Over the past two weeks, the sumo association has been preparing the arena in Nagoya to host the July tournament. As of the end of the day Thursday, July 7th, everything is more or less ready for the dohyo matsuri to bless the fighting platform and mark the start of the basho.
Below are some photos from the NSK’s twitter feed that help provide some of the action around transforming the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium into the home of sumo for the month of July. It promises to be hotter than blazes, inside and out, and Team Tachiai will be bringing you daily coverage starting Saturday.
I’ve been to Nagoya in July – about this time several years ago… got to be hotter than Hades in that gym. I can’t imagine with a crowd of 8000 sweaty attendees how it isn’t a wretched place to to wrestle in. It’s always seemed like the Nagoya basho has more slippery footing than others – and it surely isn’t only due to the particular Nagoya clay underfoot…