TEN-ICHI-SAN

Last night, my friend and I went out to eat okonomiyaki and monjayaki in the Hiroo area of Tokyo.  okonomiyaki is like a pancake type thing that you make out of different ingredients, like cabbage, konnyaku, onions, mochi, squid, shrimp, and even sometimes cheese.  You mix the ingredients together with a small amount of batter that's made from this kind of slimy Japanese potato, egg, flour and water and you pour it onto a griddle and flatten it into the shape of a pancake.  You eat it with a savoury brown sauce, seaweed flakes and dried fish shavings.  It sounds so gross when you describe it in English, but it is really delicious.  Monjayaki is basically the same thing, except you use more batter so instead of becoming crispy on the griddle, it stays soft and mushy, and you eat it with these tiny little metal spatulas.

Anyway, it was a delicious meal, and afterward we decided to walk around the nearby neighborhood of Ebisu to find something sweet to eat.  We settled in at a Spanish bar in Ebisu and ordered refreshingly sweet drinks, when in walked an enormous Sumo wrestler (the photo doesn't capture at all how huge this man was) with a chonnmage style top-knot hairstyle, a bright pink cherry blossom printed yukata lightweight summer kimono, accessorized with a pink rhinestone-encrusted watch the size of my fist, and a pink metallic cellphone.  He sat down, immediately ordered massive quantities of food and drink and kind of filled the small room with his personality sized to match his... full... frame.

He was very curious about what part of the US I'd come from and asked me some questions that I kind of stuttered responses to.  I felt so flustered around him that it was as if I'd completely forgotten my Japanese.  Anyway, eventually he insisted on buying us a mojito, which we gratefully sipped and kind of stared at him and giggled.  We completely reverted to middle school giggly girl mode...  Apparently our reaction was not uncommon either.  Sumo wrestlers enjoy much the same attention, fame and fawning behavior as any other professional sports star.  When they retire, it's expected that they marry beautiful women and kind of settle down into a life of leisure and fame.  I'd really enjoy seeing a sumo wrestler embroiled in Tiger Woods style drama... making an televised apology while his mother looks on kind of frowning at her son's behavior.  Except in this case, the son would be a full five times the size of his tiny Japanese mama.  Hilarious!

My friend asked to see him in Western style clothing, and he showed us a photo on his phone in which he's wearing a kind of goofy navy blue striped shirt with a HUGE silver (platinum?) kind of cross on a huge chain down his neck.  Even in Western clothes, his still is required to wear a chonmage hairstyle, which he won't stop wearing until he retires. 

Anyway, he gave us his business card, friended my friend on Mixi (Japanese facebook).  It turns out that his Sumo name is Ten-Ichi and he's actually going to be fighting in the May sumo tournament that I'm thinking about attending with a friend who will come to visit.  Marissa, you should know that he invited me to give him a call after the Sumo tournament is over because, as he said, he has a lot of free time when he's not fighting and he'd like to take us out to dinner.  AHHHH.