Roving Japan

Day 73 Photoset

Last night we talked it over, and we decided that we wanted to try to get tickets to the Sumo tournament in Nagoya. After all, this seemed like a rare opportunity, might as well right?

Yasunobu took us to the stadium early this morning so we could buy tickets. We bought 2 tickets for the cheap seats and decided to come back around 2 o’clock. Technically we could have gone in right away, but the good wrestlers don’t come out until 5pm. We used the extra time to hit up an outdoors store and buy 2 new hiking poles. One has been broken since Kyushu, and we forgot the other one at Yousuke’s house.

Sumo tournaments are interesting. They aren’t elimination or bracket based. Instead, it’s a 15 day round robin tournament where everyone wrestles everyone and whoever has the best record wins. No medals for 2nd place. If there is a tie, then the top two have a single match to determine the winner. There are a ton of ranks, and it’s all very confusing at first, but I found a nice page that can explain things about the sport way better than I can. [Learn a bit about Sumo]

When we got to the stadium, we saw low ranked sumo guys walking around in yukatta. These guys are BIG and they aren’t even the top level! I think it’s kind of interesting that the low rank guys take the trains, or drive themselves to the stadium just like the fans.

As we got closer, there was a weird announcement being broadcasted to the folks entering the stadium. Apparently you are forbidden from bringing YOUR OWN food, because of the risk of “food poisoning.” Risa and I both thought this was a pretty stupid rule considering the fact that the chances of someone getting food poisoning from their own cooking is incredibly low. Especially since we are talking about Japanese people, who generally know how to cook. If they want people to buy the expensive stadium food, the tournament officials should have just banned outside food, no need to make such a ridiculous warning.

Inside, we ended up sitting in two different places. Our first seat was fantastic. Right in the middle, next to the TV camera’s. It was like getting 50yd line seats, albeit in the upper deck. Unfortunately for us, after a couple of hours, a lady came by saying we were sitting in her seat. We were confused, because the usher had told us we could sit in this area… but sure enough, her tickets said she belonged in our seats. Dang! Since she arrived so late, there weren’t a lot of other places to sit, but we found a couple that weren’t too bad. A couple of rows farther away, and more to the side… maybe 20yd line-ish?

Just to bring in another sports reference, have you ever been to a baseball game and sat in the outfield bleachers? That’s where the rowdy drunks sit. It’s also where you can have the most fun. Our 2nd seat was in the sumo equivalent of the bleachers. The folks over here really got into the cheering. They would yell the name of the guy they were supporting, hold up signs with his name, and generally act loud. One old man was yelling “Gambare!” (good luck) but he wasn’t directing it to anyone. His wife smacked him and told him “You can’t just yell good luck! You have to say their name too! Who are you even cheering for?!” It was a lot of fun.

We ended up sitting next to a lady who was there with her young son. I had a little fun with them, explaining that I was actually the little brother of one of the top ranked wrestlers, Kotooshu. If you didn’t know already, Kotooshu is my doppelganger. I look a LOT like him. Just 100lbs lighter, and about a foot shorter. (Kotooshu used to be my facebook profile pic. My own sister didn’t realize it wasn’t me. She thought I photoshoped my face onto a sumo body) Anyway, I told the lady that I usually sit right next to the ring, but I had forgotten Kotooshu’s cell phone number and couldn’t talk to him about getting my REAL tickets.

The lady looked at me, took off her glasses, looked me right in the eye and said, “Really!? You DO look like him!” I laughed, and then told her it was a joke. I totally had her though. What do you think?

Later, when Kotooshu came out, we all yelled “KOTOOSHU! GAMBARE!” (Good luck!) Then I yelled “Kotooshu aniki! Gambare!” (aniki means “big brother”). After making so much noise for Kotooshu, the folks in front of us started yelling for the other guy. So we had a battle back and forth yelling for our guy.

Kotooshu Wins! The other guy put his hand down!

In the end, Kotooshu won… barely. But he remains undefeated and has a chance to win this tournament!

All in all, the tournament was a lot of fun. We spent a good 4 hours there, and saw a lot of matches. Sumo is a one-shot deal. There is a lot of “pre-game”, but the actual match is only played once. This makes each match extremely exciting, and it also gives you a chance to see a lot of different wrestlers during the course of the day.

Sumo is currently losing a bit of popularity in Japan. Of the top ranked wrestlers, only 1 or 2 are actually Japanese. The top 2 wrestlers are Mongolian, and my doppelganger is Bulgarian. It makes it hard for the Japanese to really get into the sport, when the champions aren’t from Japan.

