It's starting to kick in that we're not going to be here much longer, and we're trying to figure out our plans for February and March. I'm still busy this week, so unfortunately we don't have anything significant planned. Lately, we haven't even been eating anything special either.
On one of the days we didn't know what to eat, I decided to sample some cuisine specific to Japan: vending machine corn soup.
It can be described as a combination of "pretty good" and "exactly what I expected." Drinking soup out of a can is quite pleasant actually, and I could see myself using it to warm myself up from time to time. There's also a tomato basil that I suppose I could try as well.
I had a weird day on Tuesday when basically all of my classes save one was canceled; too bad no one bothered to tell me until I was already on campus. My morning class only has three other people in it now, and the guy who was supposed to present today ended up sick. So the professor and the rest of us decided to go for an early lunch at a local establishment, Asa no Ha.
Asa no Ha is a quaint little shop that probably seats fifteen at the most. The menu is written on a blackboard outside and the chef is set up at a counter putting the meal together in front of you. Everything was under 1000 Yen including my Asa no Ha Bento.
This was actually one of the top ten things I've had in Japan. So much attention to detail and impeccably put together, right now I'm thinking about how many more times I might be able to eat this.
Cat on a taxi.
Two days in a row, the same cat was sitting on the same taxi...leering at me.
One of the must-do's on my list was to attend a sumo tournament. With the January tournament ending this week, we painfully figured out how to buy tickets for Friday. Actually, the website we were trying to buy tickets on wouldn't take any of our credit cards, and we eventually had to ask Diana to help us buy them. Thanks Diana!
Every year there are six sumo tournaments and half of them take place at Tokyo's Ryōgoku Kokukigan (両国国技館). Tournaments are 15 days long and wrestlers have one match a day. With twenty or so matches, they all kind of blend together when you don't know anyone's name. Actually we spent most of the time trying to figure out who was who.
There's a lot of pomp and circumstance surrounding sumo. The matches last a couple seconds, but in between each match, someone comes out to sing. Wrestlers drink from a ladle passed to them by the participants of the next match, and then throw some salt into the ring.
They move over to the center of the ring and get into ready position...and then back out. Then they walk over to the corner and slap themselves a couple of times and throw more salt. The match doesn't begin until both wrestlers are totally ready and they both touch they fists to the ground. Once those fists touch though, they explode at each other until someone either ends up on the ground or outside the ring.
The longest match we saw lasted about a minute, and ended when the two wrestlers were locked in the center of the ring; then one just picked up the other and carried him out of the ring, limbs flailing wildly. It was pretty incredible. I have to say, my respect for sumo wrestlers as athletes has grown tremendously. Anytime I see a retired sumo wrestler on TV, he is totally trimmed down. Sumo wrestlers expend an enormous amount of calories training and eat nonsensically just to keep on the weight.
The best wrestlers aren't even the biggest. Currently there is one Yokozuna, Hakuho, and he's swiftly becoming one of the greatest of all time. He's the one on the bottom of this picture:
It's hard to tell, but the other wrestler outsizes him dramatically. Hakuho has only lost 2 matches in his last six tournaments, both of them to the same opponent. His streak includes 63 wins in a row (tied for 2nd all-time). I think the Yokozuna is always the last to go, and the last match has a million advertisements.
It has to disrupt his concentration a little right? Hakuho took out his opponent but with a bit of difficulty. After the last match they do the bow ceremony; this supposedly portrays the gratitude of the victors.
All in all, it was an interesting experience. It's tough to get too involved in the sport with the large breaks in between matches and no knowing who anyone is. I would like to go one more time and not sit in the nosebleeds, but I doubt I'll have the chance.
As we were leaving, a million people were getting these gift bags that just looked like they were filled with random food. I was soo tempted to buy one but was afraid of being stuck with a bag of crap again. Someone needs to tell me what that's all about.
"Then they walk over to the corner and slap themselves a couple of times"
ReplyDeletehahahhaahahaha