Sold on Sumo

Over the past month, I have devoted all of my academic energy to understanding sumo. Considering that I speak little to no Japanese and that I will soon need to start preparing law school applications, some could argue that I’ve been wasting my time. After attending Day 9 of the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo, I can tell you that if you haven’t been studying sumo for the past month, you’ve been wasting your time.

Before I go any further, I should probably say that I like my entertainment over-the-top. I like high-speed chases, human vs. zebra races, and pretty much anything involving Mike Tyson. But above all else, I love World Wrestling Entertainment. So if any of that bothers you, you may not find sumo as engaging as I do.

With that said, sumo is AWESOME. I was thoroughly entertained from the moment I got to the Kokugikan. Not only does the stadium look exactly like I expected a national sumo stadium to look, but the staff at the gate greeted me with the equivalent of a racing form (in English) and a sweet sumo file folder (This is a bigger deal than you might think. When I told my sumo story to my co-workers today, the free sumo file folder elicited the greatest reaction. I hate to make sweeping generalizations, but I think it’s safe to say that all Japanese people love file folders.)

Inside the sumo stadium, I gravitated to the merchandise booth. In retrospect, I’m glad that I didn’t bring my passport, because I probably would have tried to trade it straight up for a sumo set of fine china. Instead, I settled for a badass Hakuho keychain, a deck of official sumo playing cards, and a poster featuring all of the sumo competing in this month’s tournament.

Once we got to our seats, I was a little bit surprised by how many foreigners were in the crowd. If the country is 95% Japanese (which I’ve heard, but haven’t verified,) we were disproportionally represented in the cheap seats of the national sumo stadium. Did I feel like a little bit of a rube? Sure. I would have felt worse had I not seen the ultimate rube sitting in the section below us. Both he and his son were wearing full suits, making them the only people in the entire balcony in suits. It’s roughly the equivalent of a Japanese father and son rolling up to a football game in trucker hats, puffy vests, and Wrangler Jeans in an effort to fit in.

Anyway, we got there at the end of the Juryo (junior division) bouts. I definitely didn’t know any of these guys, but it was a good chance to get a feel for what sumo is all about. One thing that became immediately obvious is that none of these dudes is a regular fat guy. If defensive ends and left tackles are athletes, then so are these guys (in fact, if I ever own an NFL team, I’m going to raid the sumo ranks and create the greatest offensive and defensive lines of all-time.) The second thing that became abundantly clear is that if Vince McMahon ran sumo, it would become America’s fourth major sport. There are larger-than-life characters, genuine competition, elaborate entrances, and constantly reprising rivalries (the top sumo wrestle each other 6 times a year.) It makes NHL hockey look like MLS soccer.

The most spectacular moment of the day was the Yokozuna’s entrance. All of the Makuuchi (senior division) entered together, and then left the ring so that the Yokozuna could enter. He proceeded to do an awesome dance that involved two sidekicks, one of who had a sword. Honestly, if I knew as a kid that there was a profession out there in which you could have a sword-bearing sidekick, I would have never picked up a book.

The Makuuchi ended up being way more entertaining than the Juryo. Hakuho ended up winning with a clever throw, but his match definitely got upstaged by the Kotooshu vs. Takamisakari match:
Kotooshu is a Bulgarian guy that has taken sumo by storm in the past few years. He’s lean, he’s good-looking, and he is deferential to the traditions of sumo. Basically, he’s a kiss-ass that seems like he’s pretending to be Japanese.
In contrast, Takamisakari is the only sumo to remind me of a WWE Superstar. He interacted with the crowd on his way down the aisle; once he got in the ring, he made nothing but exaggerated movements, culminating in an Ultimate Warrior-like chest thumping; he antagonized Kotooshu during the lengthy pre-match showdown; he even managed to piss off my good-hearted Canadian friend with his antics. Sadly, Kotooshu got the better of a fierce match, ending with a throw that took down both guys. Either way, Takamisakari is definitely the best antagonist in sumo, and he, Hakuho, and Asashoryu (Yokozuna) were easily the most memorable performers.

I’m not sure how interesting my sumo experience is to anyone other than me. I do know that if I set aside the two weeks that Corinne was here, Monday was definitely the best day I’ve had in Japan. I also know that by the time the next sumo tournament rolls around in the spring, my Hakuho keychain and I will be more than ready.

I'm Gonna Live

Today, I received the results of the medical examination that I underwent last month. All Japanese companies are required to provide a yearly physical on-site to their employees. (As far as ideas that I would like to steal from Japan go, a nationalized yearly physical isn’t too high on the list, but it was pretty cool to see a bunch of doctors and nurses charge out of a huge van like they were a SWAT team.)

