Only fatties

While it's March Madness in the US of A, there's a different kind of madness going on this side of the Pacific. That's right folks, it's SUMO SEASON!!!

In January, the tour stopped by Tokyo brifely and has now arrived in Osaka. Thankfully, the venue they were holding it in was just a scant 10 min away from our apartment. Useless facts aside, sumo wrestling is a traditional sport that's losing favour with young people and is viewed as somewhat of an old people sport. Whatever the stigma may be, I'll be damned if I'm going to miss out on this (truly) once in a lifetime opportunity.

Having packed our bag full of snacks and other assorted refreshments, Val, myself, Anh and Aaron headed down to see the fat guys rumble. As always, I was armed with my trusty camera. I must warn you though, the following post contains a lot, nay, copious amounts of guy ass.



Even seing them on tv and in pictures, you really don't have a good idea of how big these guys are until you're actually standing beside one of them. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid he was gonna eat me. If there's one word that can accurately describe Japanese culture, it would be hardcore. Most Japanese guys you see are mere twigs. However, when they wanna beef up they become the dude standing beside me. As you'll see in the following pictures, these guys aren't just fat, they're muscular meat tanks. The scary thing is, I saw other guys that were bigger than him but I didn't bother them for a picture lest I get my ass throughly kicked.




The tournament itself lasts for about two weeks and usually starts at around 9 every morning. The non-ranked (juniors) have a go at each other early on in the day while the ranked wrestlers come out around 3. A typical day will finish around 6. For each ranking, there's mini parade to introduce the wrestlers to the crowd. The apron/diaper things they wear are pretty elaborate and if I'm not mistaken have sponsor info on them. The seats are still pretty empty because most people start trickling in when the big names begin their matches.



Sumo on display. Impressive no?


Some dude getting tossed. You'd think that with such a small ring and fat guys pushing each other around, there'd be some kind of fence or padding to protect the spectators below. At one point one wrestler pretty much landed on one of the dudes in the sidelines. Thankfully, he was ok but you gotta wonder if anyone has ever been crushed to death by sumo...



What did the five fingers say to the face? SLAP!



Word on the street is that these guys actually train in judo to learn how to use their opponents strength against them as well as the plethora of wonderful throws. The ring is made of clay so I would imagine it hurts like a bitch when you get thrown down.



Here's the starting position. They get into position, stare at each other for a few seconds to psych each other out, then get back up and walk around a bit while everybody cheers. Rinse and repeat. The only way you can the match is actually going to start is when the ref starts squatting too.



I didn't manage to get too many decent action shots but here's one that turned out ok. Our seats weren't great, but they weren't in the nosebleeds either. Pricing for this kind of thing is akin to a Leafs game.



The guy with the white thing on his back is the Yokozuna, the current reigning champ. There can actually be more than one Yokozuna at a time. The current champ is Mongolian, which until not too long ago would have been impossible. They way to get the title is to out game your opponents and also get voted in by the judges based on your character. It's like survivor then in a sense. Or maybe survivor stole the idea from them? Anyhow, in the last match of the day this dude kicked ass. While he's pretty big he moves incredible fast.



Most matches end within 30 seconds because one guy just gets pushed out really quickly. For the matches that last longer, they get pretty intense. In this one, the wrestlers were just standing in that position for a good 30 seconds before either of them made a move. Of course it gets even crazier because everybody in the crowd is shouting.


And finally, the obligatory crowd shot. This place got pretty packed around 4. The awesome thing about sumo is that you can bring your own food and drink. Naturally, the other three got to drinking while I had to abstain so I could take some decent pics. Well, that and I'm a horribly cheap drunk. :S

Thanks for making it all the way to the end! I managed to film Sumo Dennis Rodman in his short match. People went shit crazy for this guy. Apparently throughout the tournament he hadn't won any matches, but he was still super popular. Guy finally caught a break I guess. Watching sumo on tv is kinda boring, but being there is pretty awesome. The atmosphere is incredibly intense and you've got all these old drunk dudes yelling which is totally awesome. Anyways, enjoy!



More to come shortly. We went to some branch burning festival a few weeks ago that I have yet to post about. That's all for now!

