Japanese Language

Andy’s Trip to Japan 2024: Part I

Andy Japanese Culture, Japanese Language, Japanese Society, Jungyo (巡業)

Andy’s lightning fast, 2-week vacation to Japan is in the books. It was an amazing trip and I am already nagging my wife about when we can go back. I have proposed this coming winter but she’s pushing for next winter. We shall see. Tokyo is the same old Tokyo I fell in love with in 2003 but much has changed in the seven years since my last trip. That means new places to discover or new reasons to re-discover familiar old haunts.

This series of posts will deal with our trip to Japan. Not all of it will be strictly sumo related as a large chunk of it will be about traveling to Tokyo and hopefully suggestions for how newbies can get around, and particularly the non-Japanese-speaking newbies. I’ve got 10 pages of content so far and I can’t stop typing. There are plans of maps, data visualizations and loads of pictures. We will see what makes the final edits. But I will make this first quick post about a very simple question:

Why Go Now?

The primary reason for the visit was personal. We had not seen my in-laws, Teams and Zoom excepted, since before the pandemic shut Japan’s borders. When the borders reopened there was a boom in tourism which has been boosted by the absurd yen-dollar exchange rate. That has made flights expensive and available seats difficult to find for the past couple of years. Add in the fact that inflation has been very low in Japan over the past twenty years and it becomes a bigger draw — even with the recent 2.5-3.5% post-pandemic inflation prices over there are remarkably similar to, but just a little higher than, what I remember from the early 2000s. So, it seemed the entire planet has spent the last couple of years booking flights to Japan.

I don’t like to throw out an argument without showing a bit of data to support it. This data is taken from the World Bank and shows consumer prices in the US and Japan, based at 2010. On the lefthand side of the graph, the dramatic uphill climb for Japan illustrates the rapid inflation of the 1970s and bursting of the bubble economy but look at the remarkably flat prices from the 1990s to the late 2010s. Ultimately, I look at this and see that I can spend a little bit more on yakiniku and yakitori that I was spending 20 years ago while making with a higher salary to boot.

Anyway, the low prices may not be around for much longer, as you see that uptick over the last several years. The comparison is not meant to illustrate $1 of ice cream equals $100 yen of ice cream. It is to simply contrast overall trends in consumer prices, especially since inflation has been such a big topic everywhere. This graph gives us a look at those trends in the US versus the trend in Japan. I could add more countries but most readers seem to be Americans and that is what I know but I can definitely try to add more countries to the graph if others are interested in seeing it. The World Bank’s website has great data like this.

If you have not gone to Japan yet, and you’re still on the fence, you might want to hop off that fence soon and take the plunge. Economically speaking, your dollar will go pretty far and ticket prices for flights are starting to come back to Earth. Inflation is starting to kick in a bit over there so the time to party appears to be now, while the exchange rate is massively in our favor. It has already swung from over 160 to 147 in the past few weeks.

On the other hand…

Why Not Go Now?

We very nearly passed up this opportunity because we knew that summer in Tokyo would be hot. We had heard temperatures were regularly in the upper 90s to up over 100. That sounded similar to what I had experienced 20 years ago but friends had been telling us, “this year’s worse.” As it turned out, our entire trip featured highs above 90°F with lows around 80°F. Scorching!!

To combat the heat, many people would wear rings that you can put in the refrigerator or freezer and wear around your neck. You can find them easily in stores. The cheap, old-school, “ojichan” method that I saw in use was to wear rolled up tenugui around the neck. Tenugui are hand towels, basically what you wave around at sumo tournaments. They can be used to simply block the sun or to hold the ice/cooling packs. Or, as Daieisho demonstrated, you can use the tenugui to just look cool. I would not advise going out on the town in only a towel, though. As tempting as it may be.

Popular consumer electronics this year seriously include portable fans to wear around your neck. When we were at Disney, I saw some people walking around with full-blown desk fans. Recently there have been consumer warnings that damaged fan batteries might explode while the user is wearing them. I like to beat the heat in edible, and non-combustable, fashion. Many vending machines on train platforms were selling ice cream! Those out in the sticks near Nishonoseki-beya were unfortunately sold out.

I enjoyed this one on the Tachikawa monorail while heading to the Jungyo (more of which in later posts). As you can see from the picture of the vending machine below, it cost me 200 yen, or roughly $1.35. Most were 180. There were a bunch of good choices.

A buck-and-a-quarter for ice cream in the heat. It is not exactly a massive pint of Breyer’s but an acceptable option in the heat. A pint from the grocery store back home would set me back $5.50 so I could buy four of these. I should have bought four of these. Damn it. Ah, we have to live with the decisions we make. Anyway, I swear, this country is magical. Why can’t we have ice cream vending machines?

Bottom line, I have successfully turned one reason NOT to go to Japan into a reason to go. So, what’s next? As a sumo fan, there’s no sumo tournament in August…well, at least no hon-basho. Our trip would begin as the Nagoya tournament ended and only last for two weeks. So that’s another major strike against going in August.