The physical itself was one of the better experiences I’ve had in Japan. My manager gave me a two-page form to fill out (all in Japanese,) and then stressed to me that everything I wrote would be confidential. Since I can’t read, she went over each question with me in front of all my co-workers and wrote down my answers for me, making it the least confidential Confidential Medical Exam ever:

“Do you smoke?”
“No.”
(writes in a box.)
“Do you drink alcohol?”
“Yes.”
(writes in a box.)
“How much?”
“Maybe 1-3 times a week.”
(writes in a box.)
“Do you do illegal drugs?”
“No.”
(Doesn’t write in a box. It’s rough being so illiterate that your manager thinks she can try to trick you into admitting a drug problem.)
“Do you, um, have girlfriend?”
“No.”

One thing that I learned from the Confidential Medical Exam is that the language barrier is a lot more imposing when your health is in question. I maintained a half-grimace/half-scowl throughout the entire process in an attempt to bluff my way into some respect from the medical staff. Even so, I managed to make a fool out of myself at least once:

I sort of know my numbers and my directions, so I agreed to take the vision test in Japanese (I had no options; none of the medical professionals administering the test spoke English.) He would call out a number, and I would say what direction the E was pointing. When I finished, I looked up and saw that he was shocked. I figured he was impressed by my fighter-pilot vision. Turns out, I missed every question. Damn.

Today, the results from the exam arrived, completely in Japanese. I ended up handing it to one of my co-workers and telling her to give me a thumbs-up if I was going to live. I thought it was a pretty good joke. She just took my envelope, read it, gave me a thumbs-up, and went on with her day. Damn.

A few random thoughts, since I don’t post very often:

--It shouldn’t take a month to write language into a contract addressing what should happen if the player gets indicted for perjury. Please retire, Barry Bonds.

--Steve Nash is going to win the MVP again this year, even though a Nash for Kobe trade would result in the Suns going 82-0 and the Lakers missing the playoffs.

--The Los Angeles Lakers are going to win the 2008 NBA Championship.

--I opened a giant beer bottle on the edge of my shelf last night, in what was easily the manliest moment of my life. Sadly, I was by myself, which made the moment hollow and mildly depressing. Now that I have some perspective, I’m back to being proud of myself.

--In my Mommy and Me class this afternoon, I was teaching “smile.” I showed Ryouma the card, said “Smile!” and he responded by picking his nose.

--I’m going to the Grand Sumo tournament on Monday. I’ve been researching pretty thoroughly, and I think that Hakuho is my favorite sumo. He’s a 21-year-old Mongolian. Considering that my only experiences with Mongolians involve Ghengis Khan Mongolian BBQ on Brookhurst, I’m confident that he will become the greatest sumo of all-time, as long as he continues to eat only the finest frozen meats.

Some Advice

Here's some advice for you: If you're teaching a kid English, and you ask him what animal he likes, and he says "blue," don't reply with "Are you serious?"

The First 100 Days

December 3rd marked my 100th day in Japan. The first thirty days felt like 200, but when I really think about it I feel like the time has gone by pretty quickly. I’m very pleased with Japan and with Hitachi, and I’ve only encountered one major problem: It’s absolutely freezing here. I give myself a pep talk every morning before I go out to toughen up so that I don’t reinforce the stereotype about people from Southern California being soft. Unfortunately, the pep talk never works. With that, here are my three favorite things about my life in Japan so far:

--Any Japanese-related American comedy. Especially the SNL skit with Chris Farley on a Japanese game show, “Lost in Translation,” and Dave Chappelle’s “Blackzilla” sketch from season one of “Chappelle’s Show.”

I cut my foot on a piece of glass, and I went to the drug store to get Neosporin or its Japanese equivalent. When I got to the drug store, I realized that not only could I not read any of the boxes, but that I wouldn’t be able to explain myself without taking my shoe off and putting my bloody foot on the counter. Eventually, I decided to gamble on a box that had a picture of a crying baby on one side and a happy baby on the other. I should have been more frustrated and probably a little bit more concerned by the whole ordeal, but it’s hard to be frustrated when you’ve got an image of Chris Farley yelling “For the love of God I don’t speak Japanese!” playing in your head.