For our second installment of video goodness, I present to you Dough Hammer.





This one was taken in historic Nara in one of the touristy alleys. I'm not really sure what these guys were doing, but from what I could gather the green doughy stuff is for some kind of dessert. I actually got to try some of it and it didn't taste too bad, but it wasn't great either. To pur it bluntly, it tasted like mildly sweetened dough. anything I was just wondering how many times previously the dude got his fingers smashed before they perfected this little routine. :S

Urge to kill RISING. (Japan Annoyance #2)

It's 4:43 in the AM and I can't sleep.

Maybe it was the Red Bull and vodkas I had but I'm gonna chalk this one up to my neighbours.

For a culture that has incredibly advanced computers and robotics you'd think they'd get some of the more fundamental things right. What we're lacking here is insulation in our apartment which affects us in two ways: temperature and noise.

For the 'winter' we're having here, it's actually pretty warm. BUT, even when it gets anywhere close to 0 degrees it's fucking FREEZING in this joint.

For the noise bit, I can hear everything that people are talking about outside. Did I mention I can also hear ALL of my neighbours? The walls here are paper thin. I'm not even kidding. We have one guy under us (I think) that likes to play his guitar loud and sing at the top of his lungs at 10 in the morning. Normally this isn't a big deal, but he's doing this shit on the weekends when sleeping in time is so key. Oh, and his singing SUCKS. I'm not even talking My Chemical Romance bad, it's like yelling/chanting...I can't really tell. As for the winners next door to us, they're ALWAYS SO DAMN LOUD. Pretty much all day they have the TV/radio cranked and they're always having shouting level conversations. So here's my point...it's almost 5 now and the TV is still cranked. I swear they're watching some show about Japanese drumming or some shit.

How do you tell someone to shut up in Japanese? This is ridiculous.

Pictures...that move!

Hey guys!

Since my camera has the ability to take short videos, I've been trying to capture the stuff where pictures don't capture the appropriate vibe. Unfortuneately, they've just been sitting on my compy waiting to be viewed by you. Then I thought, wait! I can put my crappy videos up on YouTube and share with EVERYONE!

Well, here's my rookie attempt so I hope you like it!

I present to you...Japanese Family Fun.




To give you some context, this was taken outside Osaka Castle in the surrounding park area. This was on a Sunday afternoon and the answer is...I don't get it either. :)

Look, it's Bambi's mom! Wait...

Back again for some bad writing eh?

Prior to our jaunt up Ikoma mountain, we made a brief stop in the main part of Nara. Our Goal? Nara Park and Todaiji Temple.

PIctures, do your stuff!



I live in Osaka, but my work often likes to send me to Nara to teach at the schools there. It's not terribly far, but I'd much rather just stay in the city. Getting home @ 10:30 every night is a biatch. However, the one redeeming quality about the train ride is the view is pretty incredible. The train reaches this one area before Ikoma where you can see pretty far off into the distance. Osaka is actually pretty ugly by day, but looks passable by night. Kinda like how most people look better in dim lighting. hehe! Regardless, it's nice to see both the night and day. This pic you see above was taken from the train. What still amazes me about Japan is the sheer amount of concrete everywhere. Man, I miss trees and grass. :(



Here's a pretty important 5 storey pagoda. It's name is...uh...5 storey pagoda thing. Yeah! That's it! You calling me a liar? Here's the thing, most of the signage is in Japanese. There's barely any English even for the tourists. I think they only make signs and such for the A-list historical sites. Maybe this pagoda is like the Greg Kinnear of historical sites?



On our way to Todaiji Temple, we passed by the (in)famous Nara Park. The "feature" of this park that distinguishes it from the other run-of-the-mill parks is that this one has deer. Yup, deer. You can buy a stack of "deer cookies" from the various vendors and feed the deer that are walking around. In case you cared, the cookies are of the same texture as waffle cones. The deer are all incredibly docile and let you approach them to feed them. The only thing is, if you try to pet them, they back off. Bastards.



Here's our friend Anh Tran (it rhymes!) feeding some deer. More like teasing the poor thing. I think at one point she actually had a piece of the cookie in the deer's mouth and she still managed to yank it out. Yeah, it's kinda cruel, but you gotta admit it's kinda funny.


