Tuesday 14 July 2015
Accommodation: Hotel MyStays Nagoya-Sakae booked on easytobook.
£28.21 for superior double room (given the change in the rate of Yen, this will be more expensive now but what a bargain!)
Buying sumo tickets
While planning our trip to Japan, one of the very ‘Japanese’ things that we wanted to experience was a sumo wrestling match. I had a look online for reputable companies to buy tickets through and found buysumotickets.com. We checked their list of Grand Sumo Tournaments and discovered that there would be a tournament in Nagoya taking place while we were in the country. We’d had no plans to visit the city, but added it to our itinerary.
I communicated with Jeff at buysumotickets.com in April (when pre-orders were available) and bought two Arena ‘A’ tickets for ¥12,850 (around £95). We paid via PayPal and he posted these to us in Scotland before we left (along with Hanshin Tigers baseball tickets which we bought for a game in Osaka).
Arriving in Nagoya
The journey from Kinosaki to Nagoya took about 3.5 hours and was covered by our JR Passes. Nagoya has a subway with six lines so it wasn’t too difficult to navigate. When we arrived, we got the subway to the nearest station to our hotel and had a short walk. It wasn’t far but it was so hot and we were lugging cases and bags so it felt it. Before we had left for Japan, a few people had warned us about how hot it would be (failing to mention all the rain!) and the temperature in Nagoya must have been what they were talking about. Phew!
We checked in to our hotel and, although the room was very small, we were very pleased with what we got for less than £30 a night!
Sumo wrestling
Having read up on sumo wrestling, I knew the matches started early in the morning with the lower ranked wrestlers and went on all day, with the pro wrestlers later in the afternoon. We’d initially thought of going in the morning when a lot of the seats at the front wouldn’t be occupied yet so we would be able to get a better view. However, by the time we travelled from Kinosaki and faffed about, it was 4.30pm when we arrived at Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium.
We showed our tickets at the entrance and were taken to our seats. The place was packed when we arrived and I doubt we would have found them otherwise. The sumo wrestling takes place in a huge square room, with seating all around and the ring right in the middle with a roof suspended to the ceiling, over the ring. Seats right at the front are on the floor (and possibly at risk of being squashed by a sumo wrestler falling off the stage…) and as you get further back, there are small areas for four people to reserve to sit on the floor and then further back (where were were) is actual seats. The Gymnasium seats about 7,400 people so although we were quite far back, we could easily see the ring.
Seeing the ring was one thing, but understanding what was going on was another… The results of the matches are up on the wall but in Japanese characters. When we arrived we were handed a sheet of paper in English which listed all the matches taking place on the day. For each wrestler, the number of matches that they had won/lost over the course of the tournament were listed. When a new match started, we tried to listen out for the wrestler’s names in the Japanese announcements but it was difficult so we generally didn’t know what was happening!
I was surprised how little actual wrestling took place. As each new two opponents entered the ring, they spent about 10 minutes on the rituals of glaring at the other wrestler, stamping their feet and throwing salt around (I’m sure there is much more to this that I don’t understand) before starting to wrestle. I just read on a beginners guide to sumo wrestling that there is now a four minute time limit for the pre-fight rituals but it seemed like longer than that! The wrestler who has even one toe out of the ring or touches the floor with anything other than their feet is the loser. So after at least four minutes of stomping around and throwing salt, the fighting lasted for about 10 seconds!
Between each bout, people holding brightly coloured adverts would walk around the ring in a sort of commercial break!
After watching for a while, I decided to have a wander around the arena and see what was on sale. A lot of sumo merchandise and stalls serving food. I bought some drinks and edamame beans and went back to our seats to find David.
The senior sumo wrestlers started at 3.40pm and I had though these matches would go on until about 8pm. However, at about 6pm, the matches ended for the day. Tournaments are 15 days long and we had attended on the 3rd day so the fans and wrestlers still had another 12 days to go. We slowly filed outside with the other (99% Japanese) fans. There was a big display outside the Gymnasium which (I think) listed the results of the day.
We saw people gathering beside a car park and stayed around to see what they were waiting for. The fans were waiting for the wrestlers to drive away so they could cheer and take pictures. These guys are big stars in Japan!
Gaijin in Nagoya
After feeling like total gaijin (foreigners) at the sumo wrestling and not understanding what was going on, we went on the hunt for dinner. We had been in Japan for almost two weeks by this point and had had no problems at all finding food that we could understand or recognise – either by plastic food displayed in windows, food we could pick off a conveyor belt or menus with pictures of food. However, in Nagoya, we were stumped! We tried the very handy TripAdvisor ‘near me now’ function (while hanging around a 7/11 for wifi) and looked at loads of menus in restaurants with no luck. It took us about an hour to find somewhere with menus with pictures of food that we could point to! I don’t know where it was to recommend it but they served delicious ramen and dumplings.
Denny’s, Japan style
We had spotted a Denny’s across the road from our hotel. After two weeks of traditional Japanese breakfasts, we were keen to have something Western and headed there in the morning. The ‘usual’ Denny’s breakfast food was available (and ordered!) such as eggs and pancakes but you had Japanese options of sides such as miso soup. Denny’s with a Japanese twist!
Leaving Nagoya
After breakfast, we went back to the hotel, grabbed our luggage and rushed to the station to catch our train towards Kawiguchiko. Our trip to Nagoya was good, and it was worth it to experience sumo wrestling but we definitely could have seen more of the city. For example, Nagoya Castle is right beside the Gymnasium where the sumo tournament is held so we could have added in a trip to that on the way. However, our only plan in Nagoya was to see the sumo wrestling so mission accomplished. Would I go to another sumo tournament? Probably not as I found it pretty difficult to follow what was going on and I didn’t find it an exciting sport like the baseball. Maybe it gets more exciting towards the end of the tournament. However, I’m really glad that we got to experience a very Japanese activity.
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