In another incident, I dropped my camera into a pitcher of beer in a tragic karaoke accident. When it finally turned itself back on three days later, there was a golden haze over every picture that made everything look slightly more pleasant. My camera literally had beer goggles on. I took it to the camera shop down the street, and I sheepishly explained myself to the girl that spoke English. She handed it over to the four other people in the store, who took turns laughing, snapping pictures, and joking in Japanese with each other for a solid two minutes. When they stopped, the English speaker turned to me and asked, “Do you have a warranty card?” Again, if I hadn’t seen the commercial scene from “Lost in Translation,” my day would have been a lot worse.

And every day, I feel respected and feared in a way that I have never felt at home. I can’t really relate to the “Blackzilla” sketch in any other way, but it always makes me laugh and I feel slightly more in on the joke than I did before I came here.

--Windansea. I wrote about Windansea in my first entry, and I’ll have to give it its own entry to do it justice. But I will say that when I found out that “OJ Simpson: If I Did It” was canceled, I went to Windansea because it’s the only place in Japan that could cheer me up. By the way, I once watched a team of midgets race against an elephant in an airplane pull on FOX. And, more relevantly, I used to tune into FOX every day after school because they had the most extensive post-trial OJ coverage. (Yes, I watched the OJ trial every day when I was in middle school.) All I’m saying is, if you’re going to shamelessly promote a double murder, you might as well go all the way with it. And if it wasn’t in poor taste to pay the ghost-writer to write the book, then I don’t see how it is in poor taste for America to watch the television special. Damn you, Rupie Murdoch.

--My Job. It’s a long day, and it’s a long week, but it’s a good time. Here are a few of my favorite anecdotes:
During parent observation week, a mom got really into coming up with “cr-“ words for Phonics Hot Potato (cracker, crow, etc.) After a dry spell, she started clapping her hands excitedly to get her son’s attention. When he couldn’t come up with the word, she just yelled it for him: “Crap!”

In one of my Mommy and Me classes, one kid just spends the entire forty-five minutes sprinting around the classroom. He sometimes participates in the lessons, screaming “blue!” or “red!” if he sees a color that he recognizes. The only thing that ever slows him down is when he slips and runs into the wall. I know that the mom is waiting for me to discipline him, but I’m so impressed by the kid’s endurance that I don’t say anything. The kid is impressive… unlike that chump Kento, who runs for the first fifteen minutes and then falls asleep ten minutes later. And yeah, it’s really fun to call a three-year-old kid a chump.

I teach a group of three middle school girls that are considered bilingual even though they almost never actually speak. One of them has literally never spoken two English words together in class. If I ask a question that requires more than a one-word answer, she will stare at me for long enough that I break and ask someone else. One day, when none of them would speak at all, I broke the silence with, “You know, I should be mad right now. And I kinda am. But I respect what you’re doing here, even if it makes me a terrible teacher.” They all started laughing at that…and then went silent for the rest of the class. When we got their test scores, they were the three highest scorers at the school. So it turns out I’m great at teaching English.

In one of my high school classes, there’s a kid that always comes in late, if at all. I asked the kids if they wanted to bet on whether or not Yoshitaka was going to show up. One of the kids said, “Oh, he maybe will show up, but maybe we wait until yesterday, no, no, uh..tomorrow, maybe we wait until tomorrow for him.”
“Oh, a joke. Right. Nice work Shotaro.”

My boy Hiromu is in a class with another 3-year-old that lived in New York for a year and a half, and whose English is very good. Hiromu’s really good at punching me in the legs and randomly taking his shirt off during the lesson, but his English is not much better than that of the average three-year-old non-native English speaker. Things usually start getting ugly in our lesson when we progress from learning new words to putting them in sentences. At this point, Hiromu usually starts screaming in Japanese and walks outside to tell his mom that he’s hungry, sleepy, or angry (the other 3-year-old translates for me.) During parent observation week, Hiromu had his best meltdown ever. I asked the kids to take out their Main Cards. Hiromu’s mom hadn’t separated the day’s main cards from the big deck, so she suggested that he share with Anon. Hiromu LOST HIS MIND. He threw the deck of main cards at his mom, ripped his shirt off, and started screaming and crying while he tore up every loose piece of paper he could find. As his mom got up the courage to slow him down, he started punching her and screaming all kinds of Japanese at her. My manager eventually came in and dragged him out of the room while he kicked and punched the air. This whole ordeal lasted about ten minutes, during which he had managed to take off his jacket, two shirts, and one sock.

So that’s my first 100 days in Japan. I’m going to be logging a lot of time in front of my space heater in the next 100 days.

Mike's Can't Miss Travel Tips

I’ve been in Japan for close to two months now. In that time, I’ve managed to compile this list of some of my favorite things about the country. While you may not find any of these in your standard Japanese Tour Book, I’m confident that experiencing any of these things will enhance your Japan experience. In short: you’re welcome.

