Tiny little great big men

We got up at 6 on Saturday morning to get same-day tickets to the second-to-last day of the May sumo matches. We had been slightly less ambitious during the previous set of matches and got to the end of a long line just before 8, about 100 people too late. This time we were an hour earlier and in the clear. They hand out numbered vouchers at 7:40 that are traded in for tickets when the box office opens at 8. We had our tickets in hand by 8:15. We walked up the riverside path to Asakusa and grabbed a bite and wandered around Sensoji temple as shops raised their shutters. Sleepy by 10:30, we scrubbed plans for the sumo museum in favor of going home for a nap.


You can can get right up close* earlier in the day to watch the lower-ranked wrestlers. We didn't - we got there just as the really big guys were parading in before 4 pm in ceremonial ($20,000+) skirts to start off the last two hours of the big matches. Advance tickets get you seats in masu - squares of floor on the risers marked off by knee-high steel railings. I'm told that for your money, in addition to a good view and cramped knees, you can get lunch boxes and piles of souvenirs. One guy told me about lugging home 10 kilos worth of commemorative ceramic rice bowls, tea cups, and plates for his whole family. There are no goodie bags in the nosebleed general admission seats at the back of the second level. The view from above is perfect, though, if small, and the chairs have backs. A pair of binoculars is a good idea.

The English guide book handed out with the tickets said watching sumo can be "baffling." Agreed. Jim seemed to know an awful lot about it - he's been watching at work lately. The winner and loser are as clear as 300 pounds of flesh hitting the sandy ground. I found everything else about the show, from the pre-emptive stomping before some matches to the twirling golden archer's bow and the rain of floor cushions at the end, more obscure. And the ranking system. It was interesting. There was something about the way they hesitated and tried to draw each other out at the start and got into long, motionless clenches occasionally, that made me think, oddly, of thumb wrestling.

We watched the final day as surely the original stable masters intended - on a hi-def TV with self-assured ("what he needs to do is drop his hips") American commentators.



*There is such a thing as too close. During the preening before the final tie-breaker playoff round, NHK followed the fellows into their dressing rooms. They abused the power of their ultra high-resolution cameras to bring us an extreme look deep into the pores of the wrestlers. We were looking for a switch to turn off the hi-def.