🌐 Location: Ginowan, Okinawa
Today was the penultimate day of the Jungyo. Almost 3000 people came to the venue today to see some sumo action.
Among them, apparently, many gaijin enjoying a bit of Japanese tradition
Daiamami seems to have found his alarm clock and now shows up to morning practice like a good boy:
Just as in Miyakojima, the top 16 rankers fought in elimination format. This time, the winner was Ozeki Takayasu, who has beaten Onosho by hikiotoshi.
Here is the NHK summary of the day: Shokkiri and some bouts. Notably, Ishiura being Ishiura. He is probably telling himself that’s a hassou-tobi. But we all know what that is:
But this short summary won’t be complete without the following little candy. Kiddie sumo. This rather cheeky kid is asked to pick his opponent. He picks… Aminishiki, no less, who is not on the dohyo and is rather surprised.
But fansa is fansa. And Uncle obliges.
大相撲沖縄巡業最高でした😎
最後のしめが自分と言う😁
最高でした✌️ pic.twitter.com/5KBzBUIHb7— KenTO👍 (@f8ao2) December 16, 2017
Who needs Shokkiri when there’s Aminishiki around? :-)
Tomorrow is the last day of the Jungyo!
I so wish I could have done kiddie sumo when I was a kid.
I kinda want to do amateur sumo even now if I could go up for a bout against Aminishiki. He’s such a great guy!
Good to see some fellow gaijin enjoying the jungyo. :)
I wish they would publicize it a bit more. I never knew about jungyo until I got serious about sumo.
Frankly, I don’t think the gaijin are the target audience. The “Beyond 2020” event was targeted at foreigners, and I suppose there will be more and more events like that as the Olympics draw near. But the Jungyo is about developing community ties, and most of the locations are hell holes.
What changed between 2005-08 and now? Cause there were foreign jungyo special events back then. Was it just the financial crisis plus the match fixing scandals that put a crimp in the tour budget? Or was it a change in marketing leadership that made them all but give up on the gaijin market?
The pics I’ve seen of the Vegas event look just as well attended as any of the modern tours. And people seem to have fun cheering on the local amateur sumo bouts and Japan pro wrestling over here too… they need to do something before their market dies out in 50 years or so.
Foreign events are typically by invitation, either on the initiative of a local promoter or as part of some (government-backed) cultural goodwill event. I’m not sure if the Association has ever ventured out of Japan on their own dime. So there’s not really any coherent plan for exporting the sumo experience – and during the scandal years nobody was interested anyway, while now they’re swamped with jungyo applications at home.
Keep in mind that only a few years ago they weren’t even posting makushita-and-under results of honbasho in English/romaji on the official site. There’s a lot in sumo where the NSK’s default position is “that can’t possibly be interesting to non-Japanese people”.
Aminishiki is a real treasure. I’m glad he’s getting one more run at the top of sumo. The sport is better for it.
Man Aminishiki is the best. Fantastic comic timing, the other rikishi were loving it.
The crowd also loved it, and the kid himself was happy. Considering that Aminishiki was caught by surprise and didn’t have time to put on his brace – you can see him checking his knee there – all I can do is respect the man.
I misread this as “you can see him checking his knee is still there” and I’m not sure I was that far off the truth.
🤣🤣🤣
Kaisei wasn’t in on the joke it seems.