To boost ticket sales, children get in for only $2. That means the mom and kid next to us got a full day of sumo for just $30 or so. I’d say it was a pretty good deal. There were actually quite a few kids, so maybe there will be a lot more Sumo fans in the future?

For dinner tonight, Machiko made some really awesome fish. It tasted as good as it looked. Yum!!

Day 72 Photoset

Yasunobu is a successful tailor with his own shop in Nagoya. He designs and makes all his clothes in his studio room in his apartment. His wife Machiko makes handmade silver jewelry which she sells in their shop as well. Since Yasunobu is into fashion design and fabrics, he took us to a cool area in Nagoya called Arimatsu.

Hippies like to tie up some cloth and dump it in a bucket of dye, soak it, untie it, and call it good. Whatever random patterns emerge, its acceptable. Things are a little different in Arimatsu.

The people in Arimatsu have been making a specialize and precision form of tied-ye for hundreds of years. Their methods are detailed and extremely time consuming, but they produce really amazing patterns.

Yasunobu took us to the Arimatsu tie-dye museum where we got to watch some volunteers demonstrate the knot tieing. We also got to see a lot of examples of the different patterns they can produce with different knots.

I never knew that tiedye could be so precise. They aren’t making random designs, everything has been planned beforehand. The blank fabric is layed out on a table, and the pattern designer makes a dot wherever he wants a knot tied. The knot tiers then go about tieing the hundreds, or thousands of knots by hand. It’s amazing.

Yasunobu has two daughters, Saho and Miki. Saho is a fashion designer like her father. She is also a part time English teacher so I can talk with her without needing a lot of translation. This afternoon, Risa and I went with Saho to checkout downtown Nagoya.

Our first stop was Nagoya castle. This castle is pretty big, but it’s not an original. Inside they have the standard castle museum stuff. Samurai suits, and historical artifacts from the original castle and the surrounding area. However, they also had a few things that stuck out. The first was a fun “castle construction” simulator. You basically had to pretend to help pull large stones to be used in the castle wall. There was a gauge on the side that told you how strong you were. It was fun, and I’m proud to say that Risa and I were both stronger than the guy who went before us! Haha!

It was also interesting to learn that when the castle was originally built, the various subjected areas around Nagoya would donate stone to use in the construction. The lords of those smaller areas would stamp the stones with their symbol so that the main lord in Nagoya would know who donated what. We didn’t notice these markings when we got to the castle, but sure enough, as we left we could see the old markings on the stones from a bunch of different lords.

The castle is right next to the main Nagoya stadium. Right now the famous “Nagoya Sumo Basho” is going on. This is one of the main 4 sumo tournaments in Japan. We saw some sumo guys walking around, and Risa and I are trying to decide if we should splurge and buy a ticket! We didn’t have time to go today, but maybe tomorrow? It sure would be cool!

While we were out with Saho, Risa and I wanted to go see the store that sells Saho’s clothes. So we jumped on a train and went to Nagoya’s shopping arcade. This arcade is much like the covered arcade in Osaka, only with about 25% the number of people. Of course, just because they don’t have as many people, doesn’t mean they don’t have a few crazy’s. While Risa was in the bathroom, one old man in a cowboy hat was particularly interested in me. He kept saying “Hallo! America? HI!” I talked back to him in Japanese, and he talked back in broken English. He asked where I was from in America, and I told him Oregon. “Colorado!” “No… Oregon” “Oh! OK!” He had a pen and paper with him, so I drew a map of America and showed him where Oregon is. The best part was when I was getting my picture taken with him, Risa came out of the bathroom and was like, “Um… who’s that guy?”

We eventually made it to Saho’s store, and Risa finally got a chance to wear something other than her hiking clothes. She tried on one of Saho’s dresses, and really liked it. Too bad for us, it was kind of expensive! Good for Saho, bad for us! It was a nice dress though!

We wandered around the shopping arcade for a while, ate some ice cream, then left to go to the Nagoya port where we could watch the summer fireworks show.

We didn’t quite make it all the way to the main viewing area, but we did manage to get some cool seats. We climbed up a ladder and sat on a tall cement wall that gave us a clear view of the show. As a cool bonus, we also had the giant ferris wheel in view, so we could see the fireworks and the lights of the ferris wheel together. It was really fun!

For dinner, Machiko made us her famous spring rolls. Yasunobu explained that it was THIS dish that made him want to marry her, and after tasting it, we don’t blame him!