I Sit There Staring and There's Nothing Else to do

I'd like to consider myself as someone who is always willing to try new things.

Throughout my adult life, I've done my best to sample new foods, travel to new places, and have new experiences. At the beginning of June I will have just gone through four months of essentially having new experiences of doing different things each day, but even when I'm at home, I make an effort to try to do these things, and when the chance to do something new comes along, I frequently make the most of opportunity.

Being abroad has helped to increase the number of opportunities afforded to me, and I feel like, just generally that the 'freedom' of being in a foreign country makes me, or anyone else more like to try different things.
Due to the language barrier who knows how many different and exotic foods have gone through my digestive system undetected, and I think it definitely goes without saying that I've been to lots of new countries, cities and places which I've never experienced before - and may never again.

I guess it's when you go through several of these experiences that you discover where your comfort zone is, and how far you are willing to push your boundaries.
I think that an 18 or 22 year-old Ben would have made different decisions to a 30-year-old me, but I guess that's partly because I have much more 'life experience' (code for "I'm old") than I would of had I completed this journey five or even ten years ago.

Being a solo traveller also dictates where that comfort zone begins and ends, and also my surroundings have a massive impact on it too. There are a couple of times on this trip when I've hit the edges of it much more often than others, although I think previous experiences of travelling and coming to Asia have made the 'zone' bigger than it perhaps would have been otherwise.

I think that the 'want' or 'desire' to do different things is something that lives within me naturally and I don't feel that it's the case that I act differently just because I'm abroad. Sure there are occasions when I have made impulsive decisions based on the fact that I might not get another chance to repeat an experience if I don't act quickly, but I feel like for the most part decisions I'm making are well thought out, and based on what I think is a good thing to do, rather than being an impulsive off the cuff momentary choice.

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It was time to make a move of a slightly different kind this morning, as for the first time on my journey I was changing hotels without actually leaving the city.
Mostly I've been a 'one hotel man' in each city with the exception of my visit to Manila and Ho Chi Minh City when my move was made after leaving and coming back in each case.

I'd planned to have an authentic Japanese hotel experience at some point in my journey, and figured that as I am staying in Tokyo for the longest, the fifth night of my stay might well be an ideal opportunity to stay in a cube or capsule hotel.
Amongst the many different types of accommodation available in Japan which include bath houses, love motels and dvd rooms, I think that capsules are the most unique, frequently found and quintessentially Nippon choices available.
I can't remember where I first read about or saw them, but I've always thought it would be a fun experience to test one out, and had been planning to do so for just a single night to see what it was like.

I've had mixed luck with guest houses type stays in Asia so far, and for at least the last two months onwards I've been exclusively staying in hotels, but I felt like this was an opportunity too good to miss.
Korea, China and Japan all have a selection of different kinds of accommodation for daring travellers, and I certainly wanted to make it part of my journey to sample at least one somewhere along the line.

Having spent some of my Sunday looking for the place, I felt like I'd made my job this morning much easier by at least knowing where I was supposed to be going.
I had to leave my hotel pretty early for a reason I will explain in a second, but I would have had to check out by 10am regardless.
Part of the reason I went to find my capsule hotel was to ask if I could store my bags there after leaving my original hotel and coming there.
Capsules usually require you to leave by 10am also, and due to the fact they are cleaned during the day you're unable to check-in until 4pm which means I was left at a bit of a loose end unless there was a place to store my bag.

Thankfully there was, so the plan was to leave Tokiwadi at about 8.30am, and then leave my bags at the capsule hotel before getting on with my day.

The reason for checking out so early this morning was that my today I was intending to go and spend the day at the Ryogoku Kokugigan Sumo Wrestling Tournament which extremely conveniently is running concurrently with my stay in Japan.
It was all very well going to watch football in different countries on the continent, but clearly spending some time watching a traditional sporting event would be a more memorable experience.
Having done some research I discovered that there were general sale tickets which were available from 8am each morning, and these were reasonably priced enough to give me an opportunity to attend the session today.

I knew I wasn't going to get there for 8am, but I at least wanted to get to the stadium early enough to secure one of what was essentially only about 200 tickets which are available.
My capsule is in the Shunjuku area of Tokyo which is much closer to the centre than where I was staying in Tokiwadai so I had to get there, and then go across the city to the Ryogoku Kokuhikan Arena.