Another item on my list of odd fascinations is Koi, the wonderful, giant and ugly as hell goldfish/carp things that the Japanese like to put in their water. It has always been near impossible for me to take decent pictures of, but they had a really shallow pond area swarming with these bad boys. Man, they're ugly. The ridiculous thing is that an individual fish can cost THOUSANDS of dollars. They probably don't even taste that good.



This is the main front gate of Todaiji Temple. The main grounds are actually a continuation of Nara Park, so yeah, there were deer everywhere. How sweet would it be to just laze around all day and have people feed you? A highlight of the day was the vendor selling soft serve green tea ice cream. That stuff is delicious. I actually had the vanilla green tea swirl which was heaven in a cone. :)





This hulking monstrosity is the temple guardian on the left side of the entrance. I left those ladies in the picture to give you folks at home some scale of how big it really is. There was one on the right side, but this one looked way cooler.



After much walking we finally arrived at the main temple building. Unfortuneately, they require payment of the monetary variety in order to go look around. 5 bucks? Get outta here! This pic was taken through the fence. I'm such a rebel.


Look! It's Val!

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for reading that ridiculously long post. I think we're supposed to go to some kind of traditional tea ceremony soon so more pics to come I'm sure. Also, word on the street is cherry blossoms soon. Get ready for pink! Later skater!

It was a long and treacherous journey

Hey all. It's been a while hasn't it? Shall I regale you with more tales of my Japanese mis-adventures?

Probably about a month ago now, we once again went to Nara, Japan's oldest (old school!) capital. My history is pretty bad so you'll have to take this with a grain of salt. From what I understand, Nara was the original capital but had to be moved many times (eventually settling in Tokyo) because of all the wars and such.

As such, Nara is a place rich with history and filled to the brim with shrines and temples. If you want to get your shrine and temple on, you can do it there. There's some ridiculous amount of UNESCO sites, so you know it's good. :)



One such place of beauty is Ikoma Mountain. To get to the top, you need to ride the cable car. There's about 5 stops on the way up and it's cool to slowly have the skyline revealed to you as you go up. As I'm sure many are aware, the Japanese are quite...wacky. The picture you see above is the cable car we had to ride in. There's another one that's decked out like a cat that will meow as it passes the dog one (it's on the opposite track). There's also a pink one which look like Strawberry Shortcake's personal cable car, plastered with cakes, cookies and candies of the plastic variety on the outside of her ride.

After you reach the first stop you have to switch cars to go up the rest of the way. The good thing is, there's actually some shops and a shrine there for you to check out while you wait for the next car up. The best word I can think of to describe the place is quaint. It's incredibly quiet up there, very traditional and the narrow "streets" are lined with houses and the occasional store or restaurant. Suffice to say at this point on the mountain, the view is pretty spectacular. I'll let the pictures do the talking from here on out.

Leading up to the shrine there's a ton of stairs. If theres one thing that irks me about Japan it's the sheer number of stairs everywhere. Normally I wouldn't care, but seeing as how I'm an out of shape bastard, it kinda sucks. :P It's free excercise?



Here's Val, victory style. Those stairs are a biatch.



Here's yet more steps leading up to the shrine. Kinda like something out of an old samurai movie...you half expect to be ambushed by ninjas. Or I'm just crazy.


The 180 view from said steps. Pretty cool huh?


This picture and the next one were taken from somebody's backyard. Well, behind someone's house. The way the houses were built on the mountain there's these huge concrete steps behind people's houses that aren't really meant for climbing. Guess who went climbing? ;)


Here's another shot. I was pretty pleased with the way these turned out. I'm just a sucker for city scapes I suppose. It's interesting seeing it from this angle as usually you'd expect the skyline filled with huge skyscrapers.

By the time we got to the top of the mountain we were surrounded by pure darkness. From what we could see, there was a theme park of sorts for the little chillun. It was closed, but seeing it all empty in the dark gave it a really creepy vibe. I took some other pics of the night lights, but we were too far up to get anything that's worthwhile to post.

That's all for now. The next post should be about our visit to Todaiji temple and Nara Park. Stay Tuned!