What do Japanese People Do? Go to sporting events

Last month I had the opportunity to attend the second-to-last-day of the Osaka Sumo Grand Tournaments.  Previous to this trip, my only exposure to sumo was probably just from the movie Memoirs of a Geisha (in that scene where Sayuri watches it and gives some extended metaphor about strength and blablabla). Can't mention sumo warriors without geishas? How typical. I think coming from the States with an outsiders view of Sumo it was hard for me to think of it beyond some sort of elaborate, mystical and strange shinto ritual involving fleshy, scantily-clad men and more as a sport. I certainly wasn't really expecting to enjoy it like I would watching football and basketball back home as I was going at the time mainly for the "cultural exposure."

Boy was I wrong.

And boy is it a SPORT.

 

If anything, the Japanese audience sure treated it like one. People ate in the stands, left to go to the restrooms and returned in the middle of matches, and cute snack-vendor girls ran up and down the seats hawking their food to hungry viewers. Sake was openly served and consumed. The whole arena buzzed with excitement like in any sporting event and had none of the quite, polite, and constrained "Japanese" enthusiasm that I thought I would find there instead.

 

Towards the later matches in the day with the higher-ranking wrestlers, more and more people began to show up and the stands began to get packed. At the end, the stands were completely sold out. Viewers of both genders and all age groups were present, and I saw that even small toddlers were watching the matches as intently as the adults. There were many foreigners there as well, including some, that I overheard talking, who kept up with the scores and "stats" of each wrestler. A particular Japanese attendee next to me, a young man who looked to be in high school, even had  a score keeper which he avidly circled and marked after every match.

 

Most surprising of all perhaps was the yelling that came from all around the stadium. Single fans or entire cheering squads of guys or girls would wait for their favorite wrestler to appear and then give ear-piercing screams of 'gambarrrree!' or the yell the wrestler's name as encouragement. This also was acceptable to do during the middle of a match, when the wrestlers would grapple with each other in a deadlock. Publicly raising your voice to that level is probably something that you don't find in Japan except at a sporting event like this. On a side note, interestingly enough, while there were many times when the entire audience would break out in applause for a good match between the Japanese sumos, only one out of the several foreign sumo wrestlers that day received a smattering round of 'good effort' applause after his match.

And certainly all the shinto ritual elements were there, such as the making of the stage, the priests' blessings and the throwing of the salt before each match. But really, from the atmosphere, people were there to see cool throws and bodies fly.  Most of the bathroom breaks in the audience seemed to coincide during the middle of all the shinto practices between matches.

In the box seats, people sat in groups of friends, or family members, and many women wore traditional yukatas. The best-dressed and most serious attendees occupied the most expensive, ring-side seats. Treating it like a sporting event and sitting as close to the action as possible, despite the sweat-flying, body throwing goodness of the stage side seating was one of the amusements of the day. (I did see a few well-dressed attendees and their escorts getting squished by an unfortunate flying wrester as he fell off the stage).
    

If you're interesting in having a fantastic, sporting-event time like I did, please visit the The Official Grand Sumo home page for more info on where the next tournament is: http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/