We finally went to see one of the most Japanese things ever: sumo wrestling! For once (it was a public holiday), sumo training at the Ryogoku Kokugikan, located in Tokyo’s North-East, was open to the public. The training lasts from 7:30 am to 11 am, we arrived around 9:30.
Down at the ring, a few dozen of the biggest men of the country were waiting for their turn to fight. We had a considerable number of naked buttocks to contemplate (given that those gentlemen only wear a loincloth). Some of the wrestlers were astonishingly massive (the very best were not the biggest, as it turned out, though).
At the moment, things were still going a bit slowly. Periodically, the other wrestlers surrounding the ring would step in to separate the fighters when things got a bit rough.
After a while, the training switched to practicing pushes, where one wrestler pushes the other through the ring. Try pushing 150 kg across the room!
While the majority of sumo wrestlers is Japanese, there is a number of Mongolians in the top ranks. There were even two Caucasians among them, a Bulgarian, Kotoōshū Katsunori, and an Estonian, Baruto Kaito. (Yes, professional wrestlers get new (Japanese) names.) And they were doing really well! What Kotoōshū, who counts as the best looking of the wrestlers (the David Beckham of Sumo) lacks in belly, he makes up in height: with his 203cm he is noticeably taller than the rest.
Towards the end of the training, the lower ranking wrestlers left the ring and sat down to watch the good ones fight for real. The higher ranking ones had younger wrestlers (marked by a dark colored loin cloth) attending to them, bringing them water to drink, and drying them up with towels. Interestingly, the drinking water comes from a bamboo bucket and is drunk from a bamboo ladle (like those found at shinto shrines) that everyone uses.
Before entering the ring, the fighters now also started to throw salt for purification.
I had noticed earlier that some of the wrestlers had terrible looking bruises all over their backs. During the fighting, it became clear where they came from. Falling down from the ring, and being this heavy, makes for an uncomfortable combination.
The fighting turned out to be quite intoxicating! I had not expected to find it this interesting.
In some sense, I think seeing the training might even have been more interesting than seeing the tournament (even though we missed out on all the rituals and fancy dresses), because we had the chance to see all the wrestlers together in interaction.
Wow!!
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