Friday January 23, 1998: 8:30pm
So today was interesting. Had a meeting with Hirabayashi-san and Ichii-san in the afternoon to explain all these documents that I've been making this week (4 sets of 20 page++ specifications and a couple other documents too), and since Hirabayashi-s an appointed me "manager" of the WebAdmin and WebStatus applets, I got to sit at the head of the table (yay) nad - gulp - lead the meeting. In Japanese. Well, it was certainly amusing, if nothing else. Hirabayashi-san already knew all the stuff so basi cally I was just explaining it to Ichii-san, with difficulty. I had to explain things like what resolution meant, and what print speed was, and what 24-bit color really means - letmetellya, it's not easy in Japanese! Hirabayashi-san wasn't going to help either, I think he was enjoying it too much. Just sat back, listened, smiled to himself. Hahaha.
Tonight Martin (Matsumoto Co-op) is staying at my place, but he's only getting into Shinjuku at 11, so he probably will be here around midnight. We have to get up at 5 or so tomorrow morning to go to Ryogoku station (where the Sumo arena is) to buy our Sumo tickets for tomorrow's games. See, they start selling the tickets at 8:30, but you have to line up by 7 if you actually want to get tickets. Crazy!! Well, these are the non-reserved tickets, that's why.
They only have Sumo tournaments 3 times a year in Tokyo; January, May, and September.. so this is my last chance! And it's supposed to be lots of fun too. Can't wait!
Saturday January 24, 1998: 6am (Jan 25)
Today has been one long day so I may as well start with yesterday. Martin got here at about a quarter to 12 or so. I guess now would be the time to do a small bio on him now that I know more. Let's see - he's a mathie Co-op, goin' into 2B (he thin ks) like me, at Waterloo of course. Canadian, but a Polish background - I think he said he lived there when very young, and he speaks Polish, and his parents are Polish - so yeah, Polish. But Canadian. He works for AISoft which, if I remember correctly , is a division or subsidiary of Epson. And although his office is in Matsumoto, he stays at the dorms in Hirooka like the rest of the guys. Oh, Martin went to Sapporo over New Year's, and he met Dave, *by chance*, in a subway station! And Dave didn't recognize him! Hahahaha, how Dave. Anyway, I thought that was pretty crazy - in Japan's 5th/6th biggest city, on New Year's Eve, they bump into eachother at the most unlikely place.
Oh and the bum also went skiing near Sapporo a few weeks before that, I am so jealous!! I've been wanting to do that, but the money is sadly lacking. It's a skiing trip or next May's rent. Hmm...
Anyway, Martin and I chatted 'til 1:30 or so, then set the alarm for an insane 5:25am, and went to sleep.
Ok, now for today.
Rise n' shine, 5:25. Mumble Grumble, man, it is hard to get up at that hour! I guess that's why we were a little slow-moving, and a bit late to leave. And the walk and train ride took a little longer than I thought to get to Ryogoku station, so we only got there at 7:30, just half an hour late. Already there was a definite line-up. We were just discussing which one of us shoule check to see if the others were in line when Yuka found us. Yuka is Jeff's, not Geoff's (Jeff is a Canadian, not Co-op , who was (is?) working at Epson Hirooka, Geoff is a Waterloo Co-op like me) girlfriend. Her and Simon and Geoff (not the boyfriend Geoff, the Coop -- is this confusing or what?) were in line somewhat close to the front, so we joined them there, and not a moment too soon because within 5 minutes they'd put up the chains around the line to prevent butting in.
Oh the reason we all had to come and line up is because they only sell one ticket per person, to prevent scalping. Oh well, it's probably good to get up so early every once in awhile. maybe.
So the tickets start going on sale at 8, which is neat because I had thought it was supposed to be at 8:30 - and half an hour less in the early morning chill is a good thinkg. There were lots of foreigners in line - I guess we all want the cheap tic kets, ha ha. Ok, so these tickets are for seats at the very back of the stadium, but actually they're quite good. And they only set ya back Y2,100 ($25) - not bad for a potential 8 hours of entertainment!!
Now we headed out for breakfast at a French café-type restaurant. Simon and I did a CD trade, oh wow, I love this trade thing. Good music, free. Sharing the wealth, all that stuff. Hmm.
