Sumo!!!!

Ah yes, what would a stay in Japan be without Sumo???? I had only vaguely been aware of Sumo over the years as a bit of curiosity and a slightly odd performance of under-clad humongous men bashing into each other after a random number of personal butt slaps.

Coming to BSCIS I realized that, just like the Canucks get talked about in BC staff rooms, Sumo is one of THE popular sports here talked about at length in staf rooms, followed on TV and debated about in bars all over the country. It is a surprise to go into a store and find the quite elderly woman who owns the store glued to her TV screen watching Sumo. All of the TV screens in our fitness centre are on the Sumo channel while the tournament is on.

My colleague Masachi-san knows everything about Sumo, loves Sumo and gave me a thorough play by play of his last time at the big tournament. I casually said to him that we would come the next time and BAM! there we were, 2 rows behind the big wrestling mat, at the National Sumo tournament along with a group of my excited colleagues.


                               

Getting in the right mood for the event (life-size cut-outs!):

                                          

They are BIG boys... over 200 kg!

                               

Shelley in the arms of the "hottest" wrestler from Tokyo, Endo:

                                               

Dan in my next career:

                                               

Like any sports Sumo has its' stars (Yokozuna; Grand Champions)

                                                

And the brass hand prints... check out the size:

                                               

And all of the many sponsors who want to get a piece of the action (names on flags):


                                        

If you look in the background of this photo, you will see a beautiful kimono. Kimonos are still very much worn in Japan for dress occasions.

So before we go any further into the excitement of the event you might want to check out some of the history and meaning in Sumo, a sport that goes back hundreds of years. From our uninitiated eyes there are many "unique" aspects of the sport, but a quick look at this web-site will help you understand the depth of this sport along with some of its' quasi-spititual/ritual meaning. Click here to get the background on Sumo.

Once we wended our way through the excited throngs, the souvenir buyers, the groupies lined up to catch a glimpse of their heroes, we entered the main hall:

                                    

slowly filling up with the days' crowds. It was quite impressive to see the shrine roof poised over the ring, maintaining the sacred space of the bout. Apparently there is a vat of rice buried under the central rink that is considering part of the blessing of this event.

We were "lucky" enough to get good tickets near the front in the tatami booths... that were not designed for big foreign bodies. This meant we spent 6 hours squished in these little matted areas surrounded by excited fans, supposedly squatting on our knees; ouch! Where can I stretch my legs out please, please, please?

                     

Other than the progressively intensifying physical discomfort we had a fascinating time watching each match, having all of the subtleties explained my Masachi (front and center in the photo), cheering for our Mongolian hero who won his match, and generally soaking up the atmosphere at this amazing event.

The event started with a ceremonial/ traditional "dance" performed every year by the Grand Champion. This year it is Hakuho, the huge Mongolian, who is breaking all records in terms of wins. Click here for more on Hakuho.

In each of these short videos you will see the ref, in the middle,who makes the final call, the linesmen in black squatting around the edge of the ring, the crowds and the wrestlers. Interesting that there are literally no holds barred other than punching and biting!

The bout only starts once both wrestlers have both fists on the start line. Until that point there is a lot of mind games with stomping, slapping and salt throwing to purify the ring.
                                         

Once the match starts the goal is to force your opponent out of the ring or onto the floor in any way you can. Amazing power and weight! They measured the force of the original impact at 2 tons!!!

                                      

The match finished with this final traditional ritual, prised by experts for the subtleness of the delivery of the moves.

After that intense and fascinating afternoon, Shelley and I had a long, quiet and relaxed walk to stretch our cramped limbs to go for dinner under the shadow of the other interesting area of that neighbourhood, the Tokyo Skytree.

I learned a huge amount from our day, gained a tremendous respect for this sport with such a long history and so many interesting rituals.

I also learned that we will book the actual seats in the nosebleed section next time! :)

I brought the appropriate souvenirs back to the office: my cool Hakuho t-shirt and an Endo doll for the class mascot.

Another amazing day in Tokyo!

Our first ski experience in Japan

A little scheming and dreaming on our lovely, peaceful, rural deck in Tokyo led to our first ski trip in Japan. There was no snow anywhere near Tokyo as you can see by what they are wearing here so... where is there snow? This year has been a really bad year for snow in Japan. But why not explore? We all had our ski equipment, including Sarah with her brand-new-never-been-skied-on-powder-skis...

We rented a car, drove and drove and drove past Nagano to Hakuba. There, sure enough, just driving into the final valleys... there was snow; not much but there it was. Alexis and Sarah recovered from colds while Shelley and I took our first turns this year at a sprawling intermediate resort with a few runs open and LOTS of people; so nice to be in the snow!!

The "expert" ski outfit!

We enjoyed playing cards in the evening at our lodge around this special Japanese coffee table with a heater under the blanket so your legs stay warm as you sit on the tatami mat. 

The next day we discovered that there had been 25cm of fresh snow at the Cortina resort up the valley so we scooted up there for a day on the slopes, Alexis and Sarah renting skis because of concerns about obstacles. 

Yes, there was snow!

So quickly we headed off to the "expert onry" slopes to get some powder before it was skied out by the crowds. . 

