Well, FINALLY I completed a pilgrimage that's been about 3 years in the making... You see I LOVE Sumo, I've followed it for about 7 years, and for the last 3 have been trying to get tickets for a tournament whenever I happen to be here. I've been 1 ticket late 3 times, and actually got sorted 3 weeks out this time to prevent this happening again.

The plan was that a workmate here, who has never really known about sumo, but who had it on his "list of 20 things to do in Japan", and I would go to see the sumo together on one of the 2 weekends it was possible for us to do so... Unfortunately closing weekend sold out WAAAAY in advance, which only left the middle weekend. This was fine, except that I was busy on the Saturday, so I could only make it Sunday.

20 minutes worth of phone call (In Japanese - I hate speaking Japanese on the phone) finally produced the realization that there was only one SINGLE ticket left on the Sunday. I quickly booked that, and received a booking number, booking my workmate into one of the last 3 spots on the Saturday. The seats were in the nosebleeds, but such is life.

Next of course I had to secure the tickets themselves. Japan has a convoluted system whereby you order the tickets, get a booking number, and then consummate the purchase on a certain machine found at convenience stores. This machine provides you with a barcode, which you take to the counter, pay for in cash, and then they make your ticket on a different machine. This process was hampered by my not reading Japanese, and by the staff member "helping" me being completely unable to understand the workings of the special machine... A half hour of foolishness ensued, but, EVENTUALLY so did 2 shiny tickets.

On the appointed day I made my way to the sacred space (it is a somewhat unusual point of sumo that the stadiums, or more specifically the rings are holy spaces, the tournaments religious rites, and the wrestlers living gods - at least until their hair is ceremoniously shorn) in Ryugoku, full of excitement and awe at the prospect of finally seeing it live.

The atmosphere in the stadium was indescribable - It really did feel like being in a church, or some other sacred space. The crowd was electric. It's the only time I've seen a crowd cheer when something DIDN'T happen, such as when the wrestlers decided that they would take a little walk and postpone the match another 30 seconds (Which they get to do 4 times). The throwing of salt felt like a benediction... It was quite simply amazing. After I was left with the feeling that I would have returned immediately the next day, were it not for work, and I will definitely be making this pilgrimage again.

Oh, and I got some quite good photos too - Got lucky with the timing of the shots.

The only thing missing from this pilgrimage was a pilgrim outfit of some sort, but maybe when my alter-ego does his version of this task I'll get round to that...