The LDS Air Force Wife: Tokyo Sumo Tour

We decided when we moved to Japan that there were a few things we should experience before we left and one of those things was Sumo wrestling. We took and ITT tour for the weekend to Tokyo to experience this. We love ITT and do a trip with them a month. Josh enjoys napping on the bus, I read lots of books, and the kids watch the movies that they show. It is nice to stay in the New Sanno hotel in Tokyo as it centrally located. We found an excellent gyoza place called Tiger Gyoza and then ended the night with the Japanese Baskin Robbins, our favorite!

We spent our first day at the Sumo Tournament. Josh was so excited to attend, and the kids had a fun time but did lose interest eventually. There was a lot of ceremony before each match that Josh and I enjoyed. We liked seeing them parade in with their colorful robes on and I enjoyed the ritual stretches that they did before the matches. As the night progressed, the wrestlers were greater ranked, so they had sponsorship flags that would follow them into the ring. I find it fascinating to watch an event that has ancient cultural significance. Since the US is a melting pot, we don’t have some of these ancient traditions. Josh got some amazing action shots on his nice camera and he picked up some souvenirs. There were even collecting cards of the wrestlers. Pants and Bub each purchased a pack and then it was fun to watch for their wrestlers. This was truly a unique event.

Flying Sumo!

Ritual stretches and kicks

Parade of participants. Their robes were beautiful!

More rituals- all of the ceremony has symbolism

Sword skill show

Ritual stretches

Too bad we could not get a picture with the real contenders.

As part of our Tokyo weekend, we got a free day to do what we wanted. We decided to spend the day at Disney Seas. We were so excited to go to a Disney park. It is a bit of a journey from the New Sannot to the park. We got up at 5:00am to get ready and then take the three train transfers to the park. Our travels took us about an hour and half. Unfortunately, we had to come on a Saturday which I normally try to avoid. There were a lot of people lined up for the opening. We made it in and then it was just trying to find our way around. We do not know the park of course, so I just made my best guess about where to go first.

Disney Seas is a very unique park with only a few rides that are repeats from parks in the US. The architecture is beautiful and each of the lands are related to water. The day was very cold, and I think this hampered some of our enjoyment. We did not figure out where the parades were and did not really want to sit in the cold waiting for them. Some of the magic was not quite there. We found it amusing to see the different merchandise in a Japanese park. We were excited to see characters out roaming that are never found in the US parks. We were disappointed that pin trading does not exist in the park, but we did buy a popcorn tub that we could refill at various stations around the park. We found some amazing little mochi balls- three green aliens from Toy Story filled with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry custard. So good! The food at the park in general was a welcome change as it all had an Asian flair. The kids really liked the ride, “Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage.” It was a dark ride in a boat, like Small World. It was very long and told a cute story with a catchy song. All the rides were narrated in Japanese and so we decided to forego the shows as we did not want to sit through something that we would not understand. I was just worried that we would not be able to see everything as I did not know the lay of the park. As it turned out, the cold drove us away from the park. I think we still had fun though. There was a lot of great new fun to discover.