Bryan Acts a Fool in Tokyo!

Part Two: Sumo and Exhaustion

Also Starring: Sumo butt. Lots and lots of Sumo butt.

After spending a pretty restless night in our capsule hotel (sleeping next to 23 other people, many of whom wanted to talk about the morality of eating dog meat in Korea for long enough to make me want to lean out my capsule and hiss wildly at them), it was time for Sumo!

Waking up early, me and Nicole head off to the arena… with lots of other foreigners. The gates opened at 8, but nothing started until 10, so for a couple hours it was just us and lots of other not-Japanese people.

I’d say I was surprised, and at first I was. I mean, eight hours of sumo means eight hours of big fat naked man butt. 

Eight. Hours.

Thankfully for the majority of this I was sitting up in our second story seating well away from all the butt, but Nicole brought her telescopic lens, which meant we didn’t have to miss one cottage cheese back side.

It all started without a whole lot of pomp or circumstance. The judges enter the arena and sit far too close to the ring for my own personal liking in an area I lovingly refer to as The Splash Zone. These judges are taking their lives into their own hands, because on more than one occasion, one wrestler full on picked up the other and threw him out of the ring. 

Now when there weren’t very many people in the arena, this is perfectly fine. The judge can sort of lean to one side, and the tumbling sumo can get back on his feet pretty easily. But once the stands fill up, there’s pretty much nothing you can do when you’ve got a giant of a man flying towards you. Especially if you’re a wee little old Japanese man like most of the people in the front rows were.

Over the next several hours the stands filled up, and you could feel the tension building as we approached the final match: Hakuho vs. Baruto.

As the match came up, Hakuho was undefeated, 12 wins to 0, while Baruto had only won 9 of the 12 matches, but the last five times these two butted heads, Baruto always came out the victor.

By the time the two enter the arena, everyone’s officially gone nuts. There’s screaming and yelling and fan girls are fainting in the stands, and finally the two lover themselves to the ground and prepare for battle.

Take a look!

And Baruto wins!

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly trying to stay awake. After a 14 hour day at DisneySea and an 8 hour day of sumo, there was pretty much no way I was able to stay conscious for our remaining time in Tokyo. I vaguely remember us visiting a temple and Shibuya (this really incredible area of Tokyo with tons of nightlife and neon), but for the most part I just needed a good night’s sleep.

Our return home took about 9 hours or so, but I passed most of it by watching Changeling and Star Trek on the bus on the way home (it was a good way to pass the time).

But finally I got home to my filthy apartment, spent the next several hours cleaning, and then positively collapsed.

Still, Tokyo is an amazing city. And I can’t wait to go back!