Welcome to the World of Sumo

After some thorough and detailed research, here's a brief introduction to the fattest sport in Japan (that will be the last "big fat men" quip, I promise). Sumo, or 相撲 in Japanese, is a contact sport with very few rules and lots of Shinto tradition and ritual. It originated many years ago, and takes place on a circular mound covered with sand, or dohyo. The aim of the game is to force your opponent out of the ring, or make him fall over inside the ring. This is accomplished through a variety of techniques- pushing, grabbing, side-stepping, throwing your opponent off balance etc. Contrary to the initial impression that bigger is better, many sumo who aren't so fat have a large advantage through their agility. The basho (tournament) I'll be attending is the Haru Basho (Spring Tournament), taking place in Osaka. There are six tournaments a year- three in Tokyo, and one each in Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka. Each tournament runs for 15 days. Here's three sumo wrestlers to look out for...

Asashoryu, Yokozuna rank (Mongolian)

Asashoryu is one of the most successful, and controversial, sumo wrestlers in history. After gaining fame and fortune through his sumo skills, he become embroiled in controversy when, on returning home to Mongolia to "recover" from an injury, he was spotted participating in a charity football match. Despite weighing over 23 stone, he showed some silky skills on the football pitch. This didn't go down well with the big-wigs at Sumo HQ though, who banned him for two tournaments. That's all behind him now though, and after a strong performance in the January basho he'll be looking to continue his good form into the Osaka tournament.

Hakuho Sho, Yokozuna rank (Mongolian)

Hakuho is the only other wrestler who currently holds the top rank of Yokozuna. Also from Mongolia, he is a mere 23 years old. His real name is Monkhbatyn Davaajargal.

Kotooshu Katsunori, Ozeki rank (Bulgarian)

Of the four wrestlers who hold the number two Ozeki rank, Kotooshu is the only non-Japanese. Being a gajin, he has been labelled by the public as the "David Beckham of Sumo", a title he understandably dislikes. He is smaller and lighter than most, and often appears in adverts for yoghurt.

Ok thats it for now- I have been informed we haven't technically got the tickets for thursday yet, but it looks like we will do. So fear not everyone!

Munch in Kobe; Sumo in Osaka!

This weekend was fairly chilled- shopping over in Takamatsu, chilling with Miki on "White Day" (Japan splits Valentines Day into two, and "Howaito De" is for boyfriends to give gifts), and a day trip to Kobe on sunday to see the Earthquake Museum and the current Munch Exhibition at the Kobe Prefectural Museum.

The Earthquake Museum was small but interesting, and I must admit it shook me up a bit (ahem). I never realised that the earthquake caused so much damage, and a simulation room demonstrated a small fraction of what it must be like to have your world implode for a few horrifying seconds. Around 6,500 people lost their lives in the "Great Hanshin Earthquake", which struck on January 17th 1995, at 5.46am. It lasted only 20 seconds.

The Munch Exhibition was also fairly short, the highlights being the painting in this post- "Anxiety"- and another piece, "Despair", which together with the more famous "The Scream" make up a set meant to be viewed together. Munch's colours are vivid and expressive, and the Victorian costumes in the piece here, together with the ethereal faces, reminded me of the kind of world Tim Burton creates in his films. The people seem to be going somewhere, somewhere they do not want to go, while the bridge they seem to be on is crossing a background that is wonderfully expressive- a beautiful yet unreal sky, and the lake with two boats that is based on a place in Norway, but is changed and given meaning by the wonderful colours Munch chooses to use.

Anyway, moving on, final news is that this thursday I'll be going to see sumo in Osaka!! It's been long overdue, and I'm glad I'll get to experience this unique Japanese sport at least once, as well as take some photos of the legend that is, Asashoryu Akinori! Stay tuned for more on the world of sumo before my impending trip to the Osaka haru basho.

Language

Languages are such strange and complex things. To pick up the basics, and even become conversational in one takes only the sacrifice of a bit of free time, and a modest amount of effort. Yet to become fluent in one, to truly understand one’s ins and outs, one’s idiosyncrasies, the different mindset a different language requires; that seems an insurmountable obstacle.