Ooo, I had French toast for breakfast, yummmy! It was good, but not enough! Anyway, we were there for awhile, we were figuring out how to kill time until we wanted to watch Sumo. Martin had to go to the Canadian embassy, and Geoff needed to go as well, so they headed out over there. Yuka wanted to go to Akihabara (Electric Town) to check out her competition's products, so she left, and that left Simon and I, and we wanted to go see the Sumo museum. So we set out to find the place, and discover t hat it's closed during Sumo tournaments. Oh well, so much for that. Instead, we go into downtown Tokyo. First stop is the Yaesu Book Centre, where I bought a book on JavaBeans for work (to be reimbursed, of course) and a couple of postcards. Oo, I got one with all these Sumo diagrams on it - the winning moves. I'll put it in here on the next page [ed note: I'll put it up here as soon as possible!]
Next we head over to the Imperial Palace because Simon has never been there. Would you believe that.. the guy who's lived in Tokyo and whose parents live in Tokyo, hasn't been. Shameful ;) We had to go quickly though - through the East Palace Gard ens and up to Yasukuni Jinja. I got my first fortune of the year, and had Simon translate it for me (how useful!) - I don't remember it perfectly, but I recall that everything seemed to go something like this: "It'll be bad now, but better later". Yeah, perfect.
Now it's about noon and time to head over to the Sumo tournament! First we buy lunch at a Family Mart, meet Yuka, and head on in to the stadium where Geoff and Martin are already waiting. It seems taht the embassy was closed... hahahaha. No luck f or us!
We head up to our back row seats - the place is big, but there are barely any people. There's a reason for this of course. It's because there are 4 or 5 different divisions in Sumo - they put wrestlers of equal level in the same divisions - and the y start off with the lower divisions and work their way up to the top during the day.
But this is a good thing for us because you're allowed to sit in empty seats until the actual owners arrive. What this means is that we could go down to the very expensive seats (Y100,000 = $1,200 per 4 seats) which are right close to the stage, and sit there for awhile. So we did. Until 3, when we thought we should go back up because they were getting to the top 2 divisions, and that's when people would probably show up.
OK now I should explain Sumo itself. Luckily Simon knows tons about it so I could pick his brain. I was probably very annoying, but it's so interesting! So first of all I suppose the best way to describe Sumo is that it's a form of wrestling, wher e the objective is to get your oponent either onto the ground (there's no "count" like in WWF!), or to get him out of the "ring" on the stage. The stage itself (the douyo) is a 2 foot tall platform made of mud. On this square platform is a circle of rop e stuck to the ground. This is the "ring" - and since the rope is probably only 15 cms tall, you may think it is easy to get your oponent out of the ring. Yeah whatever. But I'll get to that later. Now, I think I should describe the wrestlers themselv es.
Actually there are 2 things that probably stand out to most gaijin (foreigners) about Sumo, and both have to do with the wrestlers. First is the wrestlers' size - weight and height is a definite advantage. If I remember correctly, the average weight is around 180 kgs, and the height around 200 cms. But there was even a guy there that was something like 230 cms tall and 230 kgs!!! Wooo hah! That's not big, that's HUGE!
The second widely recognized trait would probably be their garb. Basically, they wear something barely larger than a G-string - the belt around the waist is wider though, because the belt is often what the oponent grabs in order to throw the wrestle r out of the ring. Hm, of course this isn't like one big celebrated strip join - keep in mind their weight. Ah, but they don't all look like big flabby couch potatoes either, I mean, these guys have MUSCLE dude.
On with the show. There are many different parts to a Sumo match, it seems. The wrestlers are led out to the ring very quietly (well, with no big hooplah) while some other match is going on, and they sit very quietly on a cushion on the floor on op posite sides of the douyo (stage). When it is their turn to wrestle, a man dressed in traditional clothing comes onto the douyo holding a fan, and sings (yes, sings) out the names of the 2 wrestlers. He then leaves the douyo, and the ref (dressed in old traditional clothing too), and the 2 wrestlers all step up. Now this is the neat part. The wrestlers have 5 minutes (well, 5 minutes if they're in the top division, less time in lower divisions) to do all this ceremonial stuff. What does this include .. hmm.. well first of all, they each go to a corner of the fing and "show off" their flexibility - what I mean is they kinduv rock from side to side, doing leg lifts really high. They do this slowly, and in unison. Then they walk to the centre and do t he same thing. And then it begins. NOt the match -- yet. The match starts when both wrestlers mutually agree they are ready (but they don't agree verbally, they seem to just know) - they sort of look at eachother - maybe get down into the starting posi tion (which happens to resemble the football starting position a bit) but they rarely start then. Usually one of them will get up and the other will follow - they each go back to their corner of the ring where they may grab a handfull of salt and throw i t onto the douyo. (The salt, btw, is only used in the top divisions.) Then they go back to the centre, maybe get back into the starting position.. and repeat the process again. This can go on for 5 minutes, and surprisingly, it usually does. And somet imes it's a very tense process! One guy will pretend he's ready to fight, and at the last minute get back up and walk to the corner!! Quite crazy.
