I’ve been very excited to watch the Tachiai blog and the sumo community grow. The knowledge base and passion that you all have for sumo has been awesome. I’m always glued to my WordPress app to see what new posts and comments are out and I frequently watch the map fill in, showing all the countries people come from.
It’s exciting to meet you all here in cyberspace but I’d also be interested to see if you all could meet in the real world, too. It seems like there are a lot of sumo fans around LA, London, Sydney, as well as Tokyo. Visits to the site from DC falls after NYC and San Francisco…but before Chicago, surprisingly. Anyway, I just thought I’d put this post out there to hopefully prompt some of you all into engaging each other IRL. If interested, feel free to put out a feeler in the comments below, and hopefully some in the community can organize a happy hour to get to meet some of your fellow sumo fans.
Live viewing parties like we do at bars for NFL games is hard given the time zone differences…but I could imagine a resourceful individual bringing in a tablet to stream Jason’s videos or Kintamayama…or hopefully someone out there owns a bar and wouldn’t mind putting sumo up on the big screen on occasion? If one happens, I’d love to hear about it – here, or on Twitter.
Really enjoy this blog as its tough to get good English coverage of Sumo. Need to work on my Japanese!
Me too, especially my kanji, though. My kanji is terrrrible.
Nowadays Kanji shouldn’t be much of a problem, especially if you’re on a desktop. You can install Rikai-chan (Firefox) or Rikai-kun (Chrome) and read Japanese pretty well (though some expressions are missing from the JMEDict, the Jim Breen dictionary on which those extensions rely).
Sumo might be enough to revive my old video-game Japanese, which was never any good…
If video games and sumo are involved…that’s one hell of a night, especially if it devolves into a booze-fueled amateur exhibition in the parking lot. Not that I’d encourage that.
I would be totally up for a video game and sumo night, even if I have to pony up for a monthly stream account. I’m also in the rusty Japanese category, I need a lot more practice before I can understand the commentators fully.
For fans in LA, does anyone know if there are any bars that already show the tournaments live? Pacific Standard Time actually lines up incredibly nicely with the tournament for an opening/closing weekend late-night bar meetup.
There’s got to be quite a few out there. I was in Torrance a few months back and there was a tonkatsu place next door and several Japanese stores in the mall. And shorter flights too. And 70 degree weather…I’m a bit jealous.
I’m also in the OC/LA region, and this was the same thing that we were wondering about during this basho. Admittedly the makuuchi bouts run until past 1 AM most nights until the end, but that’s still still doable for a bar. We’ve been to a couple of restaurants that have banzuke or even sumo calendars on the walls, but never any TVs showing sumo so far.
It does seem like there are quite a lot of us here in LA and that’s a great shout for Torrance, Andy. Worth digging into. I’d be surprised if there’s not a spot in Little Tokyo that would show the matches as well. If anyone does find this, I would certainly love to attend.
I have a post about another LA based sumo-friendly spot coming up soon….
So I do end up in San Diego a few times per quarter. When I lived there a couple of years ago, I was working on getting a place to let me have a “sumo party” in the back room, and have some Chanko and a good amount of beer / sake. I had gotten them to consider it, even though they thought a giant Scottish looking fellow wanting a sumo party might be a prelude to something really strange.
I did spend quite a bit of time looking throughout San Diego, and for the most part, the Japanese community seems to have decided that nobody likes Sumo, and if some American likes sumo, it’s really damn odd. Maybe LA has better outlook.
Shinsengumi group has a Chanko restaurant in Torrance, and were the food purveyors at the local USA Sumo championships in Long Beach. They might be down with group events.
I don’t really know of any “sports bars” in Torrance, though that bar in the hotel near the Mitsuwa was doing a nomihodai beer garden before. Maybe visiting businessmen want to watch sumo too? Hard to say.
If the root of sumo wuzn’t evil then I’d b mor into it. I’m bored AF in Chicago burbs so its like the last thing I had to try to enjoy. But simply, their getting big and fat from eating meat -murdered peaceful animals, which is wrong and fukt up. If they were vegan sumo wrestlers I’d love it. Evrythng in this world is lies and evil bs, and if the source of their energy is meat and animal products then its unnecessary animal cruelty and murder. Not kewl, not OK, so its not all fun good times.
Spiritually and consciously evolved,
Vegan Jesus
The Japanese view of the universe, and all the creatures in it is very different from our own.
well, this isn’t a streaming party, but if anyone is going over for the January 2018 Basho let me know! I have flights and accomodation booked for the second week of the Basho (and an extra week of bumming around in Tokyo). Now I just need to pray to the Sumo gods ( or very kind Japanese friends) for tickets!
Definitely going – but we won’t cross paths as it will be in week 1. Next time!
If I attempt this twice a year I may go broke … I really need to live there!
So I am planning on setting up a meetup group for Sumo fans to meet in San Francisco and watch the first matches on a late Saturday night at the beginning of the next basho. I have to find a place in Japantown that is actually showing the matches on the All Japan channel, which is kindof expensive through Comcast. Anyway, are there any other people in San Francisco who would be interested in this?
That would be an awesome venue. (Is that anywhere near the Japanese Tea Garden I went to as a kid?)
There’s just lots of bars and restaurants there. Certainly at least one would show it. It’s not particularly near the tea garden though, no…that’s in the park, a few miles away.
Talking about community in general, has there been perhaps any talk of a Tachiai Discord channel or other chat community for sumo outside the standard forums?