Sunday 9 February 2014

Sumo

Things I thought I knew about sumo wrestling before I watched it:

It consists of fat Japanese men wrestling in nappies.

Things I found out from going to a sumo tournament:

Fat's not the word. Even the biggest sumo wrestlers (rikishi) live on a healthy-ish diet of 'chankonabe', or meat and vegetable stew. They just eat a lot of it. The result is that under their layer of fat rikishi are enormously muscular, which makes them surprisingly graceful - at least inside the ring. Judge for yourself, from the photos I took at the tournament:




The men aren't actually all that big. Some are pretty small. There are no weight divisions in sumo, which means that a small wrestler can sometimes find himself up against someone twice his weight. Eep. 

Rikishi aren't always Japanese. Japan may be the only country where it's an official sport, but wrestlers of various nationalities compete.

It isn't just men pushing each other around in a ring: both the sport and the wrestlers' lives are highly regulated. Each little detail, from the wrestlers' hairstyles to the slippers that they wear, is chosen for them and steeped in tradition and ritual. Rikishi live together in 'stables' and on the rare occasions that they appear in public must wear full traditional dress of cotton yukata and wooden slippers (geta). Geta make a loud 'clip-clop' noise on the ground, and so one of the rewards of moving up the sumo ranks is that straw slippers can be worn and the wrestler can avoid sounding like a horse.





The outfit that wrestlers wear in the ring? Not (surprise surprise) a nappy, but a silk belt or 'mawashi'. Nowadays if a rikishi's mawashi completely unravels in a bout he is immediately disqualified - a rather ignominious end to the match. However, this is apparently due more to western awkwardness about nudity than Japanese tradition. In fact Japan is pretty OK with nudity, doubtless a result of the onsen culture.



Friday 7 February 2014

Hanegi Park






Ode to a kotatsu

Japanese houses are rarely insulated and retain almost no heat. So despite the swanky-sounding name, a Japanese 'manshon' is, in winter, pretty much a glorified refrigerator. Ours is currently covered (windows and doors at least) in many layers of bubble wrap - the hyaku en (60p) per roll answer to double glazing which is effective but does get a few funny looks from the post/ pizza man. 

So this week we got a kotatsu, in a bid to keep warm through the storms and snow that will apparently arrive tomorrow. This is a kotatsu (not ours) on traditional tatami flooring:



The best bit about kotatsus, and what's not clear from the picture, is that inside the table there is an electric heating element. So a kotatsu is a heated table with removable blankets both in the middle and underneath, which has apparently - thank you wiki - been around in Japan in one form or another since the 14th century. The idea is to sit around on floor cushions (zabuten) with your legs under the blanket, and keep warm without wasting money heating your whole apartment/ house, whilst still being able to do things like work, eat, watch films etc, thanks to the table-top. 

This is the current state of ours:


The book on the right is Peter Rabbit, or ピーターラビット (Piitaa Rabitto), as having finished A Very Hungry Caterpillar I have decided to make the leap from 3- (??) to 6-year-old Japanese child. Either that or I'll transform into a cat, having now started to take naps under the kotatsu in typical Japanese cat-style.