Since I arrived at my new in-laws… time is just flying by. I can:t believe our shower was a week ago… it could:ve been yesterday. Japan is starting to grow on me.
Sumo was something… a 5+30 wake up that day, to get us from Yoshiko:s house, to the train station, and then a two hour ride on the Shinkansen to Osaka had us in really rough shape 12 hours later when Sumo was peaking. We spent extra mooney and bought box seats… which… to me meant we:d have a nice room with a couch and some chairs…
Instead… it meant a 4×4 foot square with 4 little pillows for sitting on, some 4 year old boy behind us yelling “Takami ganbatte!” in our ear, some punk ass 25 year old kicking me in the back and some 160cm tall dude on the right who thinks he and his friends are too big for their 4×4 square so he should invade ours.
Medicate with 500ml vending machine beers, and 80Y hamburgers. Temperature rising… our clothes were coming off, and I ended up using a 2foot tall pile of clothes as a stool. Sitting so tall… I probably blocked the matches for 500 people… but I was pissed… how can they all sit on their knees for so long.
Somehow, we all got comfortble enough to fall asleep.
That:s what sumo was to me…
Well… that… and… high school reject, fat camp candidates trying hard to beat each other up, but not knowing how, because…
… well… because they:re high school rejects?
Early matches were less than exciting.
Walking to our seats, through a crowd of fat men, with pimply asses and multiple folds of skin in incomprehensible places really made me wonder if I was right to bring my beautiful wife to be with me. If I had to watch girls of such stature fight each other, that vending machine would be empty of beer in moments, and I:d still probably be so repulsed that I:d tear the stadium to the ground.
(Being the tallest man in a country, possesing a unit that all the guys need to check out at the urinals, and having cute girls always ask you for your picture… has convinced me that I do indeed have super powers when I:m wobbly. Actually… maybe it only takes Yoshiko:s love.)
Later matches were something else. Thats not to say, Sumo is a fantastic genre of fighting…. fights are short, seldom more than 1 minute long, and yet… the preparation for the actual clash on stage, takes five or ten times that. It:s really about tradition and history, although, those who are top ranked fighters actually carry themselves with great respect and are considerably more fine in their appearances.
Again… I started worrying if I:d brought Yoshiko to the wrong place. Are these 6 foot 4 inch men, with wonderful breasts and mammoth asses, shiny hair and smooth skin… the super sexy objects of every Japanese girls fantasy? Do the men in the boys room battle for the urinal next to a Sumo wrestler when he makes the trip in between matches? There really were a lot of girls in the stands… Yoshiko was really watching closely… and she was taking more pictures than me too…
Oh no what have I done…
I later asked her about it… and she laughed hard at my concern. Apparently they can:t even wipe their own asses or use a urinal… nevermind have intercourse.
Yoshiko and I parted ways with Andrew and Dave that night, after a wicked buffet at the Swissotel courtesy of Andrew:s massive staff discount. We hung around in Osaka for another day… just talking and being together… walking around the shopping districts, eating mcdonalds (you can:t find good hot and fast food in Japan anywhere else) and riding a massive ferris wheel built on the top of a department store (see an early album of mine) before coming home to Hamamatsu for dinner.
All that leaves me with only 3 days before we hit Tokyo Disney sea and I:m out of here. geez…
This trip… that went so slow in the beginning… is now going so fast. There:s so much planning for the future to do… still so much for Yoshiko and I to sort out about our future… still so much we need to learn about each other. It:s fun and exciting… but it:s so scarey at the same time though.
Somehow… she:s managed well to convey to me… her commitment to us. I hope I have done the same.
So much to say… but I:ll leave it at that for now.