Then, the match starts. This is probably the quickest part of the whole process - some are as short as 5 seconds - and they rarely last longer than a minute. But they are exciting! They kinduv rush eachother, and try all these different ways to ge t the other guy down or out of the ring. And the ref, in the meantime, is yelling and yelling - usually encouragement. There are at least 20 different ways of winning a Sumo match (different throws, etc), just check out the postcard [ed note: not up ye t]
And when the match is over, the loser bows silently to the winner, and leaves the ring. The winner then leaves as well. No big celebration or anything, it's all quite dignified and practiced.
Oh, let me explain the tournaments. There are 6 Sumo tournies a year, with 3 of them in Tokyo, one in Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagano each. Each tournament lasts 15 days, and it's a round-robin type thing, so each day is packed with matches. And the same Sumo wrestlers enter every tournament, and their division placement is dependent on their ranking, so fans are very familiar with each wrestler (in the top divisions) and their records. It's really neat.
Now, just say you wanted to be a Sumo wrestler. Hmmm, not so easy. They scout for the wrestlers in middle school, and they pick the really athletic kids, obviously. Then they each join a stable, which is is a Sumo training house, kinda. Ev ery wrestler belongs to some Sumo house, where he does all his training and eating (I think). These stables are situated in Tokyo around the Sumo stadium, I believe. And some stables are better than others, but not sooo much, because not all the great w restlers come from the same stable.
Hm, I've probably gone into enough detail about Sumo [ed note: yeeeeah, after typing all this...], even though I haven't even described what I saw, or the wrestlers that were there! Well, all the matches were pretty exciting - the higher divisions especially though. It only took me a half an hour or so to really get into it.. clappin' gaspin' "yeah"-in' - fun.
SUmo ended at about 6 sharp, and we waited in thhe stadium for as long as we could (until someone actually announced over the loudspeakers: "You in the back row, leave!") in order to not get crushed in the line-up for the train, but that couldn't be avoided. There were SO many people, like sardines!
We headed over to Shinjuku to meet up with Marie (a French girl who works in Hirooka) and 3 of her friends. We'd decided that we would all like to go see 'Titanic', and since it's a 3 hour movie, we decided to look for a theatre playing it and then grab dinner and eat it in the theatre (which, according to Martin, is perfectly acceptable here). But, we went to a few theatres, and their last showings were all before 6:30!! Crazy! On a Saturday! Argh, so being too late, we started the search for a restaurant that could fit 8 (not easy, at dinnertime in Shinjuku) and found the Spaghetti Factory in the basement of some building. And although it was just spaghetti, it was yum-yum-yum. Ha ha, I was sitting with Martin, Geoff, and N... (Canadian Coop from Uni of Manitoba - one of Marie's friends), so we had a nice long debate about the uses of "ga" and "wa" in Japanese. Mannnn, it just muddled my brain.
After dinner, 2 of Marie's friends and Geoff left, and the rest of us went over to Dubliner's, this really packed Irish Pub that Simon and I have gone to before. In fact, I owed Simon a beer. We had drinks and yelled (no way you could just talk in that place), and at 10 or so we left. Marie and N... went home, and Martin, Simon and I made our way back to Hino cuz, well, we weren't done partying yet.
We stop off at the Lawson's and buy food (dessert!) and drinks to mix with the abnormal amount of alcohol I've been accumulating in my apartment. Ooo, Martin brought me some umeshuu (plum wine) - thhe stuff from that commercial with the drunk lady who keeps on going "but it's my mother that loves it.." "but it's my father that loves it.." Hahaha, and it really has plums on the bottom! I was wondering if the plums were like tequila worms.. y'know, *super* concentrated. But neither Martin nor Simon knew, and none of us thought to try (with good reason, I think!)
So we drank some; played music and stuff. Oh, at 3 or so my doorbell rang, and I finally met my right-hand neighbour... seems as though the music was getting too loud. Oh yeah whatever, *I'm* not the one doing laundry at 6AM on weekends.
