Welcome Dear Readers.

The crew here at Tachiai would like to thank all of our readers, who take time from their day to stop by and read what we have to say about sumo. There has been a huge influx of new readers from reddit and other aggregators, and some of you may be asking “Who are these guys, and what are they doing?”

Tachiai was started by Andy, who ran it solo for some time. He posted some great commentary and analysis when his schedule permitted. As an avid reader, I was eager to engage him on topics of each basho. Finally, he decided to have me write as well, as I was such a constant visitor and commentator. Since then we have added other contributors that kick in posts and comments when they can.

The site is strictly amateur – no one here makes any money from our work on the site, or the site in general. We post and write and contribute out of our love for sumo, and our firm belief that sumo can be a sport that is globally popular. The primary barrier to this result is the language gap between Japanese and the rest of the world. None of us are experts at Japanese, but we do try to struggle through it when we can. Why? It lets us share the sport more broadly than what the limited reports that can be had by NHK or the Japanese newspaper’s English sites.

So as we are now just hours away from the start of Nagoya – welcome to Tachiai, and thank you so much for visiting our site.