If you are planning a trip to Japan this year, I recommend you to include Sumo tournament into your plan! Not only it was lots of fun, you can also enjoy the one-of-a-kind cultural experience it provides!
About a year ago when I was living in Japan, I went to my first sumo tournament in Tokyo! It was an unforgettable memory for me. I still remember how excited I was when I just arrived Ryogoku. There are in total 6 times of Sumo contests in Japan every year, and Ryogoku is one of the locations for sumo contest in Tokyo area.
Just after you get out of Ryogoku station, this statue tells you right away this is a sumo place!
On the way to Ryogoku Kokugikan (Sumo Hall), there are many flags with each sumo wrestler's name on it. I was impressed by this colorful and spectacular flag decoration.
He is the first Sumo player I found!Yay :D
And more indoors! :D There are many ranks of sumo players. People can tell which rank they belong to by looking at their hairstyle and what they wear. These sumo players are wearing a bun on the head and yukata (the robe) and it means that they are still in a low position. They have no salary but only some pocket money. They don't have their own room so they need to all sleep together in a big room. And they only have 7 days to take part in each tournament. The other days they have to cook, clean and serve the higher rank of the sumo players!
The stadium was totally full. There are several types of seats and we got the second best type so we had a pretty good view.
With this type of ticket, although it's a bit expensive, besides getting a good view, you can also get a free bento box, some snacks and lots of souvenirs to take home!
It's a tradition that sumo players wash their mouth before they fight.
Also before the fight, they spread some salt to pray not to get hurt during the fight. In tradition, Japanese people think spreading salt can evict demons.
Clap Clap
People cleaned up the accumulated salt on the floor
People were doing some advertisement before the game started, EACH ad cost 60000 yen. The way to advertise is just to walk around the ring for one round and then they had to go down the stage. The sumo player who won the game can get 30000 yen from each ad!
The more famous the sumo player is, the more ads they will have. This game had 40 ads. So it means the winner of this game can gain 1200000 yen!
Japan is such an organized and polite country with no exception even when the game is finished they cleaned up the ring right away and covered it with a piece of cloth as like the ring was treated with full respect.
After the game we went to the souvenir zone :) Manga is one of the culture representation in Japan and with Japanese people's creativity,
everything that you can or cannot think of can be "cute."
Sumo T-shirt
This big bunch of good-quality Shitake mushrooms is an award for Sumo players, good nutrition support! :)
This is an award too from Coca Cola
The whole game last about 4 to 5 hours. And we got so much free souvenirs! (they came with the seat we purchased) So when we got home, we couldn't wait to open and see what we have got in the bags! Guess what we have got?
Traditional Japanese sweets..but they didn't really taste good actually...:P
Sumo rice crackers! These were good!
Sumo noodles
Sumo bowls..there was no sumo pictures on it, but the little fan in the middle is what the sumo judge is always holding during the game.
The last but not the least, Sumo Chocolate!! This is super! My favorite souvenirs among all of them! They are just so adorable and I felt bad to eat them :-P
If you are interested in watching Sumo tournament while traveling in Japan, booking your tickets several weeks in advance is recommended because Sumo is such a popular sports in Japan, no matter they watch it in live or just in front of TV.
There are 6 tournaments in total every year in Japan:
- January in Tokyo
- March in Osaka
- May in Tokyo
- July in Nagoya
- September in Tokyo
- November in Fukuoka
The following is the link for purchasing the ticket in English:
http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/ticket/index.html
Wish you a good summer vacation ♥：）
No comments:
Post a Comment