Sumo

We interrupt this blog chronology to bring you this important announcement.

We are already in Fukuoka and we've booked our hotel for the next two weeks. Our son is still with us, despite numerous attempts to trade him for Japanese children. We are staying at the Hakata Green Hotel Annex, which is located adjacent to the Hakata station. For those not in the know, Hakata station is the main railway hub in Fukuoka. Many years ago two cities, Fukuoka and Hakata, merged: Fukuoka was the samurai district and so the merged city took its name; Hakata was the merchant district and so most things are Hakata in Fukuoka. It's all about the money.

All of the general admission tickets were sold out for the first day. Raku raku seats were available, but none of our lower ranked wrestlers were fighting on day one and we did not feel like springing for the good seats just yet. We watched the tournament on NHK in the hotel room, in HD, while drinking delicious Mystery Drinks (3% to 8%).

Today, however, we were determined to watch some sumo (or, as we've learned to pronounce it: smoh). There is a bus from the station that takes us directly to the stadium in about 12 minutes. We boarded the bus, charmed the passengers with our adorable son, and then bought our general admission tickets. True to form, we didn't actually sit in the general admission seats until much, much later in the day.

Locutus was awesome. He charmed at least a dozen old ladies, who insisted on holding him. (Don't worry moms! None of them stole your grandson!) He slept during the sandanme and makushita matches (but then, didn't we all!) and awoke for the Juryo, in time for Yobadashi Kunio's singing.

While Locutus was very well behaved, we quickly realized that only one of us could really concentrate on the sumo matches at a time. And so, a competition was borne. We each selected 11 Juryo wrestlers. On a given day, whomevers wrestlers perform best determines who gets to watch the Ozeki and Yokozuna fights, and who gets to wrangle the Borg.

The game is ON!