Sumo training
07/25/2009
Remember: two years ago, I wrote a post to introduce sumo. Fighters and fighters in the making live in Tokyo but, during the tournaments held outside of the capital, stay at temples that are equipped with training facilities.
The training sessions are open to the public and last monday, a national holiday, was the perfect opportunity for that. I had planned to go to the beach with a couple friends, so I woke up early to go watch the sumo fighters first.
The aforementioned facilities are usually very sparse and the one I went to looked almost like a barn:
Unless you manage to get a good seat, watching a training session is, by some aspects, more impressive than the actual thing. The proximity of the fighters allows to hear their breathing and really feel their power. We arrived around the end and could only watch the last 20 minutes or so, including stretches and falls.
When it's over, the lower ranked fighters take care of the higher ranked ones. It is obvious on the next pictures:
The rank is shown by the color of the belt and when it comes to sumo, white is above black.
Another ring, even more spartan:
Some of the fighters are really good! That one currently holds the rank of ozeki:
Could it be possible that there will soon be three yokozunas?...
My friends finally arrived and, as we were about to leave, a sumo geek came talk to us and started to explain a couple techniques.
A little effort:
That didn't make us forget to go to the beach...here are some pictures. For your information, the buildings you can see at the back are...a nuclear plant!
And an interesting detail to conclude: note the amazing number of buoys. It sounds unbelievable, but it seems that quite a few Japanese girls cannot swim!
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