There is the Jungyo, though, so I wanted to check that out for myself. I did that, and the proof is in these pictures. There was also amateur sumo to enjoy, in the form of a middle-school championship at Kokugikan and a women’s high school tournament in Tachikawa, which I unfortunately missed.

I wanted to actually discover as many of the heya as I possibly could, as well as possibly meet sumo wrestlers. Check! I was also determined to support Shohozan and his yakiniku restaurant – and support many other suppliers of delicious sustenance. Check!

Lastly, I had an interview set up with the head priest at Ekōin Temple. Check! And that was a very interesting conversation. Mr. Honda is a lovely fellow and I hope you all will enjoy learning what I did about the temple and its role in the history of Grand Sumo.

Summary

So, in spite of no hon-basho, I felt that I peppered my trip with enough sumo for a two-week visit. Much more on these in future posts. Clearly, for us the yays outnumbered the nays with regard to going to Japan. If more of you are there now, or planning to go, or have been recently, feel free to share your experiences in the comments…especially those that are along the lines of, “I wish I knew this before I went.” My lessons learned about Jungyo covers an entire post in and of itself.

New Ad-free Streaming Sumo Option for Natsu

Andy Japanese Language, Japanese Society, Television ,

Jme.TV (pronounced Jay-mee), the exclusive North American streaming provider of NHK content, will offer a fourth channel exclusively for sumo content just in time for the May tournament. Two hours of live sumo will be available via the NHK World Premium channel and repeats of that sumo action (with English audio) will be streamed four times daily on the new channel. The service is described the image to the right. Tachiai welcomes this development from NHK Cosmomedia and their NHK parent company, unreservedly.

In the past, JapanTV was the only legitimate source of live sumo coverage in North America. That service required a cable subscription. In my experience, if you wanted TV in High Definition, that required extra bundles beyond the basic cable. Ultimately, I would be left subsiziding 500 channels I’d never watch just for one show or one channel.

JME was launched this year to replace the old JapanTV option with a streaming capability, direct to consumers at $25/mo. This effectively shutdown JapanTV at the beginning of April 2024. I don’t use Roku or Amazon Fire and I don’t watch via apps on my phone but those options are available. I have heard some users have complained about the fact that the new service is streamed and is not their usual cable package. To those who complain, I ask how many of their three remote controls do they use? And do they hate it when luddites like myself come over to visit and push the wrong “ON” button on the wrong remote to turn on the TV? (My daughter usually has fix my parents’ cable set up after I destroy it.) All of those remotes and all of those buttons when you probably use five, max.

There are three streaming channels as well as an “on-demand” option for various Japanese television series. Two of the channels are in Japanese and the third is the “NHK World” service that we were most familiar with. Jme Select is NHK content shifted for North American timezones. NHK Premium is Japanese with some programming (including live sumo) having English audio available. NHK World is…well..NHK World, the NHK’s English language channel. Until recently that had been available via broadcast in the MHZ networks. The new, sumo only channel is a welcome development!

For cord-cutters like myself, this has been quite the encouraging development, especially since the content is AD-FREE. We will continue to advocate for more sumo coverage. That case will be made easier with rapid uptake of the new streaming service. Let’s face it, if they see impressive viewer numbers on the exclusive sumo channel it’s my hope that they expand viewership to Juryo and the lower divisions and maybe even “off-season” special events, like retirement ceremonies and Jungyo.

I encourage viewers to comment here with their unfiltered reviews of the service. I started watching on senshuraku in March. Senshuraku offers 2.5 hours of live coverage which is a bit more than the 2 hours of day-to-day coverage. That is enough to watch makuuchi, no VPN or illicit stream needed. I’ve been a casual viewer of the service in the off-season, mostly of the news. But I have definitely found a few Japanese dramas and comedies to watch as I try to improve my own language skills. There have been a few bugs and glitches, generally quickly resolved. Earlier this week, the schedule for one of the channels was unavailable in the usual location but that was fixed. What has been your experience so far?

“He’s Got My Number!”

Andy Japanese Language, Visualization ,

I’ve got a new book about sumo, specifically sumo terms in Japanese, and I’ve been loving it. One new term for me is “Aikuchi ga warui” (or, conversely, Aikuchi ga ii). In Japanese it looks like this: 合い口が悪い. The term is used for a difficult opponent, one whom at your level you should be able to beat more frequently but you just can’t do it. In English, I think I’d equate it to someone who’s “got my number.” As an example, Kotoeko appears to have Wakatakakage’s number, as we can see in these tweets below:

Their rivalry is pretty young, having faced each other 7 times with Kotoeko winning 5 of their bouts. When I started drafting this article a few months ago, Wakatakakage was down 5-to-1. Wakatakakage actually claimed victory this July. And wouldn’t you know it, he also beat the other example I was going to use, Mitakeumi. Until July, he had gone 0-4. Even with this terrible July, he somehow figured out a way to beat Mitakeumi and Kotoeko, two rikishi he’d had difficulty with previously.

