On lists of Japan must-dos, attending a Sumo tournament usually makes an appearance. So, when some friends invited me to join them on an excursion to Osaka to see a traditional tournament I jumped at the opportunity. To sweeten the deal, a friend had managed to buy a special train ticket that decreased the cost of our trip significantly. Normally, a train to Osaka would cost about Y4000 each way, but with our special pass it cost only Y1600, round trip.

Four of us, all with the day off, set out early in the morning for Osaka. The cheap train ticket only allowed us to use the slower trains (not the famously speedy Shinkansen trains), so the trip took a while. But, after about 3 hours and a few train transfers, we were in Osaka. Upon arrival we set out for the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium where the matches were taking place.

We hadn?t been able to purchase tickets ahead of time, so we were hoping that there would be some cheap ones left by the time we got there. There was some left, but the ?cheap? aspect was debatable. We opted for the expensive tickets; it was easy to rationalize this purchase following the dirt cheap train ride.

We then headed inside the gym and found our seats, which turned out to be okay. It was early in the afternoon, so the lower ranked matches where taking place. No one really cares about these bouts as the fighters are not well known and usually a lot smaller than the higher ranked ones. We spent the first hour or so trying to figure out how everything worked. Upon entering the stadium we had been given information pamphlets about the Sumo, luckily, written in English (a lot of foreigners come to watch the Sumo, so they were ready for us). The basic rules of the sport are pretty straightforward. To win, you need to either push your opponent out of the circle, or make him touch the ground with any part of his body. This can be done by any means necessary. Among those we witnessed were: pushing, pulling, slapping, swatting, and even moving out of the way so your opponent falls on his face when he tries to charge you, although this is apparently a dishonourable strategy.

In this sense, the sport is pretty simple, but there is also a tremendous amount of culture, custom and traditional embedded into it. All the referees and participants wear traditional clothing: special men?s? kimonos for the referees, and various loincloths / wedgie-suits for the fighters?all colour-coded according to their rank. Each rank has a name, and is distinguished by both loincloth colour and the type of tassels attached to it. Only fighters of the same rank are allowed to compete against each other; one can move up in the ranks by performing well and winning tournaments. In addition to clothing, the tournament also included traditional entrance rites, dances and chants, salt throwing and a series of stare-downs, or psyche-outs prior to each match. Below I?ve posted a video of the entrance ceremony:

I was really impressed by the sport because it blended serious competition (a la, North American professional sports) with so much tradition and culture.

Throughout the course of the afternoon and evening we watched many matches, probably over 60 by the time the tournament was over. We saw all sorts of fights, some better than others, some long, some short, some exciting, some boring, some with throwing, some with grunting, basically a little bit of everything. Among the highlights was a match featuring one of the foreign fighters from Bulgaria handily beating one of the locals. Check out the video here:

The biggest match of the tournament came at the very end and featured Asashoryu, who is currently the only fighter with the highest rank of ?Yokozuna?. Only the best of the best are given this title, which brings with it extra respect, and a cooler costume (he even got to bring out a sword and do a little dance by himself). Once given the title, one can never be demoted, however, if a Yokozuna starts to perform poorly, he is expected to retire out of respect for the title.

His match was one of the more exciting of the evening, a good way to end the night. On this particular evening he won the match, much to the pleasure of the crowd.

Later, I learned that when he loses the crowd becomes very angry and many people throw their seat cushions at him in disgust. This sounds to me like it would be quite hilarious, so I think I might attend another tournament when the Sumo comes to Nagoya in the hopes that he might lose and I would be treated to this spectacle.

After the event was finished we had time to do a little exploring before our train left. We went back to the area where I had stayed my first night in Japan, a really cool place called Namba. It was a bit of a strange feeling to be back there again, made me feel like I?d been in Japan for a long time?.which I guess I sort of have.