Sumo Sumo

The Sumo experience was very interesting indeed. The guide had told me that she had real difficulty getting one of the "stables" to agree to let us in due to a big tournament coming up (not sure if they were all practising special moves?!)

As we arrived we were greeted by an out of breath sumo in his outfit standing outside the stable doing press ups. The guide later told me he had been sent outside as punishment. Quite impressive how easy he was doing press ups considering his collosal weight.

We were ushered inside and told to stay silent. After copious bowing to the surly sumo coaches we perched at the back of a stage adjacent to the ring. From here we witnessed first hand the training regime of the lower ranking sumo fighters.

They were training a game which I worked out to be a "winner stays on" freestyle sumo stamina test. They wouyld square up and try and force eachother to the ground or out of the ring. Once one (or sometimes both) had occured, the wrestler that reached the victor first was next in line for a grapple. No one sumo managed more than 3 or so victories as by the second bout they were seriously blowing.

Most impressive of all was the slapping/cracking sound of their faces/heads as they started to wrestle. These guys were also impressivley flexible and were actually able to do the splits. After 30 mins or so were were told to leave which prompted more prefuse bowing and thanking from my guide and we left. It was the first time she had been into such a stable and said she was particularly nervous as the sport holds a very formal and tradional set of traditions and she was unsure as to how she would be recieved as a woman. She also mentioned a recent scandal where a 17 year old sumo trainee was beaten to death with baseball bats by the stable masters for quitting during the morning training.....

From what I saw they are very tough athletic and fat! Aparently their training consists of morning scrapping and afternoon eating of their Chunto.

Quite an experience