So, what’s another example? Let’s take a look at Shodai. He has beaten Takarafuji 14 times in 17 bouts. But Kaisei, of all people, has his number. Shodai has never beaten Kaisei, not counting fusen. The first visualization that I’m releasing here is the heatmap. The size of the box indicates the number of bouts they’ve faced each other, with the most going from top-left to the least at the bottom right, with a minimum of three bouts. That minimum kicks out a lot of the young guns and low rankers. More red means a worse win/loss ratio (aikuchi warui). Darker blue means a better ratio (aikuchi ga ii). I’m still working on ways to visualize trend or other “rivalry” metrics to see who’s been winning lately, that kind of thing. To prevent having this load every time someone visits the site, continue reading below to see…

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Kanji Used In Shikona

Andy Japanese Language, Stables (Heya)

The NHK has a great video (#43) about shikona in its “Sumopedia” but I thought I’d dive a bit into the statistics on the usage of various characters. Why? Because I’m always trying to improve my Japanese and the kanji is the most impenetrable part for me.

The Japanese Language is one of the biggest hurdles facing any sumo fan. If you’re just trying to catch up on news, few media outlets outside of Japan cover the sport on a regular basis and the Japanese Sumo Association often offers its press releases only in Japanese. There’s a whole other world to sumo fandom if you can learn the language. However, we don’t need to learn THE WHOLE LANGUAGE. We need to learn SUMO Japanese. It’s still a difficult prospect but it seems the best place to begin is with the shikona and just a handful of shikona can take us a long way.

First of all, a brief detour. The word Shikona is 四股名. Shiko, the “sumo stomp” excercise is the first two characters, with the character for name at the end. Memorize that last character if you hope to learn Japanese. You’ll see 名前 (na-mae) everywhere for “name.”

Back to the topic of characters used in shikona. This is a list of the Ten most frequently used characters, counting by the number of rikishi. Koto, for example, is used by Kotoshogiku (aka Kotokikutsuki) twice but I only count him as 1 distinct rikishi. One little side note is that characters used in Shikona include a few hiragana and katakana, not just kanji. Hiragana and Katakana are kind of inescapable and are crucial to anyone learning Japanese.

Character# of Uses# of Rikishi
1山14531243
2田730683
3大747650
4ノ571510
5の523458
6若524430
7龍439380
8乃382353
9川374349
10海390336

The good news is, there’s only 223 or so kanji that are used in 25 or more shikona since the 1950s. The bad news is, there are 1028 characters used 24 times or fewer. This includes the 隠 (O) from 隠岐の海 (Okinoumi).

Yama, the character for “mountain,” is a wildly popular character not just because of all of the Asanoyama’s and Tochiozan’s, but also many Japanese surnames like Yamaguchi and Yamada — the latter which combines our Top 2. Yamadayama goes even further by surrounding the rice field with two mountains. Yamamotoyama, who even made an appearance in John Wick 2, bookends a book with two mountains.

Andy made another data viz? Oh, crap. There’s another 15 min down the tubes.

But mountain it’s not the most popular for rikishi from all prefectures. It’s in 3rd place after 土 and 佐 for rikishi from Kochi and fifth place after 安, 芸, and two versions of the possessive “no” (ノ and 乃) while the hiragana “no” is just after yama. This is because of the historical domain of Tosa (土佐) in Kochi and many location names within Hiroshima, including Aki (安芸). If you click on Shizuoka prefecture, the characters for Fuji (富士) bubble up to the top.

There’s another interesting, but predictable, aspect to kanji pairs like Tosa, Aki, Fuji, and Chiyo (千代). Shikona which use those characters are longer, on average, so the bars are orange to red while greener colored characters are used in shorter shikona (on average).

It’s also just interesting to see where wrestlers are coming from. Along with Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, and Fukuoka (sites of the big tournaments) many wrestlers come from Hokkaido, including several yokozuna like Taiho, Chiyonofuji, Hokutoumi, Kitanoumi. Neighboring Aomori, home of Wakanohana I & II is also up there, along with Hyogo (next to Osaka and Kyoto), and Kagoshima have been hotbeds of sumo talent and the geography offers clues to the origins of many of their shikona.

In the past, I’ve had articles which tried to help decipher Japanese headlines, short articles, and tweets to try to help readers (and me) gather just a bit more information about sumo. Let’s face it, Shikona and sumo jargon (and medical/injury terms) are where Google Translate breaks down into word salad. If you can pick out the shikona and place names from headlines and articles, we can start diving deeper into the articles and tweets. This visualization and some of the others I’m working on will try to break down the hard part and help sumo fans focus on Sumo Japanese.