The bigger they are...

The more it's going to hurt. Especially if you are in the front row at the Sumo tournament. These guys are big. They are tall for Japanese, and some of them aren't even Japanese. We went with a group of friends to see the battle of the bulge.

We got B Seki seats, which are in the middle. The A Seki seats were all booked, as were the ring side seats. I don't know how safe it was in the front. You would be sitting behind a row of Sumo wrestlers but I have seen some fighters fall and roll into the row of Sumo and then past into the crowd.

Though, it would be cool to tell people at work you broke your leg because a Sumo wrestler landed on you. The Sumo event started from 12 noon and lasted until 6PM. We got there around 1PM and we were able to catch some of the lower ranked Sumo matches. These matches were cool at first because they were quick and dirty.

When the second tier came on you could tell there was more finesse involved. Along with the finesse came the posturing. Sometimes the guys would hunker down and look like they were about to start but then they would get up and grab some salt to throw and slap their legs. Admittedly this was cool at first, but it got tiresome. In these matches it was harder to tell who the victor was going to be.

Finally around 4PM the top tier fighters arrived. These bouts were way better than the other tiers. Of course the posturing was incredible. They are allowed something like four minutes for posturing and hyping the crowd. So when they showed up in the ring we'd have to wait about 3 minutes before turning on the cameras, but the show was incredible. There were many fights where one fighter was almost pushed out of the ring, but he'd somehow reverse the situation. Apparently Moose and Russ had made a drinking game of predicting the victor. Moose said he lost a fair bit.

The best part was the end. Asashoryu , a Yokozuna, was beaten. This was a rare occurence so we got to join in on the age old tradition of throwing the seat cushions at the Yokozuna. Bryce made a short video of the fight that I took. He had the song in his head all day, and finally we can see things from his point of view.


Afterwards we walked, and I hobbled, to an Indian restaurant for some curry and company. All in all it was a great day.