One thing about setting off early is that I was likely to encounter a significant portion of the rush hour traffic which begins and ends anywhere between 7am and 10am each morning - with a massive rucksack this wasn't really a prospect I was looking forward to.
Regardless, as has been the case many times on this journey, me, an early morning and my two bags were going to have to co-exist.

I was up and out of bed by 7.30am and ended up re-packing my bag before setting off to ensure that when I got to the capsule it was just a case of taking my smaller rucksack (that I needed for today) out of my larger one, and then coming back later to check-in.

The platform at Tokiwadai was pretty busy when I got there this morning, but I went right to the end of the platform so I at least had a little bit of space to stand in. More daunting was set to be the trip from Ikebukuro to Shinjuku which is one of the busier routes in all of the city. I also read yesterday that Shinjuku Station has over 100 exits so it wasn't necessarily guaranteed that I'd come out in the same place I did on Sunday.

I brought my ticket and went up to the platform that I caught the train from to go to a couple of different destinations, but seeing a long queue of people and faces pressed against the window there was absolutely no way that I'd be able to get on that service unless I waited for ages - potentially wasting an opportunity to get one of the few general sale tickets that might still be available for the sumo.

Going back to the electronic board with the timetable on, I spied another train which was going towards Shinjuku with the station I needed to get off at being the first stop rather than being part of the looped route I'd previously thought about using to get there. I managed to get on the first train which came to the platform and although it was still busy, it was significantly less crowded and I felt less like I had been locked inside of a very small safe.

Predictably, having caught an entirely different train service, the platform brought me out somewhere different, but yet somehow I actually managed to navigate my way using the train tracks as a prompt to reach the hotel significantly quicker than I had done when I'd tried to get here originally.
The guy at reception remembered who I was from Sunday and indicated where I could leave my bag until later.

Plucking my smaller rucksack out of my larger one, I was off on my way to the stop for the sumo wrestling which travelled across one of the few Tokyo lines which I've not yet experienced.

I must have been so 'in the zone' and concentrating on the fact that things had so far worked out in my favour that I wasn't paying complete attention, and somehow walked straight past the sumo arena. I found myself directly behind at something known as the Edo Tokyo Museum, and it was only when I picked up a leaflet that I realised the venue I was looking for was actually next door. The entrance must have been pretty hidden for me not to see it.

I walked to the ticket entrance where I thought the lack of a queue would indicate that tickets had entirely sold out, but a man approached me asking if he could help and said that there were still general sale tickets available for today's matches.

Being significantly the cheapest ticket obviously means I was sitting right at the back, but during the day I was actually able to get a good view from several different locations lower down as it was relatively empty and there were no stewards checking to make sure people were in the right place:

Personally I took no interest when I was younger in anything like karate or taekwando, and although occasionally I'll take an interest in boxing (like two weekends ago) I have to say that my knowledge of combat sports is somewhat limited.
I didn't go this time around, but on my previous visit to Thailand in 2009 Kevin and I went to see Thai Boxing which I found quite interesting as a spectacle although essentially I had no idea what was going on until someone hit the canvas and the bell sounded to signify a winner!

I can't say I have ever watched sumo wrestling, and before looking it up online I thought that it'd be something that occurred on an almost weekly basis.
Whilst I was in the area I brought a book for Y100 which provided me with all the information I needed about the matches, traditions and the tournament itself. I discovered that the Grand Sumo tournament runs for six months of the year; in Tokyo for January, May and September, in Osaka during March, Nagoya in July and Fukuoka in November - how fortunate it is then that I visited when I did.

As well as reading through the book I picked up, I paid close attention in these early matches to discover the pre and post fight rituals - typically these last as long if not longer than the bouts themselves.

Early on in the day there were preliminary matches before the most celebrated matches occurred right at the end of the day; there was however plenty of interest in between.
Sumo is believed to date back over 1500 years, and one thing you perhaps don't realise is that there are plenty of ancient traditions contained throughout the fights and the area itself.

Essentially the object of the contest is to knock your opponent out of the fifteen feet diameter ring. If a sumo touches the floor with anything other than their feet then they lose, and it can often end up as a stalemate with nether fighter wanting to give an opportunity to their opponent.

It mostly involves holds and grapples, but sometimes matches last for ten or twenty seconds as one competitor overpowers or out-thinks his opponent.

