Playing Hooky

(Alternate Title: True Confessions of a Budding Sumo Enthusiast)

It’s been about 2 years since the last time I got to watch scantily clad men pound their flesh against one another (at least in the 3D world).  While it’s something I don’t think the Western world really understands, sumo is incredibly popular in Japan.  Not only are tickets expensive, but they sold out faster than we could order them when we tried to get them last year.

Golden Kamuy sumo is still the best sumo...

However, this was one thing I still haven't made up for missing when I came to Tokyo back in 2014 - the sumo tournament at Yasukuni Jinja.  I thought with our really long spring break that the stars were finally going to align, but when I checked the sumo website, I discovered that it was taking place a week and a half later than it did back then.  I felt a little conflicted* about taking a day off school to go watch sumo, but the last chance I had to go to a tournament at a shrine I missed because of an IB training, so maybe I felt a little vindicated in sending in an email that claimed I was sick on that bright and sunny Monday morning.

My sources indicated that the tournament started at 9, but Google maps listed an event starting at 10:40.  Since I was hoping to avoid discovery by any late stragglers to school, I decided to err on the side of caution, and didn’t leave home til 8.  By the time I got to the dohyo there weren’t many places left to sit.  I was almost resigned to lurking around the back of the seating area, but I noticed some wasted space between my fellow gaijin on the uppermost tier and imposed on them to make room for me.  Shortly thereafter I spotted the missionaries from Tokyo 2nd trying to find a place to sit, but there was no more room where I was sitting, so I didn't wave them over.

There was activity in the ring as all this was happening.  The wrestlers seemed to be having some kind of warm-ups.  The fact that there were lots of wrestlers in the ring at the same time was my first clue - this isn’t Mongolia, after all - but there was something playful about the way they pushed each other around.  I even saw wrestler somersault his way across the ring.  Eventually they all cleared off and the dohyo was swept smooth again.

Right around 10:40, two blocks of wood were struck together, and two men wearing formal kimono led the first wrestlers into the ring.  Right away, I began to notice differences from the time I went to the tournament in Himeji with Five.  For starters, there was much, much less posturing.  These matches seemed straightforward - they weren’t even tossing salt into the ring.  They didn't psych each other out - a couple of stretches and it was on.  Another difference that struck me was the fact that each match was prefaced by a man with a fan calling out a poem (I think), in a lovely, resonant voice.  Now admittedly we arrived in Himeji much later in the day, while I got to see this tournament from its start.  I decided I’d have to stay long enough to find out if this was just the preliminary amateur hour, or if the difference was part of the fact that this was a shrine tournament.

Like much of Japanese culture there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about sumo.  Unlike many of these traditions,though, it won’t put you to sleep.  It’s fast paced and unpredictable.  Of course, if you’ve never seen someone push a man twice his size out of the ring, you may fail to understand what makes this sport so exciting.  If you’ve never watched a guy shoved to the rope on the ground, struggling with all his might to hang on, finally to shift balance enough to toss his opponent out of the ring, you might not get it.  You might not be able to imagine how entertaining it is to watch two 400-pound guys engage in a slapping match til one dances the other out of bounds.  But sitting on the ground, being showered with late cherry blossom petals, I had a hard time imagining a sport I’d rather be watching.  There was a food tent set up, selling drinks and snacks, and another with memorabilia swag.  There was plenty of room to move if you wanted to get up and get a drink or go to the toilet.  It was more like a picnic with entertainment; life doesn't get much better than that.

If I had to guess what makes it hard for the west to appreciate sumo, I'd probably boil it down to our fat-phobia.  These guys are huge.  Some of them are merely big, but others are distinctly fat.  I couldn't help wondering if these guys face the same discrimination as other heavyweights -  like when they go to the doctor with a medical complaint, does the doctor assume they'd be cured if they weren't fat?  Or does their status as athletes shelter them from that contempt?  Admittedly, as athletes they are much fitter than most people with their BMIs, but the fact remains that not everyone who is fat is unhealthy.

A little before noon it seemed the junior division was over.  They swept out the ring again, and the striking wooden blocks heralded the arrival of wrestlers wearing the richly decorated cloth that Five and I had seen previously.  They proceeded to take turns chanting over the crowd while the rest moved around the ring, with movements that seemed almost ritualized.  Now, I intended to stay and watch some of the senior division, but after about five minutes of chanting I realized my butt kind of hurt from sitting on the concrete, and that if my mischief managed plan included avoiding all teachers and students on my way home I'd better get on with it.

