The world is my trailer park.

After arriving early at Hakata Station, I decided to aimlessly wander around the in-progress renovations as an attempt to kill time. Giving up, I leaped aboard the subway and headed toward Tenjin. Once there, I meandered in the general direction of my apartment.

Finding my accommodation was far too easy. I had arrived 45 minutes before the scheduled meeting with the school representative who would handover the key. But true to trip form, she showed up 30 minutes early, which equated to only 15 minutes of suspicious loitering on my part.

Surprisingly, the apartment turned out to be somewhat spacious by Japan standards. And just to rub it in for those back in Canada, my arrival in Fukuoka was greeted with sunny skies and 25 degree temperature.

Sunday, November 8th

Another day of nice weather, but rather uneventful in the adventure department. Excitement was limited to the purchasing of school supplies, three language guides, two Yukio Mishima novels, and a collection of Hoshi Shinichi short stories.

I contemplated bringing home a $100 23-volume box set of complete Astro Boy reprints, but decided it would take too much luggage space. However, I still might change my mind as buying them individually would cost about three times that amount. For the unaware, most of this year was the 80th anniversary of the birth of Tezuka Osamu, so there's quite a variety of special box sets adorning the shelves.

Monday, November 9th

The first day of classes, and in keeping with the flow of previous days, everything went smoothly. Surprisingly, my weakest area -- listening -- has improved dramatically since this time last year. How is this possible without conversation practice? Beats me...

Needless to say, reading remains my strength, and that too has improved.

For those not in the know, and despite intentions to the contrary, this year I am NOT attending school at GenkiJACS. Instead I've enrolled in what could be described as a break-away school called Wahaha Japanese Language School. Several of the staff are already known to me from previous visits, and even many students are GenkiJACS refugees whom I've met before. I'm not sure why the split happened, but it does make one scratch one's head in wonderment.

Tuesday, November 10th

This turned out to be an interesting day. While still in Yokohama, I received an email from the school asking if I would like watch sumō wrestlers practice and eat. The invite didn't sound overly interesting, but I accepted.

Skip ahead to Tuesday...

We met outside the school at 9 AM and split into two separate groups of male and female students. I drove with a husband/wife/infant combo (wife is the neice of one of the teachers) and the only other male student -- a German who has a knack for hideous facial expressions. Curiously, the female students rode in a BMW, which are rather pricey vehicles in Japan. This struck me as something worth noting.

I soon discovered the sumō practice building was located north of Fukuoka in the city of Kitakyushu. The drive up was a mix of cityscape and countryside, but to be honest, the farming areas more closely resembled Canadian cities in terms of density. Not what I'd consider agricultural land.

I sat in the back seat with the mother and infant. The mother did not wear a seatbelt and the infant sat in her lap rather than a child safety seat. This is normal in Japan as only front seatbelts are required by law. I've been told the reasoning behind this is highways have a maximum speed of only 80 km/hr and seatbelts aren't considered important at that speed.

We arrived at a nondescript single-storey building, which turned out to be two buildings with a roof covering a pathway between them. One side contained the practice dohyō, and the other contained the kitchen, showers, dorm, etc..

Immediately after exiting the cars, strict instructions were given: Don't make any noise during the practice.

We walked inside the building containing the dohyō, and sat down -- either cross-legged or seiza -- on a wood-floored stage, similar to what one might see in a typical elementary school gymnasium. However, instead of parents seated below watching their kids perform up on stage, we sat up on stage and watched the sumō wrestlers practice below.

The practice itself was rather interesting. Rote stuff included those leg-raising things sumō is famous for, pushing a partner across the dohyō, and other tit-bits.

However, most of the practice consisted of drill matches, whereby one obviously stronger partner would continually chose others to wrestle. Often the higher ranking sumō would stay with one specific wrestler for several matches before selecting a different opponent. If the next challenger did well enough, they might be rewarded by being picked for many successive matches.

After a challenger sumō was either knocked over or pushed out of the ring, the wrestlers in waiting would immediately ask permission to be the next opponent. "O-negai shimasu!" More often than not the current opponent would be reselected, leaving the others patiently waiting off to the side until the next opportunity arose.

The thanking of both opponents and trainers appeared to be strictly enforced, with a more formal bow reserved for the latter. (Five trainers stood attentively around the outside perimeter of the dohyō during the entire practice.) In addition, any chatty people sitting on the viewing stage were immediately scolded.

Four of the wrestlers wore white belts, the rest dark green belts. It was apparent the former were top ranked sumō, as they were clearly larger and stronger. Several of the lower ranking individuals were having a really hard time, and one was puffing and panting so hard, he looked ready to pass out at any moment -- and once nearly puked.

While waiting for a chance to spar, the wrestlers would do a variety of other exercises, including several core exercises using what looked like a medicine ball. I later discovered this ball was in fact made of stone!

When the practice had finished, we wandered outside and took photos with a trainer (a former yokozuna) and one of their top wrestlers (a Mongolian national).

At this point I still wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but did notice the guy with the BMW had brought boxes of produce along with him. As it turns out, we were going to eat with the sumō!

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While the food was being prepared, the four top guys hit the showers and then proceeded to have their hair tied up in the traditional style. The lesser wrestlers then had their chance to bathe.

Following this, we were lead to the dining room, which was layed out in a typical traditional Japanese manner. Two planks lay on the floor as tables, and pillows were carefully placed alongside for seating purposes.

The lower ranking wrestlers served the food, and everyone was merry...

Actually, no. Everyone was nervous.

It had now become clear that this was a privileged experience. If you look again at the photo above, the scruffy guy watching the hair cermony is reportedly a famous mangaka who had come as a special guest. (I don't know his name, but he specializes in food manga.) So, yeah... Top sumō wrestlers, top comic book author, and a handful of stinky foreigners. One Yen to whoever can figure out which category I fit in.

Diagonally across from me sat one of the top sumō. I didn't know what to do in terms of etiquette -- which in this setting is very strict -- so I just nervously munched away.

After he left, I had a bit of a broken conversation with BMW-san and the head coach. Finally everything became clear:

The guy with the BMW is the husband of the sister of WAHAHA's founder. For one month before the Kyushyu Basho, this particular heya stays at this building owned by BMW-san's business. Furthermore, BMW-san is the head coach's golfing partner. A-ha... now it all makes sense.

But wait, there's more! The head coach is not only a former yokozuna, but is in fact the top guy for the Sumō Association of Japan. That's right, he's the top sumō administrator in Japan, which in turn makes him boss of the entire sumō world. (I didn't find that out until during the trip home.) All in all, a very privileged experience.

If you're interested, here's an English link to the heya in question:

To see profiles of the top four wrestlers, scroll to the bottom and click on the relevant links. The lower ranking wrestlers have no additional information. Sorry.

(click to enlarge)