--Construction sites. At every site, there is at least one guy in a suit and a sweet hat holding one of those orange traffic-control sticks. His only job appears to be to direct pedestrian traffic around the roped off construction-zone.

--My beach towel. It’s oversized, it’s bright yellow, it has a picture of a bear watering four-leaf clovers on it, and it says in huge block letters: “This life which have been my long cherished desire now begins from here.” Clearly, it’s better than your beach towel.

--My feud with a 7-Year-Old. Although I’ve only been here a few weeks, it’s quickly reaching Biggie-2Pac levels. I see the kid for forty minutes every Thursday. It’s the worst forty minutes of my week. I spend most of my Thursday mornings gearing myself up for whatever tricks he may have up his sleeve. I open every meeting with “so is today going to be a good day or a bad day? I’d prefer to know up front.” Yes, he’s one of my students. Yes, he’s seven years old. But that won’t stop me from writing a scathing rap song about the time I had sex with his wife.

--Hitachi drinking culture. I can’t speak for anywhere else in Japan, but people in Hitachi sure seem to take care of their own. I was walking home from work one night (at roughly 9 PM on a Wednesday) and saw a woman in her mid-forties puking outside of a karaoke bar. Who was holding her hair back? The staff of the karaoke bar! Incredible. It’s also impressive how well developed their drunken walks home appear to be. I’m disappointed if I don’t pass at least three massive groups of businessmen in full suits, holding each other up in an elaborate drunken matrix as I walk home from work on Fridays.

--The Look. When kids in Hitachi see white people, they get these wide-eyed, confused, terrified, curious looks on their faces that I’m not a good enough writer to do justice to. You have to see it for yourself to truly appreciate it.

--Hiromu’s American Flag Jeans. It appears as though someone took a bunch of old American flags and sewed them into a pair of pants for a three-year-old boy. It’s the most remarkable achievement in fashion design since the T-Shirt. If you see these pants, and you aren’t at least a little tempted to start singing The Star Spangled Banner, then you probably hate freedom.

--The button at Gusto. Alright, I’m probably going to suffer some sort of karmic demise for this, but I can’t help it. I eat at this chain restaurant after work sometimes that has a button on every table to press when you’re ready to order (servers don’t approach the table here unless you ask them to.) Anyway, if the server is far enough away from you when you press the button, they will break out into a run to get to your table quickly. It’s awesome. Sometimes (every time) I wait until the server is across the restaurant before I hit the button. I’ve done it several times, and I don’t see it ever getting old. If a bolt of lightning strikes me down, now you know why.

--The karaoke-night killer. It usually begins when someone picks either a fast-paced or an obscure rap song. It starts out fine, but within a few bars the singer can’t keep up and he starts to crack. A special wrinkle is when the song is unexpectedly dirty or racist, and the singer has to make some difficult and awkward choices with what he decides to repeat. It finally ends with everyone feeling slightly uncomfortable and a little less into karaoke. Best example: an awkward guy from Chico performed “The Seed 2.0.” Honorable Mention: The time I performed "Morris Brown" (new Outkast song) and realized that I only knew the first two lines. Bad times.

--The time I saw a guy say yes to a prostitute. On the street next to my apartment, there are a lot of women offering massages to passing men late at night. They could be massage therapists, but I doubt it. Anyway, I was walking by last Saturday and saw a guy stumble out of a bar. From across the street, a lady yelled out “massage-E?” They started talking, I heard some numbers get thrown around (unfortunately, that’s roughly all the Japanese I know) and then he crossed the street and they walked off together. I’ve never been more upset with myself for not knowing Japanese.

--Grocery shopping. It is absolutely disorienting. I spent five minutes today looking at milk, trying to decide which one was low-fat. As I was staring at the various cartons, a small LCD screen played a commercial in which a carton of milk looked like it was killing a cat. Meanwhile, I was trying to evaluate the cartons based on the appearance of the people that were purchasing them, but there is a much narrower range of body types here than in California, so I couldn’t get a feel for the situation. I ended up going with the carton that had the slimmest cow on the box, but it was whole milk anyway.
On a lighter note, the food kiosks here are top-notch. Not only is the food usually very good, but the cook has a very personal interest in whether or not you purchase his or her product. It’s a great feeling to try some green tea, pick up the package on the table, and then smile and give a thumbs up to the green tea maker as he bows and says “thank you” over and over. It’s why I have three types of green tea in my apartment right now. Everybody wins.

