These pictures aren't very good, but I thought I'd share them anyway since these two sports were very interesting to watch. The first three are from a recent sumo tournament in Nagoya, and the following three are from a Kyudo training session in a park in Iwata.



A sumo fan and a former sumo wrestler chilling. Since the matches start in the morning and the last ones end in the late afternoon, some fans get pretty tired and need both sleep and refreshments during the day.




The wrestlers do a million rituals before they start to fight. They slap their own faces, stretch their legs high up into the air, throw salt in the ring, bow, etc. This stretching of the arms is also quite common.




These days the champions are usually not Japanese (which has caused many Japanese to lose interest in the sport). The guy on the right is an extremely strong Estonian whose special move is to simply carry his opponent out of the ring. Most matches last around 7-8 seconds. This one lasted maybe 3 seconds.




The archer and his sensei. There is no questioning of any advice given. What sensei says is the law - and it gives good results. After only a year in training this student can hit a very small target from 30 metres distance.




The bows are extremey long and constructed so that you need very little power to use them. The sport is popular among women, who sometimes wear full kimonos while shooting.




You basically elevate the bow high up in the air and then let it sink down to face level very slowly. The archers usually concentrate for several seconds before letting the arrow go.


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[Edited 7/31/06 4:17am]

very interesting Retina, I'm jealous of how you are exposed to Japanese culture, so I live vicariously through your threads.

jerseykrs said:

I'm Asian

Wonderful!

Like Jersey says, it must be so interesting to immerse yourself in another culture like this.


I read somewhere, once, that sumo wrestlers are so revered and feted in Japan that they're treated like royalty. Assistants and everything. One of their tasks is to wipe the sumo wrestler's bottom. Rather them than me.

Awesome, thanks for sharing.

How is the sumo "event" constructed? I have always wondered how these are staged as the bout often only lasts a few seconds. Do they have sumo days or afternoons, or is it like boxing with several smaller bouts and a main event?

The Kyodo archery looks fascinating, was this an open event or competition?

Imago said:

wonderful ... thank you for sharing

i would love to know a lot more about their rituals ... meanings and reasons

maybe my research project for today's mind stimulation

jerseykrs said:

Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate them! I wish I was even more immersed in the culture here, but usually the language barrier is almost impossible to penetrate. If you meet someone who speaks decent English you can consider yourself very lucky, because it's incredibly rare.

onenitealone said:

I don't know about the bottom-wiping, but yeah - the wrestlers are definitely shown a lot of respect. Some people waited for hours for the best ones to arrive and to catch a glimpse of them. Most of the people in the audience are quite old though. Young people have lost interest, which doesn't bode well for the future of the sport, nor for the status of the wrestlers.

PREDOMINANT said:

Glad you liked it.



Basically they have a few tournaments (I think around seven or eight) during a regular sumo season. Each tournament lasts for about a week and features bouts from early morning until late afternoon. The ones in the early morning are for less skilled wrestlers; the really strong ones don't arrive until much later. But no, it's not one main event, it's several.



It was just a training session that I happened to stumble across in a park. One of the teachers noticed me and could actually speak a bit of English, so he introduced me to the archers and told me about the sport.

Mach said:

A lot of rituals here in Japan seem completely pointless. Like when the train drivers do all kinds of hand gestures for example. It's not for anybody really, since they do it even when nobody is watching. But I guess there's some kind of history that would explain it. In all honesty though, many rituals just seem to serve the purpose of keeping people in check. If everybody follows certain very strict patterns they don't waste time on things like crime. The price you pay is personal freedom, but most Japanese aren't really aware of that. They just do what they've learned since they were toddlers.

Imago said:

Yeah right, if you were a rice you'd be Uncle Ben's. If we smacked you on the head you'd see stars...and stripes. You're not automatically Asian just because you have a small penis, you know?

retina said:

retina said:

HIYO!!!

retina said:

From the waste down, I'm African American fool!

Imago said:

psssh

SammiJ said:

[url]

Imago said:

ass!

Imago said:

It looks more like Celine Dion in that photo no?

Muse2NOPharaoh said:

Actually, yes.