The Kokugikan is the arena that hosts Tokyo’s sumo tournaments. The venue is 30 years old this year. It is definitely showing its age. According to this Yahoo! article, aggregated from Mainichi Shinbun, planned renovations will include upgrades to the air conditioning and power substations. I wouldn’t expect big changes to the seating or amenities like WiFi. It would be nice to make the boxes a little bigger. Fitting 4 adults in those is nuts, three is a squeeze. Two seems to be nice, giving enough space, since I’m certainly not going to be sitting in a seiza position for more than a few minutes.

You may wonder why I didn’t link to the Mainichi article directly. Well, their sports section has subheadings for the Olympics and high-school baseball – but not sumo. Japanese media have been putting sumo on the back burner for a while. I will not link to Mainichi if they throw sumo under “Other” yet give more attention to high school baseball. OK…maybe I will, this time. I’m more annoyed by aggregators.

Not to get off on a rant but at least they don’t go as nuts as ESPN and all the American media go for certain college sports. They and the universities make loads of money off the backs of college football and basketball players who get nothing. I feel real bad for college athletes who get career ending injuries before they get to cash in. I just don’t want to see that in Japan.