SUMO

 

Excited about the tournament!

 

This is the Sumo ring and stadium.  The ring is made out of a special clay that's packed around sacks of rice.  There's a lot of Shinto symbolism in Sumo, including the roof of the ring which resembles a shrine and the referee's clothes which look like a priest's.  Since antiquity, Sumo has been thought of as a way of reenacting creation and entertaining the gods.

Sumo wrestlers beginning to enter for their matches!

  

The tournament lasts all day, so there are always sumo wrestlers coming and going depending on when their matches take place.

 

  

First, each rank of sumo wrestlers process in wearing these elaborately decorated aprons and perform a short ritual.

 

 

At one point, the yokozuna, or Grand Champion enters and performs another special ritual.  He's wearing a belt made out of hemp rope that has lightning shaped white papers hanging from it.  Both the rope and the papers are important symbols in the Shinto tradition.

  

I'm not sure if you can see this dude, but he was the biggest one we saw.  He's so big that he can't sit crosslegged, but instead has to spread his legs out on the floor.  He was up against a teeny guy who was probably a third of his weight (there are no weight classes in Sumo), and the teeny guy won!  He grabbed the huge guy's mawashi belt and kind of lifted/tugged him three big times until the big guy was out of the ring.

 

He's kind of like the main referee who stands near the wrestlers and calls out words of encouragement during the match.  There are also 5 men in black hakama who sit around the ring to resolve any disputes during the course of the match.  There's also another many who calls out each Sumo wrestler's poetic professional name in a high-pitched nasal voice before they step onto the ring and begin to prepare to fight.

  

Sumo wrestlers greeted each other and are now doing a purification ritual to cleanse their mind and the ring.  Senior Sumo wrestlers sip water to cleanse themselves and throw a handful of salt purify the ring.

 

They're greeting each other again before fighting.  Sometimes this greeting, purification, glaring process will go on for whole minutes.  It's part of a psychological preparation/intimidation process before the actual fighting begins.  It's usual for the actual fighting to take a matter of seconds, while the preparations can take up to 4 minutes.  Note the size difference of these two guys!!!

  

They're getting ready to fight and "fiercely glaring" at each other.  When they both put their fists on the ground, the fighting can begin.

  

Oh!!!  The little guy lost.

 

The big guy won!

 

This is a shot of how the Sumo wrestlers greet each other at the beginning of the match.  They're raising their hands to show that they conceal no weapons.

 

Sumo wrestler getting into a taxi to return to his stable after a match.  Their residences/training spaces are actually called stables.  Like they are livestock or something,