Oh, we wanted to do tequila shots (of course) but we had no lemons. But Simon had mikans (mandarin oranges) and I had lemon juice, so we improvised. Hahaha. This was, obviously, after we'd finished off the wine and started in the whisky.
Anyway, it was reeeally fun, those 2 are fun! Martin clumked out at 4 or so, and Simon and I stayed up 'til about 5:30, when Simon left to catch his train because he has a meeting in Nagano this afternoon! Good luck to him, and sleep to me.
Sunday January 25, 1998: 6pm
Mannnnn, I am TIRED! Got up at 9:30 (3.5 hrs sleep?!?) because Martin was *determined* to see 'Titanic', and I was gonna go with him. So we go over to Tachikawa to find a place that's showing it before 11 since Martin had to leave at 2:30 from Shin juku. But, no place in Tachikawa (well, the one place we checked..) was playing it before 12:30. So, being determined, we headed over to Hachioji to find a place there. Still, nothing before noon, so we settled on eating at a Subway instead (a luxury o ver here). Got a Sub-club card - I wanna know if I can use it in Canada. I'm gonna try, at least.
Now Martin needed to get a Godzilla mask for a friend of his in Canada (I hear that Godzilla masks are all the rage over there) and he was pretty sure they had Godzilla masks in Asakusa. (I don't know why or how he knew that, but I believe him I gue ss) so he went out there really quick because he had a bus to catch at 2:30.
So I stayed in Hachioji because I had a teeny bit of shopping to do, and I was considering going and seeing Titanic all by myself, after spending a good portion of my weekend either attempting to see it, or talking about attempting to see it. In the end, I didn't get any of my shopping done, and managed to miss the first 15-20 minutes of 'Titanic' while I was at it. Of course, I didn't *know* I had missed the first part until I got there with my ticket that I'd actually bought before the movie star ted, and realized that I'd gotten the time wrong and had been aimlessly wandering Hachioji when I could've been watchin' the movie. Long sentence.
Ok so 'Titanic'. Loved it! I don't know.. I'd actually been expecting to NOT like it, but I thought it was great! It made me cry even! Not just the love-story part, but just how the boat sank, really, when you realize that it's true.. woah. And. . [next paragraph cut because I don't want to give away the movie to those who haven't seen it yet]
Well after that I had this happy-yet-sad thing going oh, but it was such a bee-yoo-tiful sunny day taht my sadness quickly disappeared (it was just a movie, after all), and I decided to walk home, and I just got home a couple of minutes ago. As I sa
id, I am TIRED. Y'know what that means..
Monday January 26, 1998: 9pm
So I heard from Martin today that, first of all, he didn't even get close to finding a Godzilla mask (and I had seen one in Hachioji within 5 minutes of him leaving) - he almost missed his bus, and then didn't see 'Titanic' when he got back like he'd
semi-intended. Ha ha. Ah, I told him I'd see it again, if he wanted to see it when he's next in Tokyo. Oh and Simon slept through his meetin in Nagano.. what a bunch.
Tuesday January 27, 1998: 9pm
Man, 2.5 months, that's it! I didn't quite realize it, but I got an email from Hidaka-san today saying 2.5 months. Ack!!
Wednesday January 28, 1998: 9:30pm
Woah, time seems even shorter now. Next week is already February, and because there's a holiday on the 11th, and I'm in Nagano for the 18th and 25th, I'm only going to have one calligraphy lesson! Basically, I can count the remaining lessons on one hand.. ahhhh!
And I'm suddenly being barraged with questions like "When are you coming back?" and "When do you leave?" and "How much longer?".. It all gives me reason to panic!
Anyway, the reason Sensei and I were discussing how many lessons I had left was because I'm going to do one really big nice calligraphy before I go, and I need to spend as many lessons as possible on it. Tonight we chose what I would do, "kotobuki" - which is a word meaning "Good Luck! Long life!" Only one character too, and I'll most probably do it in the really old style of calligraphy that looks neat-o. Usually I do the "kaisho" style.
Well I don't start that one 'til next week. This week I did "koi no saiten" which means "ice festival". Appropriate for Nagano we thought!
Oh when I left Sensei have me these funny little pouch things that if you shake 'em they're like hot pouches, and you can stick them in your pocket to keep you warm, or sleep with one on your stomach, etc. Anyway, this thing WORKS man! I think I al
most burnt myself while biking home!! I wonder how long the thing lasts..
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