, Matt, and I went to Day 8 of the May Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo! I have always wanted to see sumo, and had a blast watching it today!

We started off having ちやんこ, or chiyanko. Chiyanko is a community pot of boiling water, where you toss in veggies and random meats. It’s also what you typically eat if you’re training for sumo. And the broth is wonderful after it’s cooked a bunch of meat and veggies! Anyway, after chiyanko, we headed off to sumo!

Sumo is an interesting sport. First off, it’s one of the few where a whole lot of fat, coupled with a whole lot of weight, wins. Most sports just want muscle, but sumo gives hope to guys like me. The second is that there’s a lot more ritual around each match — although it’s a lot more casual than I expected. The crowd is also a lot more mellow than I expected… not nearly as organized as the folks at the baseball game.

The ritual is simple… for the most part, the rikishi (wrestlers) get into a stance to wrestle, stand up, then toss some salt into the dohyo. After the third time, they get into the stance once more, and try to toss one another out or two the ground.

We saw a number of matches… we got there just before 4 PM, when the makuuchi rikishi (the majors) came in to wrestle. Each wrestler has one bout per day. The tournament is 15 matches, and the best win-loss record wins. There’s one yokozuna, Asashoryu, a Mongolian — the third non-Japanese yokozuna (the other was a Samoan, and the first was Akebono, the Hawaiian), and three ozeki (champions), although only two were wrestling. The third dropped out due to injury. Asashoryu won the match we saw… we found out later that he went 15-0 and won the competition. He’s dominated the past tournaments, and he’s only 24! Pretty impressive guy.

i’ll put up some pics… i need to go through them, as i was using a telephoto on a Nikon D70, but the light conditions required a steadier hand than I had, so many are blury. Alas.