The Osaka Sumo Tournament

Tessa and I made a sojourn to Osaka to see sumo while Amy and Lily went to see the psychotic deer of Nara (more on that in a bit).  It was only after arriving at our hotel that I realized Tessa still requires a bit of parental supervision when it comes to packing.  For a five day trip, she packed two t-shirts, one sweater, zero rain jackets and three pairs of jeans.  Luckily, my t-shirts fit her.  So it turns out that I essentially packed two t-shirts.

We went to a fancy sushi restaurant the night before the tournament.

... and had a slice of cheesecake to top it off.

Tessa wanted to spend the morning in the hotel watching Youtube shorts with the comforter over her head.  I told her she could do that when she's a freshman in college.  No, I mandated that we were going to experience Osaka.  Amy has long said that I have the time management skills of a lobotomized hamster (though even a brain dead hamster would have had a 50/50 chance of improving on my planning).  Long story short, we arrived really early and spent over two hours wandering around a shopping district in the cold rain.  To be fair, that could be described as the Osaka experience.  On the up side, I think Tessa learned a really good lesson about traveling with her dad.  Sometimes the best parenting strategy is to serve as a warning.  Modeling FTW!

"See," I said to Tessa.  "You can't see a dragon like that in Lewiston.  Totally worth it!"

After a painful hour of shambling past restaurants that only served takoyaki (octopus), it was finally 2:00.   We checked in with our tour group and made our way to our seats in the stadium.  

One issue became immediately apparent; we were seated next to an unusually attractive Norwegian man in his twenties.  That's saying something, as Norwegians tend to be unusually attractive at baseline.  In Japan, I'm always aware when there is an attractive 13 to 20 something male within eyesight because Tessa suddenly bolts and pretends I'm a stranger and hisses at me when I try to ask what happened and then later says "that guy was so hawt."  Unfortunately for her, we were sitting next to the hawt Norwegian for approximately four hours so it was hard to pretend I was a stranger.  I will say that she gave it her best effort.

The opening ceremony.

Normally when you see two portly shirtless gentleman slamming their bellies together, you know you are at the Blue Goose in Lewiston and Pabst Blue Ribbon is somehow involved.  But in Japan, you are witnessing an elite sport dating back over a thousand years.

The first sumo squatted and placed his hamhocks on the sand.  A hush fell over the crowd.  The second sumo squatted.  The anticipation was unbearable.  Several members of the audience looked faint.  The Norwegian leaned forward in an even more attractive pose.  Tessa fainted.  The second sumo's hand dangled over the sand, almost touching it.  And then ... the first sumo stood up and backed away.  The crowd murmured, questioning his strategy.  Was that the right call?  What was off about that position?  Chafing?  What had he seen?  The first sumo strutted over to the corner, took a tiny hand towel and vigorously rubbed his belly, his arm pits, and then his scrubbed his face while inhaling deeply.  Because pheromones?  Tessa gripped my forearm with dagger sharp fingernails.  "Did you see what he just did??" she said, gagging and staring at the floor.  Then the sumo chucked the hand towel at his assistant and strutted back to the center of the ring.

Back to the tense crouching.  It's a tease, I wanted to shout.  They're not going to do anything.

But then they did.  For no apparent reason whatsoever, sumo one and sumo two launched themselves into the air and impacted with a loud crack that reverberated through the arena.  There was a furious flurry of hands and large sweaty bodies pushing and straining, and then sumo two flipped sumo one onto his back.

That lasted three seconds.

By the third match, I was pretty sure I had sumo figured out.  Approach the ring, squat, glare, hesitate, stand up and rub self with towel, inhale pheromones, return to ring, squat, hesitate, stand up and slap belly with gusto, approach the ring, squat, hesitate and then let all hell break loose.

Sometimes, though, it's better to be nimble and smart than massive.  At least that's what I always told myself in middle school.

All jokes aside, the sumo experience was one of the best things we did in Japan.  But get this ... I told maybe eight Japanese people that we went to a sumo tournament and each one said they'd never been.  At least I think that's what I said.  It's possible that I said I was going to train as a sumo, which would explain why they kept ordering me another slice of pizza.

I'll end on a picture of sakura outside our hotel.  

Because sakura.