week 33

Another week rolls on….

Unfortunately I was quite sick this week which was rubbish, I had the worst cold I have had for a long time. But I had a few afternoons off of work to recover and by the end of the week I was mostly recovered.

Monday and Wednesday I went to the gym and Tuesday and Friday I played a little tennis. On Tuesday I had tea ceremony and I received some photos from the evening I wore the kimono and I also received a gift from one of the ladies. She gave me two of the bright colourful balls that Japanese children use to play with. They are made up of coloured thread which is wrapped in certain ways to make a fantastic pattern. They take ages to make but are really cute. The balls I was given were 25yrs old! So I felt really honoured to be given them. On Wednesday I went to taiko and attempted to play through the sneezing and coughing.

On Saturday, I was luckily feeling a little brighter and so I was able to go to Osaka with a big group of other gaijin. Jordana, jill and I headed down on the train around 8.30am and we met bruce and shari. We went to the suntory museum to see the Dail exhibition which is on at the moment. I love Dali’s work so it was great to wander around some art and feel like I am stimulating my brain slightly! After this we had lunch in an Italian-ish restaurant before heading back into the main city to meet up with 50 other gaijin to watch sumo! We got there around 2.30pm to see the more famous and professional matches. Now im not a huge sumo fanatic and I cant say I knew much about it before going. I simply wanted to see Japan’s famous sport. But there is actually more to sumo than fat men pushing and shoving each other on nappies. The history and tradition behind it is quite interesting. At the sumo I got a little book that described lots about the sport. It says that the very origin of the Japanese race depended upon the outcome of sumo. 2 tribesmen had a sumo bout and the winner established the supremacy of the Japanese people on the islands of Japan.
Sumo has religious tones too. It originated as a ritual used to pray for a bountiful rice harvest. The sumo ring is called a dohyo and it has a roof suspended above it which resembles a Shinto shrine. There are four tassels which hang from the corners of this roof which signify the 4 seasons of the year- something which is very important to Japanese people. Apart from the wrestlers there are also the gyoji (referees) who wear fantasticly bright kimonos and they wear a Shinto priests’ hat and carry Japanese fans. The rank of this referee can be determined by the colour of his tassel hanging from his fan and also from his footwear. There are also four solemn looking men dressed in black sitting on each side outside of the ring. These are the judges. I didn’t actually see them do anything but im sure their job is important some how?!

There are different ranks of sumo wrestlers. The Maku-uchi are the top 40 wrestlers and are paid and have quite a good life of fame. This group has four types of wrestler within it. The Yokozuna is the champion and below him are the Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi and Maegashira. Below this group of wrestlers are the Juryo and the Makushita. These wrestlers make little from the career and have to live in sumo stables with their fellow wrestlers where they eat, sleep and train together. The rank which one belongs too is also signified by the hairstyle of the wrestler.
There would not be an event in japan that did not have an accompanying 10 ceremonies and this is true of sumo. Over the centuries sumo rituals and ceremonies and traditional etiquette has remained intact which I found to be fantastic. There is an entering the ring ceremony where all the wrestlers from one category parade together in the dohyo. The men wear fantastically colored silks which cost a bomb during this ceremony. The Yokozuna and two other top wrestlers have the most important part in this ceremony. They have a separate ceremony where the yokozuna wears a 25lb hemp rope around his waist which is arranged meticulously and has the Shinto lightening bolts hanging from it. The Yokozuna performs a ritual where he lifts each leg high and then stomps it down in the dohyo. This is to remove the evil from the ring.
The wrestlers wear a long silk mawashi which is wrapped in a careful way around him. When a bout is about to begin the wrestlers perform certain rituals to cleanse their minds and bodies. They rinse their mouths with water and wipe their bodies with paper towels. Each rishiki (wrestler) then scatters salt on to the ring to purify it and to prevent injury. However only the top wrestlers have this privilege. Then after some arm clapping and getting into the right crouch position with their clenched fists on the ground, they fight. The actual bouts only last a few seconds, but the whole process and the amount of tradition, culture and meaning still within this sport is fantastic and worth watching.

After watching a good 4hours of sumo jill and jordana and I headed back towards the station stopping to do a little shopping on the way. It was a great day and I was pleases to get in to bed at 12pm.

On Sunday I had a lie in and then I met up with Azusa to have coffee and cake in Fukui. It was lovely to hang out with a Japanese person who knew about England and could speak damn good English. She even had a british accent which was cool as most Japanese people adopt American accents when they speak English. We did purikura after the cake munching, and then I had to head back to Maruoka for tennis. After tennis John and Kim had invited me round to theirs for Nabe. I have had nabe once and I really enjoyed it, so I was definitely up for some home made nabe action. The food was magnificent and it was nice to see john and kim and catch up on the latest from them.