January Grand Sumo Tournament

18 01 2010

On Sunday we went to the sumo again.

In the morning we had no luck finding doughnuts at Tokyo eki (they rotate the flavours and there were no vegan soymilk doughnuts that day) or soy icecream at a Seiyu supermarket.

Feeling a little dejected we bought some yatsuhashi wrappers and ate red bean mochi on the way to the sumo stadium.

Around lunch time we settled into our seats to watch the junior ranking sumos compete. In one match a much larger opponent (maybe 60-80kg heavier, at least) landed on a smaller sumo’s knee. He looked to be in pain and the knee was probably broken as he got carried off.

There was lots of throwing – the judges were landed on several times and the front row of seats was a dangerous place to sit with sumo falling off the dohyo and rolling over the first 3 rows.

At 3pm the middle ranking sumo paraded in their aprons – one had a Hello Kitty embroided on his. By 4pm the highest ranked wrestlers had started and all seats were filled. We listened to the English commentary on our radio. The last few bouts were full of tension as the sumo wrestlers stood throwing salt, stretching and psyching each other out. However, the final match was over in about 5 seconds with a quick defeat.

After the sumo we met Emma and had dinner at It’s Vegetable, a Chinese/Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant.