Miss Loi 日本日記 – You stare at me I stare at you. You push me I push you.

By sheer coincidence, the Grand Sumo Tournament was taking place in Fukuoka when Miss Loi was there in November.

Colourful Nobori banners present at every tournament

Sumo is a bit of a national obsession in Japan, the only place in the world where you find fashionably kawaii teenage schoolgirls idolizing and cheering their hearts out for their favourite real-life 蜡笔小新-lookalike.

As kawaii as they get –
within range of Miss Loi’s 35-70mm zoom lens

And Grand Tournaments are … umm … grand affairs that are commercially important enough to earn them coveted primetime slots on national TV alongside Japanese dramas and crappy talkshows.

Traditional way of sponsorship advertising,
way before the advent of Formula One and race queens.

So in a vain attempt to relive her days as a fashionably kawaii schoolgirl out of sheer curiosity, Miss Loi found herself by the ringside.

That purple cushion has a critical role to play. Later.

However, not being a particularly sporty person (the most active she’ll ever get is during a major Sale), and still not being able to unravel the mystery of the Offside Rule, Miss Loi was a little apprehensive that her cheapest ¥3600 ticket would be wasted by her inability to understand the rules of yet another alien sport.

¥3600 down the drain

Eventually, her fears were unfounded as sumo wrestling turned out to be THE easiest sport ever to understand. As it turned out, all those you-stare-at-me-I-stare-at-you-push-me-I-push-you boils down to this: whoever first touches the ground with any part of his body other than his feet, or steps out of the ring, loses.

Throwing salt to ‘purify’ the ring.
Probably to rub salt into fallen opponent as well.

In fact, Miss Loi found a sumo bout similar to that of an O-Level student’s journey.

Before each bout, she was subjected to an eternity of you-stare-at-me-I-stare-at-you where each contestant tries to intimidate his opponent by slapping his middle-aged tummy, stomping his feet, and probably shooting some invisible laser beam from his eyes, and the excitement’s supposed to build up during this period.

Somehow everyone’s posture in this pic looks so … wrong.

But just like the neverending tests and mock exams that often succeed in demoralizing students building up teachers’ and parents’ excitement before the actual O-Level exam, all the staring in the world has NO bearing on the final result.

Feet stomping –
No marks will be awarded even if you made a hole in the ring.

And just like your decisive O-Level paper which is over before you even know it, the actual bout with all that you-push-me-I-push-you is usually over in less than a minute.

It’ll be over before you even get to put on your specs.

And like every subject that we take, there’s always a trick to it.

Taking a page from the Physics syllabus, it’s obvious that whoever possesses the bigger

Force (F) = Mass (m) X Acceleration (a)

will stand a better chance of winning.

Given that there’s NO weight categorization in sumo, and that there’s a limit to how much can one accelerate (a) in such a puny ring, contestants (probably through their own Zen-like joss sticks sessions) have done their algebra through the centuries and realize they have to increase their masses (m) to maximize their chances – hence the biggest congregation of 肥仔s Miss Loi has ever witnessed.

Sumo Nation!

As with most school subjects, just when Miss Loi thought she knew it all, she saw this strange entry in her copy of the SUMO QUICK GUIDE that came with her ticket (and you really thought she figured it all out by herself?):

Click to enlarge

Now why would any well-mannered Japanese wanna throw away his/her comfy cushion into the ring?

Answer can be found at around the 1:30 mark of this clip:

BTW that was the most exciting bout of the day. If only the cushions were made of better quality, then Miss Loi would’ve taken a few back to The Temple 😛

頑張って!!!

Miss Loi