Sumo Wrestling 18th March 2007

I went to Osaka o Sunday and saw a sumo wrestling tournament. It was so cool! It went all day (from 8:30am to 6:00pm) and I loved every second of it. It was really fun to watch and I never got bored of watching it. The actual wrestling matches don’t go for that long. They can be as short as five to ten seconds and can last up to five minutes…or longer! The goal is to try and get the opponent on the floor or out of the ring. The first player to do this is the winner.




The sumo wrestlers looked so big and tough and mean! I definitely wouldn’t want to get on their bad side because they would squash me flat like a pancake in one second! That would be the end of me! What got me, was that sometimes the sumo wrestlers would push each other with such force that they would go flying out of the ring and land on top of the spectators in the first row! Imagine a sumo wrestler landing on you! Man, I was so glad I wasn’t sitting in the front row!





I didn’t end up getting a photo with a sumo wrestler in his traditional costume, but there were two sumo wrestlers standing by the vending machines in their robes and they kindly let us take a photo with them. When I asked for their names, one of them replied and I forgot his name the very next second because it was so long. The other one just said, “shhh…it’s a secret!” and he left it at that and didn’t tell me his name! I just played along with it and laughed. Maybe he was so famous that if he said his name, a mass of people would come running to get autographs…it was probably for his own protection (not that a sumo wrestler would need protection coz he could just sit on them and be done with it!).



It ended up being a great day with lots of fun. I bought a sumo display cloth, a sumo wrestling magazine and some sumo rice crackers for the teachers at work. When I gave them to the teachers today, they were so excited! I think I made their day!

Sumo wrestling would require a great deal of commitment and dedication…they don’t just look the way they do overnight! Unfortunately, sumo wrestlers have very short lives due to their lifestyle, but they are very skilful at what they do.

Apparently, at the end of their sumo career, they have a very important and significant ceremony where they cut off their hair that is always so perfectly worn in a bun. This is a very sad moment for the sumo wrestlers because it means that they will never wrestle in the ring again. Many of them get very emotional during this ceremony.

So that is what I learnt about sumo wrestling. Pretty impressive, huh? Stay tuned for my next entry: The Red Hot Chili Peppers concert!!!