Grand Sumo Tournament

On my last day in Tokyo, I had a couple of hours to kill before I needed to head to the airport, so I ended up at the Grand Sumo Tournament. One of the girls that I roomed with at the hostel had gone to the Sumo tournament on Sunday. She highly recommended it and gave me directions to the arena. The tournament goes on all day, with the best bouts (what they call the matches) occurring later in the day. I got there early, so it wasn't very busy. My seat was pretty far, but after awhile I noticed that no one was checking tickets on the main floor, so I went down there and had a really great view. I was prepared to use the "I'm just a dumb foreigner, who doesn't know anything" card if I needed to, but nobody even asked to see my ticket. 

The circular ring is called the "dohyo" and the wrestlers are "rikishi." There are many rituals that take place before and after the bouts. One of them that I noticed was that they threw salt before each bout for purification.

The rikishi also did many stretches, squats, and slapped their bums before the bout began. 

That rikishi was probably the smallest one I saw that day. As you can see, he lost. The other rikishi just kind of pushed him out of the dohyo. It was a rather quick bout, only lasted a couple of seconds. A lot were pretty short, but they lasted longer as the competition got better. 

That's the BIGGEST rikishi I saw that day and he got owned by the guy half his size. Big is not always better in the world of sumo. 

That's got to hurt!

That poor guy went tumbling off the stage into the other wrestlers, who were waiting for their bout to begin. 

There were a lot of sumo wrestlers walking around and riding their bikes outside the arena. It was really funny to see these 400+ lb men, who I had just seen almost naked slapping their bums and throwing each other around in a ring, wearing these elegant kimonos and flips flops with their hair in a bun. I saw this one very large wrestler riding uphill on this dainty bike with a basket- he was definitely struggling but he made it. Overall, it was a GREAT experience. I had a lot of fun! I wish I could've stayed longer.