Brad Penny, Rick James, and a Violent Baby

I woke up early this morning to watch (and by watch, I mean read on mlb.com Gameday) Game One of the Dodgers-Mets series (first pitch-5 AM.) I knew that it was a gamble: If the Dodgers won, I would be ecstatic for the rest of the day; If they lost, I would be pissed about not only the loss but the sleep lost in order to watch the loss. Imagine my horror as I read “Pitching Change: Now in the game for the Dodgers--Brad Penny.” Let’s put it this way: I went to work pissed off.

(There’s also an outside chance that I’m not welcome back at the Toyoko-Inn. I go there for its reliable internet connection and friendly staff, but I may have burned some bridges with my lengthy, F-Bomb ridden tirade on Brad Fucking Penny at 7 AM.)

So my day didn’t get off to an auspicious start. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a reprieve at work. I had my first Baby Class today. Now, I should have thought about this beforehand, but I didn’t realize until my student showed up that, well, she’s a baby. Twenty months old, few actual words, always doing a crazy run-walk-crawl, baby. As I should have expected, my lesson consisted of me singing, dancing, running, flying, and basically making a fool of myself. Meanwhile, Baby was launching an all-out assault on her mom. Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen children get away with crazier stuff than I ever thought possible. One kid walked up to his mom, got six inches from her face, and screamed as loud as he could. Another did a Rick James impression in the lobby, doing everything but yelling “FUCK YO’ COUCH!” as his mom serenely looked on. But nothing prepared me for this outburst. It started with punches to the shoulders, escalated to running clotheslines, and culminated in a devastating head-butt to the chin that put Mom on her back. Seriously. I wish I were making this up. Once Mom was down, Baby started running circles around her like she was about to perform a religious sacrifice. At this point, I realized three things: I was a little bit afraid of this child; teaching babies a foreign language is a complete waste of time; and if Brad Penny hadn’t ruined my day, this would have been one of the funniest things I had ever seen.
I had pretty much convinced myself that I hated teaching at this point. But as we were leaving, Baby spoke her first English words: “Goodbye! See You!” The lobby broke out into applause. I am the best teacher in the world.

And Fuck You, Brad Penny.

My Magic Blue Book

My manager walked up to me on Friday and handed me a small blue book with a bunch of blank pages. As she handed it to me, she said:
“Michael*, this book is very important. You need to keep it in a safe place while you’re in Japan, and then you’ll have to give it back when you leave.”
“OK. What’s it for?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“So, what do I write in it?”
“You don’t write anything.”
“Oh, OK, OK…right, right. So, when do I need to bring it in for you to write in it?”
“No no, you don’t do anything with it.”
“Oh, right. So, why do I need to keep it?”
“I can’t explain in English.”
Oh, that’s cool.

*(I’ve done everything short of wearing a shirt that says MIKE on it to get them to call me Mike at work, and they’re not budging. It’s infuriating and impressive at the same time)


Greg, one of the foreign teachers at another English school here, had a party for himself on Saturday to celebrate his two-year anniversary in Japan. We met at a bar near my apartment, which is owned by a guy named Hiro that drives a loud motorcycle and marks the end of summer as the day that it’s too cold to pass out in the street. An hour or so after I got there, Hiro came over with his co-owner to give Greg a bottle of champagne. But before they gave him the bottle, they made him stand up in front of everyone and bend over a chair while Hiro shot the cork at his ass and the co-owner held his face forward so he couldn’t see what was going on (Call the American Embassy!). After the cork struck, the bar broke out into polite applause, Hiro handed Greg the bottle, and everyone went on like nothing had happened. When I finally could muster up some words, they came out as “He bent him over a chair and shot a cork at his ass! And then you people acted like that was the same thing as a handshake! How is that not a noteworthy event? How did a fight not break out?” I wasn’t even talking to anyone in particular; I just needed to talk my feelings out. My friend told me that it probably wasn’t the weirdest thing that would happen that night. As we were leaving, a group of fifteen gay Japanese men insisted that we sing the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me” while they snapped pictures. So I guess she was right.


On Sunday, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean at a theater in Mito. A few notes:
-When we bought our tickets, we got to pick our seats. That’s right: It’s reserved seating. It’s also eerily silent in the theater from the moment the previews come on.
-Seeing the “Snakes on a Plane” trailer in Japanese? Hilarious. Seeing the preview for the upcoming movie about Iwo Jima in Japanese? Awkward.
-I'm pretty sure Pirates of the Caribbean 2 would have been more enjoyable if I didn't speak any English. In fact, it's so bad that I wish it was dubbed in Japanese. With that said, listening to people speak English for two and a half hours was suprisingly relaxing.