Pauline's Birthday Week but I'm Living in Tokyo
January 24, 2008
Sumo Saturday
The girls and I planned on spending a little time in Shibuya before the Sumo tournament, but ran late and only had time for brunch at Starbucks. Thank goodness Sumi and Misako from school came along to give us a few background points about the ceremonial parts. I also got a booklet with the rules of the game.
The dohyo, or ring, is 15 feet in diameter, but the platform is 18 square feet, and has two feet of packed clay underneath. The surface is covered with a thin layer of sand, which they wet before matches, by sprinkling water. You can win by pushing the opponent outside the ring (a single toe, or just a heel outside the ring ends the match), or you can win by making any part of the other person's body touch the ground (even the tip of your finger counts!).
Before the match, the rikishi (fighters) repeatedly come from their respective seats at the corners of the ring, do demonstrations of strength and flexibility to intimidate one another (including very impressive leg lifts), and then go back to their corners. In the lower divisions this goes on for less time (maybe like four minutes) until the ref or wrestlers decide to start the match; in the upper division, I think they have seven minutes to do these intimidation exercises.
The matches are surprisingly quick: once they stop flexing muscles and stretching legs, it usually took less than one minute for the match to end. The ones that were longer (maybe like 45 seconds) were extremely exciting. I will be looking for classmates' blogs that have better videos than my own. It was hard to really get into the matches since we weren't familiar enough to cheer for anyone, but it was still awesome.
The rikishi are trained from a young age (lots of eating, of course, but also TONS of strength training) on places called farms. I look forward to visiting a farm, where I can watch them train.
Run gaijin, run!
The real adventure was after sumo. We tried to return to Shibuya, got the most lost I have been on the subway since I arrived, were then sidetracked by hunger, and - long story short - split a JPY2500 cab to Roppongi and had to smuggle out a rack of BBQ ribs when we were informed that the JPY 30 ribs John ordered could not be taken home.
After hearing rumors that the police here reserve the right to detain for ten days without probable cause, we nervously filed out of the Hard Rock Cafe, sneaking peeks to see if anyone had noticed that the six-foot tall gaijin had miraculously eaten his ribs in the ten minutes between being denied a take-out container and getting the bill, or that there were no bones at all on John's plate - just a few smudges of BBQ sauce.
Justice is not blind, religion ensures fairness
Monday (1.21.08) we visited the Supreme Court of Japan. The SCJ was built in 1974, by an architect who won a design contest. The criteria for the successful designer included, among other things, a building that would exhibit a sense of severity. The building was built from tons of marble, some imported from Korea and Poland, with sharp edges, and cold.
In the main entrance, was a statue of Justice. One could immediately notice that she was not blindfolded, and also that her face somewhat resembled a buddha. The tour guide explained that a blindfold is not needed, since this particular depiction of Justice has a diety's features, and that the spiritual aspect of the diety will ensure fair and just outcomes. (We were not allowed to take a photo of the statue.)
The SC is not used very often, but is open to the public. You can grab a seat to view hearings, even in the great hall when all 15 SC justices convene to hear a constitutional issue (though seating is limited), and the library is open to the public as well. Interestingly, the archive of US law in the SCJ's library is almost as large as the archive of Japanese law.
Something was awry
Between classes, Christine and I decided to go for a bite Wednesday night. She takes me to an alley full of restaurants, and - as always - it's a lottery. We ended up at a yakitori place; I got stir fry to cook at the table and Christine ordered the meat-on-sticks, which always look delicious when you pass by the advertisements in front of the restaurant.
Since Christine can't get a break when it comes to meals in Japan apparently, four out of five skewers contain very interesting types of meat. Despite the fact that both of our cultures (Puerto Rican and Vietnamese) traditionally eat all different parts of the animal, neither of us could really identify what the parts were, except for the skewer with the six chicken hearts on it. Instead of finishing it, she helped me with my stir fry and got some potato wedges and ketchup (available everywhere). As I was paying at the counter, I suddenly saw an indication of the eatery's specialty, which might have been helpful to see before ordering.
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