In a test one of my students spelt “corn flakes” as “corn freak”, and “sightseeing” as “shatseeing”. That’s not really a great problem. But when you can translate “I might be going to the cinema” in about ten different ways in Japanese, all with a subtly different meaning- well, that is. It would be entirely possible to transform the meaning of a sentence, a paragraph, by translating it in a certain way rather than another. That’s why translation seems to me to be an art rather than a science, a subtle process of weighting the literal meaning with the true intent of an authors work. It’s an art that I have to admire as I struggle through Japanese. If translation is hard, and expressing yourself succinctly and precisely in your native tongue is hard, then imagine combining these processes to speak as you mean in a foreign language. The troubles go further than this- to truly have proficiency in a foreign language surely you have to think in that language- not translate from English in your mind, but construct in Japanese. Sure European languages are hard to master, and Chinese is certainly hard to pronounce, but the Japanese language works in an entirely different way to English. Kanji can be learnt- 2,000 of them may take some time, but the complexities of Japanese grammar could be studied for years and still not mastered. Maybe I chose the wrong language to study!

I think of all these things as I struggle to make the step up from "san kyuu" Japanese to "ni kyuu" Japanese- whether I am willing to invest the time and effort in taking this step, whether my efforts will ultimately pay off. In all honesty if I'm not going to return to Japan it may be pointless. But increasingly I'm feeling like I'll come back here for a while in the future, to live in Tokyo, and if that's the case then maybe I'd better get cracking.

Goethe once said "he who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own". At the very least trying to become half-decent at Japanese has made me realise how insanely difficult English is!

Tsukiji Fish Market, and Conferencing In Yokohama

Hisashiburi! The blog has lain dormant for a while, but I've been increasingly busy after surviving snowboarding and haven't had time for an update. For the last few days I've been in the Kanto area- visiting the famous Tsukiji Fish Market, the current exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, and then going on to Yokohama for a JET Conference.

























Tsukiji was really great; despite waking up at 5, I was able to spring around gleefully at the sight of all kinds of weird and wonderful seafood, huge tuna being power saw-ed and samurai sword-ed, and even some less than politically correct bloody whale steaks. What really struck me about Tsukiji though was the scale; this is no normal market, but a serious shipping operation, with fresh cargo delivered daily, prepared (either through cutting or flash freezing), then shipped off to high class restaurants all over Tokyo and the surrounding area. The food here is literally as fresh as you can get- one young worker was gutting and de-heading fish that were still flapping their tails around! Understandably then, our sushi breakfast was a little pricey- 3600 yen for a platter eaten in a sombre sushi-ya, more akin to a temple than the usual "kaiten zushi" restaurants that I frequent. Sombre it may have been, but I've never had toro sushi quite so succulent, or such a range of fresh seasonal sushi perfectly balanced by just the right amount of wasabi. The Tsukiji experience was wonderful, but sadly I didn't get many good photos as you're constantly on your toes dodging tuna, angry workers and trucks!






Vending T-shirts in Harajuku





Record Shop, Harajuku








I also saw the current exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi while in Tokyo; it was very good, and afterwards we watched the sun setting over Tokyo, with Mount Fuji off in the distance, visible on the horizon! For those not in the know its very rare that you can see Fuji from Tokyo- only on the clearest of days- and its meant to be very lucky (I may have just made that up though).





Fuji-san! Yatta!




If seeing Fuji was a sign of clarity to come, it certainly didn't reveal itself at the"JET Returners Conference", a chance to hear from 'working professionals' in all range of fields, in an effort to sort out the general confusion of life. I ruled more things out than in- banking, finance, corporate business and the general immorality of the private business sector. This leaves me with a range of options- academia, journalism or publishing, government work or other public or non-profit work that relates in some way to the big wide world. Any suggestions greatly appreaciated- my current plan is to become the Guardian's Tokyo correspondent, although I guess this requires a bit of serious effort and planning (not to mention the violent overthrow of the incumbent journalist, the very personable Justin McCurry, who I met at the conference).





Yokohama's Chinatown- the Biggest in Japan! Beware of the gyoza...




Anyway, moving off Tokyo for a moment, today was Shonan Graduation Day. Although I know the 1st and 2nd year students far better than the third, my drummer (Natto's drummer) Murakami was graduating, and it was great to see him. Despite coming from a poor family, having to work in a factory part-time while attending school, and going to a school which never sends any students to Uni, he's managed to get a place at Okayama Daigaku (a good uni) studying economics. I'm so pleased for him- he's a really nice guy, and deserves all that hes worked to get. A long lunch with Kawahara and Toda was followed by an afternoon off work, leaving me to go for a run and write this long update. Thats all for now!

Back On The Piste!

That's right! Last year it was skiing with Georgina and Yukiko, and this year its snowboarding with Hayase, a guy who works in the Shonan school secretary office, and his mate.