I walked through the front part of the shrine, through a sun-dappled grove of cherry trees that shed their leaves and wrestled me into admitting that yes, they are quite pretty (even if I still like plum blossoms better).  You may still be wondering why it matters that it was at a shrine?  Well, I guess that's because I like experiencing things in situ.  Seeing a moai in the natural history museum in New York isn't the same experience as walking down a hill to where they keep watch on an Easter Island beach.  The origins of sumo are bound up in Shinto harvest rituals.  Seeing a tournament at a shrine just makes sense to me - like getting back to its roots.  After all, I only have a couple of months left to immerse myself in Japan, and there might not be anything that captures the spirit of Japan as fully as watching sumo wrestlers under a clear sky while sakura petals rain down.  I probably should've chased the experience with some sushi, but Tony Roma's was closer and much better for my pink blood.


*Honestly I felt far more conflicted that Yasukuni Jinja is a military shrine, and some of those enshrined therein are considered war criminals in other contexts, but in the end I decided to keep my nose out of other countries’ grudges.

Throw Down

For Mongolians, the most wonderful time of the year is NOT Christmas, it's actually Tsagaan Sar - Mongolian New Year.  It's the time when you...well, you're going to find out more in the coming week, but you can read what I wrote about it last year to tide you over, if you like.  What you need to know for now is that there are wrestling tournaments as part of the celebration, and on a whim, Engrish and I decided we needed to go today.  We planned to meet at the Wrestling Palace after I finished church, and since I got there a few minutes before she did, I went ahead and bought the tickets.  This was a bit of a maneuver, because when I went to the KACC office on the side of the building, where tickets are sold, the guy didn't understand me, and sent me to the entrance, where they promptly sent me back to the side.  Eventually I got things sorted out, and ended up with one of the security guys, who was so eager to show me where to sit that he almost missed the fact that I had two tickets and was waiting for minii nites (my friend).

She had mentioned our desire to see some wrestling to our fearless driver, Enkhaa, at some point in the past, and he was bemused.  Why would a couple of white girls want to go watch wrestling?  To which I must say why WOULDN'T we???  To quote my recent Expats Blog contest entry:  "Beautiful strong men in tiny underpants...need I say more?  (See more at: http://www.expatsblog.com/contests/746/n-is-for-nomads)  Apparently it's something men are more into ogli....er, spectating...than women, but that's never been something to stop me.  Of course, I don't think we really realized what a treat we were in for.  I should have - I've recently been fighting with one of my seventh grade girls about changing in the hallway, because she doesn't see anything wrong with changing her clothes in front of God and the whole world.  Well, neither did the wrestlers.  There were strapping young lads in nearly every stage of undress scattered around the palace, and it did my poor, very single heart a WORLD of good!

We wanted to go to the wrestling palace last year, but the opportunity never presented itself.  I actually got to see some wrestling at Naadam, but it was hot and sunny and I'd just had my back messed up by a bunch of Mongolian women forcing themselves onto our bench, so I didn't stay long.  But even if I had, it wouldn't be the same.  The wrestling palace is a much smaller venue than the Naadam stadium, so you feel much closer to the action.  There's a great deal of pageantry involved in a Mongolian wrestling tournament.  When things were finally ready to start, some of the lamas chanted, after which the referees and wrestlers came out onto the "mat" - a round green carpet that covered the floor of the palace.

The names of the wrestlers and their home aimags was announced, if Engrish can be trusted (and since she's practically Mongolian, she generally can).  The wrestlers left the floor, some of them to go back and change into their deel for a later match, and some to merely come back in a few minutes.  Before they start, they "salute" the referees and the Mongolian flag.  Or salute is the best description I can come up with for it - it's actually more graceful, and involves more of the body, as they walk or kind of skip around, gently flapping their arms like an eagle.

I have to admit that I haven't seen much wrestling in my life.  As a band geek, I played at football games and basketball games, but we didn't go to wrestling meets, so the sum of my experience with wrestling comes down to when I couldn't get Shaggy to change the channel as a child and had to watch Hulk Hogan duke it out with Randy Roddy Piper.  This was NOTHING like that (obviously).

For starters, while Mongolian wrestlers have muscles and then some (the shoulders and the legs on these guys!  I swear!), but quite a lot of them had a lot of fat on them, too.  And they weren't paired up according to size - there were very big wrestlers in matches against much more wiry guys.  Engrish and I both wondered how the matches were decided.