Our first time to ski through tall grass fields!

Sarah was thrilled to ski in bamboo patches. 

As the day progressed and the snow got skied out, Shelley and I did a run down the back side of the ridge to a lift that I saw at the bottom of the bowl. We had a pretty scraped up run down from there to... an entirely different resort in the next valley! We didn"t realize how dense these resorts were. We went to the bottom to find that the next bus was an hour and a half later so we packed our skis on our backs and boot packed back to our original resort. Lesson learned; which ski hill resort that the lift you are looking belong to?

A look at the line-up to get back on our hill had us decide to call it a day and enjoy some nice coffee. 

The following day, with most of the snow scraped off the slopes we decided to hike up one of the lateral ridges of the resort to find some turns.

We had a chilly but lovely Onigiri lunch at the top ...

before coming down for another lovely meal of tempura. 

We saw that Hakuba is a lovely ski area with big mountains and long runs and lots of potential for back-country. We just need to come back when there is snow.

For variety we headed off to our next hotel that we had booked on-line, thinking that it was in the middle of nowhere near a hot-springs town. Ah ha, surprise! As we wound our way through little villages we suddenly came across another sprawling ski resort with our hotel plunked right in the middle of the slope. Not only was it ski in and ski out, we had a choice of ways to get to the hotel; a conveyor belt that was VERY slow or a tracked van!

The resort was a very densely developped resort with over 15 lifts all seemingly randomly spread over the hill with various odd ways of connecting with each other... and very little altitude gain. Each run was lined with hotels and guest houses but about one third of these were abandoned. 

The hills were packed (for our standards)...

And Sarah and Alexis swooped down each run with about 3 turns.

Alexis kept saying; this is not steep enough!

A New Years Eve dinner in town at the only restaurant that was open and the only guests in the restaurant;

And a torch parade that we stumbled on at the ski hill along with fire works. 

Each day of our trip was finished off in the luxury of a hot onsen bath. We challenged Sarah and Alexis to find us a new hotspring every night and they did.We soaked in large and small, new and old, crowded and private onsens all over the valley. It was very civilized!

We were thrilled to discover the possibilities of skiing in Japan and to sort out where we do and do not want to again in the future. We just need to make sure that we go when there is more snow... and maybe less people (if that is possible?).

Our family Christmas

It was quite fun to celebrate Christmas in a country for whom Christmas is more of a shopping opportunity than a cultural event. So we made our own Christmas traditions or should we just call them Christmas activities?

I worked right through to Christmas Eve so we enjoyed sharing the Christmas spirit around the school. We snuck a Christmas stocking to Kumiko, my program assistant in the office, who was thrilled that this was the first time Santa had ever found her.

Sarah and Alexis visited in the afternoon and we had a great time joining in on the different club activities that were happening that day.

Naginata.... they love getting their formal photos taken with us

Kudo; traditional Japanese archery- that target is a long way away; Sarah and Alexis were given chairs as beginners!  

Kendo- This is the Tokyo champion posing with for us. It is quite amazing to see the power of these polite and gentle girls whacking each other...

Luckily they have body armour.

After a lovely bike ride home in the sun we cleaned up hand headed next door for the Christmas party of the International Student Residence where students who couldn't afford to fly home were celebrating the season. 

Santa hats and Christmas carols were a must...

"Traditional" foods such as chicken and Coke...

Some Cambodian pop songs...

And finishing off the event with a Cambodian "traditional/pop" dance; check out Alexis and Sarah"s dance moves!

Then back to our apartment to our beautiful Christmas tree...yes, you see it all lit up in white, stockings and the Christmas Eve festivities. 

We read the Christmas story, the Night Before Christmas and listened to A Child"s Christmas in Wales, just like every year even though we are thousands of miles away in a different home. As Mom used to say, home is really where you hang your hat. 

On Christmas day we enjoyed small gifts and goodies but enjoyed the gift of having Sarah and Alexis with us as our main gift. 

We enjoyed having some friends over for Christmas dinner- Mattias of German origin who is an astronomer at the Tokyo Astronomy Institute and a Zen practitioner,

Paul, our resident Friend at Friends centre from Australia who is an interpreter in Tokyo. 

Dinner was eaten on our laps in our Spartan and cosy living room. 

And, as is usual in our lives, there was just one other event to catch that day. Our Jazz Choir had a year end Christmas party that night so we had a hilarious time of singing Western Christmas carols in Japanese with a few English phrases thrown in. Check out "Santa Claus is coming to town";

Sunday, our final event of the week was a lovely Christmas celebration at Meeting with many of the Friends School girls who have a lovely choir;

And we finished off the day with a performance of the Messiah put on by the Meiji University Music School along with our friend Sayako from Meeting who is the Foreign Affairs department expert on Mongolia...

And, on the bike ride home, a visit to the Harujuku neighbourhood of Tokyo with Sarah and Alexis to show them where the coolest dress-up stores are for "cosplay"... do you like our ear muffs?

So we entered our New Year"s holiday feeling blessed with the gifts of family, of new and old friends, of adventure and of exploration. We wish you all the same gifts in your lives, in your nook of the world and in your family. Happy New Year to all of you!