Hopefully I'll be doing ollies and 360s all over the place as I descend the slopes of Hiroshima Prefecture before coming to a safe stop (without killing any Japanese people on the way down). We'll be leaving at the insanely early time of 7am (although this was only after fevered negotiations managed to put it back from 5), and travel up past Nimi across the border into Hiroshima. Then we'll spend a few hours on the piste.

Which is harder, skiing or snowboarding? I honestly have no idea, although I guess the more pertinent question is "Can Steve do either?" I'll find out on Saturday...and if you don't hear from me again, well, its been a good life.

Walking In A Winter Wonderland

For the last few days I've been in Hokkaido, Japan's second largest island, and the only one that until now I hadn't visited. It truly is a wondrous place; a winter wonderland, replete with ice sculptures and snow statues, frozen lakes, sea ice and the coldest temperatures I've ever experienced, as well as some of the most beautiful vistas. In 6 days I managed to cover a lot of ground, mainly in my friend Pete's car. We were in Sapporo for the Snow Festival for two days, then drove up to Abashiri, Japan's Alcatraz, home to a scary prison and perhaps the most amazing thing I've seen in Japan; drift ice. From there we went back down to Asahikawa, visiting the snow festival before driving into the mountains to Pete's home, Shirataki.

Sapporo (札幌)

The original reason for me going to Hokkaido at this time of year was to visit the Sapporo Yuki Matsuri, a snow festival held every year for one week. It didn't disapoint, with ice bars selling champagne, huge snow sculptures and a row of ice sculptures in Susukino, with brilliant names such as "Paradisue (sic) of Swan" and "Goldfish of Play". The snow sculptures featured all of Japan's favourite characters- Anpanman, Hello Kitty, Totoro, Doraemon, and even Kojima Yoshio! We went to an amazing bar called Brits Beat Club, with a live band that played Britpop and 60s stuff. We were with a large group of JETs, but me and the other 2 Brits there were singing along to everything (you can see our enthusiasm in the photo on facebook). The singer, Kaz, was a cool guy. You can check out online performances at http://www.brits.jp/. After leaving Sapporo we drove up to Abashiri on the north east coast, and it was only then that I realised how vast Hokkaido is. Flat rice fields covered in snow stretched off into the distance, before mountains took over, and the sky seemed huge compared to down here in Honshu. It was Japan, but totally different to the Japan I know. We left Sapporo sleep deprived and hungover at 10am, and got to Abashiri at about 7pm after stopping off at the Asahikawa Zoo, and some frozen lakes on the way.

Ice Walking on the Sea- Abashiri (網走）

Easily the most impressive thing I saw in Hokkaido was the Abashiri 流氷, or drift ice. Every winter frozen ice leaves the mouth of the Amor River in Russia, and drifts south to the coast of Hokkaido. Its an massively impressive sight, and walking out onto the sea is a bizarre experience. When I was there the conditions were perfect- crystal clear skies, and ice as far as the eye could see. It was unbelievably cold though, especially on the boat. But what an amazing place!!

Matsuri in Asahikawa (旭川）

After visiting Abashiri we made our way back down to Asahikawa, staying again at a friend of Pete's place, then went to the Asahikawa Matsuri the next day. We had lunch in Cocopelis, the best Italian restaurant I've been to in Japan, situated in a log cabin about 45 mins drive from Asahikawa. The views from this remote restaurant were spectacular, out across the plains with the mountains in the background, and the food really was great. After that we went to the Snow Festival, where Pete was dancing in his towns Yosoki ソーラン　team, which was very entertaining. After staying the night up in the mountains in Pete's home town of Shirataki, all that was left was the long journey home.

Sankyuu Beri Muchi!

やった！日本語ペラペラだよぉぉ！Yes after a few months of waiting I finally got the results of my JLPT test today, and I passed! Hurrah. My score of 310 comfortably cleared the 240 I needed, the only downside being that Georgina somehow managed to get 311! One mark more! God dammit!! Still, both very respectable scores out of 400. Grrrr.

Having planned on making this my last Japanese qualification, I've decided to "ganbare" for the next level, 2, which I can take in London this year or next. Why not eh. Only another 600 Chinese characters and, err, 4,500 words to learn. Hmm.

The title, by the way, is a cheesy Japanese joke, or おやじギャグ that got a lot of laughs today. You see "sankyuu" is the level of the test that I took, level 3 or "san" in Japanese. But sankyuu is also the way (some) Japanese people say "thankyou". Hee hee. Ahem.

Anyway tomorrow I'm off to the grim north of Hokkaido; with temperatures that rarely break above freezing, it will easily be the coldest place I've ever visited. If I survive the trip, expect magnificent photos and fantabulous words to appear on this blog after I return.

じゃね。