The technique seemed different, too - really intense.  They would grapple with each other for what seemed like a really long time, in some matches.  For long periods, their heads would be locked, like a couple of stags, and then they would start spinning, trying to lock a leg around their opponent or simply just throw them off balance.  It truly was "no holds barred;" they had a hold of each others' tops (open fronted, because once upon a time a woman decided to compete - although some of these guys had more boobage than a couple of my girls...) and bottoms.  I was hoping for a wardrobe malfunction at some point, but Engrish pointed out that most of them seemed to be wearing bloomers under their...bloomers.

Then there was the fact that there were LOTS of matches going on at the same time.  It was hard to know where to look.  Engrish and I would pick a couple to watch - occasionally the same one - but it became harder to keep track of them as they moved around the floor.  Wrestlers were constantly hitting the mat.  I found it amazing that nobody got hurt - tribute, I guess, to the refs' hard work (and occasional ass smacking).

The lamas who did the chanting earlier in the afternoon were also the keepers of the winners' brew - airag (fermented mare's milk) - and these fried dough things that you always get served when you visit a ger.  The wrestlers tossed these up into the crowd.  Engrish suggested that it might be lucky to get a treat from the winner.  I suggested that it would have been MORE lucky for them to lay a big wet one on a ginger girl (I've read somewhere that being fire-kissed brings luck), but unfortunately we were sitting in the wrong section to find out.

The truly incongruous thing seemed to me their boots.  Mongolians wrestle in big, ass-kicker boots, which seems funny with their teeny tiny costumes.  It was especially funny to see them walking down the stairs for their next match in just their underpants and boots.  Not that I'm complaining.

Well, we made it to nearly 5 o'clock before Engrish asked if I'd gotten enough photos and 5,000 tugrugs worth of entertainment.  I'd just been thinking to myself that it seemed like the matches were going to go on ALL NIGHT, and since I hadn't had lunch, I was ready to go try my student's restaurant, Korea House (conveniently located behind the wrestling palace).  But I wouldn't hesitate to go again.

The End.

Who's Got Your Goat?

The afternoon of the Eagle Festival we had the chance to learn about a sport I'd heard of, but never seen.  Khaled Hosseini mentions it in The Kite Runner, and later in our trip, I read its name again in And the Mountains Echoed.  It's a popular sport in Central Asia (don't know your geography?  Central Asia is all the 'Stans), but it sounds barbaric.  It's called buzkashi.

It began with the players racing out onto the field on their horses, looping around the goals, and coming to the middle to trade handshakes or high fives in a show of sportsmanship.  A referee came out (on horse, of course!) and threw a decapitated, legless goat corpse on the field.  Yep, you read that right: headless, legless carcass.  Told you it sounded barbaric. 

The object of the game is to race over to the goat carcass and pick it up from the ground without getting off your horse, then race to the end of the field and fling it into the goal - a tower-like structure with a hollow in the top of it.  Sounds simple enough, if you like defying death, but retrieving the carcass from the ground is not the most difficult part (as hard as that may be to believe).  This year, the game was played between teams, whereas in years past it had been played by individuals. This means that even though you may risk your life picking up the goat, odds are highly unlikely that you will keep it long enough to put it in the goal, because a whole team of riders are going to be wrestling you for it, earning it the name of "tug-o-war with a goat carcass," which is how it's typically described to foreigners.

We were watching the teams from Sagsai Sum (a sum is, to the best of my knowledge, kind of like a county) and another sum, maybe Tsengel but don't quote me on that.  The local crowd was, of course, quite into it, but I was still surprised by how quickly Engrish and I got excited about it, and started cheering for the players ("Knock him off his horse!" might have been heard from us at one point).  But then, it is a sport you need to keep an eye on.  You stand at the sides of the field, and there is nothing separating you from the action.  Which means that you may find yourself in the path of a stampede of distracted horses and riders...and we did, several times throughout the afternoon.  Engrish almost peed her pants one time!

There was also a kind of a half-time show.  This was a race around the field.  The woman has a yellow handkerchief attached to her shoulder, which the man has to snatch off of her.  If he succeeds, she has to catch up to him and hit him with her whip.  In the background, you can see the buzkashi goal.

This was the lady who served us lunch earlier in the afternoon, and there were several other women who took part in this sport.  It was amazing to see them ride in their beautiful clothing.  I can't stress enough how awesome the Eagle Festival was.  It's going to be a hard one to top, whether I'm here for an extra year or not!