The winner of the Grand Tournament is the person who has the best record over the fifteen day long competition, but there are also additional prizes for the person who upsets the most Grand Champions, one for showing the most fighting spirit and also for the sumo who displays the finest technique of the ancient art.

No matter the level of competition, the in-ring routine is the same. Competitors bow as they come into the ring before preparing themselves with a ritual called the Shikiri.
This will be familiar to most people as it involves crouching and facing your opponent, raising their arms, clapping and stamping their feed:

Fighters then assume the position to get ready and the battle commences:

After each bout, the winner is announced by the referee as competitors bow and leave the ring. Sounds fairly simple doesn't it?!

The early part of the day with the prelimiary fights was interesting without being much of a spectacle. There were lots of matches taking place, and at first it was just interesting to take everything in and see the fights themselves.

Small touches you notice from being in the arena is the fact that before each fight, the clay at the centre of the ring is prepared with a brush and watered after every couple of matches.
It was interesting also to see fighters of different sizes going against one another. Surprisingly those of less stature often came out the winner. I guess that a lot of important factors of sumo lie in lower body strength and technique meaning that it's not as easy as the bigger guy just picking the smaller one up, and throwing him out of the ring.
Not that I'm an expert in any way, but I guess that agility is still as important as height and strength in being successful.

The crowd started to fill up as time went along and eventually it become time for some higher profile matches to take place:

Whilst the preliminary matches caused only a few murmurs of delight when someone fell out of the ring or there was a particularly close fight. The Juryo matches were much more enthusiastically cheered and the standard was noticeably better with each match being much more even.
I guess there must have been a couple of local fighters involved in the competition as several people were cheered a great deal more than others. There were a couple of a really close matches where one person usually ended up teetering on the end of going out of the ringer before eventually escaping and shifting the momentum of things in their favour.

At the start of the Juryo class matches there was a ceremony which was each wrestler introduced individually into the ring before the first set of about twenty matches:

The same thing happened at the start of the final class of matches which was the Makuuchi. In between their introductions and at the start of this class of matches we saw the Yokozuna champions make their entrance.
The Yokozuna is the highest class of wrestler who has won the Grand Tournament on two consecutive occasions and is recognised to be amongst the best competitiors. They are brought to the ring alongside two Makucuchi wrestlers for a ceremonius entrance on their own and they seemed popular with the crowded offering them lots of clapping and cheering.

There was an interlude as the ring was swept and the fighters readied themselves for the coming bouts, but at about 4.15pm it was time for the main action to begin.

There was much more preening and preparation with the top fighters as they stretched and psyched themselves up to go into battle. Quite frequently they looked prepared to go in their crouched 'set' position and then one of the wrestlers would stand up deciding he needed more time. It was quite stop-start at this stage, but I guess it built up the anticipating to the fast and furious action that would follow:

Before entering the ring, the last two groups of fighters would each throw salt into the ring (for good luck and with the belief that it prevents injuries) and by the time some of the matches got going the clay would have turned a lighter shade of grey with a good few handfuls having been thrown in there.

Despite the sometimes slow nature of the whole thing it was pretty absorbing, and I found myself not able to take my eyes off the action which was taking place at the centre of the ring:

Even in just a couple of fights it was pretty clear to see how the last wrestlers on stage had earned their status. There was much more skill about the way they did everything and they were more measured with their approach to the fight in general:

          

The highest rainking fighters (Yokozuna and Makuuchi) had their honours displayed before the battle and they saved the best for last when two very decorated fighters went at it before the closing attraction which was a baton twirling demonstration from one of the champions:

Overall it was a very enjoyable evening, and I'm glad that I not only made the effort to go but stayed all day to see the whole thing play out.
There was a predictable rush of people headed to the metro station at the arena, so I walked to stops further on to Akihabara to give it time to calm down, and I had to remind myself to get off at Shinjuku and not Ikebukuro!
When I did arrive I came out at the same exit as I did on Sunday, so at least I knew where I was going also this was close to a shopping centre which allowed me to get some dinner.

When I eventually got back to open skies they opened up and I got caught in a bit of a rain storm as I headed to my accomodation for tonight.

I've written all of this pre-having time to properly settle so I will save the delights of my new accommodation for tomorrow.

Turning Japansese
The Vapors (1980)