Vulch

In the UK, Betfair run a betting exchange as well as a standard site. On the exchange you can take either side of a bet and set your own odds if you don't like the ones on offer. You may or may not get matched on a bet but can amend your offer if the market is moving away from you. They do operate in some jurisdictions outside the UK, but currently no Sumo that I can find.

The banzuke is fixed by the time the new Juryo are announced on the wednesday after the basho. Anyone resigning on the monday (or possibly early hours of tuesday) will not be on it, after that they will.

Maybe something like one tournament without loss of rank, then treated as a 5-10 or 2 -5 score subsequently rather than the 0-15 and 0-7 used currently?

Looks like his 40 years gets him the full basic state pension when he reaches 65, and he could take a proportionatly reduced (76% at age 60) pension at once. There's also an earnings related amount on top of that which can be taken from 60, though at a quick read some of that may be replaced by whatever sort of scheme the NSK runs.

I don't see the requirement that new Olympic sports must be open to all or have both mens and womens competitions as appropriate going down well in certain quarters...

No, Julius and Augustus renamed Quintilis and Sextilis. Sextilis also grabbed a couple of extra days to make it the same length as the new July. January and February had been dropped into the blank winter bit around 700BC.

That's just an artifact of the New Year no longer starting in March.

Minus whatever they pay Ustream for the service, and that's likely to be more than it was for the free version as paying viewers are going to expect to get everything they've paid for.

I have been twiddling thumbs in hope...

Ah yes. I'd seen that when I looked at Y+5O but didn't twig it would apply here. Mind you, as a Yokozuna ought to get 13+ that soaks things up!

That's only just mathematically possible isn't it? With six Ozeki and a Yokozuna who all fight each other (ignoring the same Heya rule for now) there are 21 bouts. Assuming they all go 8-0 against Sekiwake and below they need three more wins each which is 21 again. Minus Kotooshu v Kotoshogiku and two of them will fail...

One of its legs is both the same. Seemples.

There's another good analogy if you are familiar with a collegiate university like Oxbridge, Durham or London. The individual colleges (heya) are reponsible for recruiting students, seeing to their living needs and basic discipline, training them and then entering them for the examinations. The University (Kyokai) sets the standards, conducts the examinations (basho) and awards the qualifications. The numbers of people involved are hugely different, but the principles are much the same. One difference is that these days Cambridge Colleges (at least, I don't know about The Other Place) hire professional staff to do a lot of the non-academic work. There's often a Fellow (Oyakata) nominally in charge of something but someone with outside experience doing the day to day work, although in some cases (eg the Bursar, effectively the business manager of the College) the person with outside experience is also appointed as a Fellow to give them the leverage and authority their job requires.

Looks to be fairly standard weathered copper alloy colour. If you ever see a bronze statue outside that isn't that colour it's probably been laquered to stop oxidation.

I work for a Cambridge College which has traditions and ways of doing things that date back in some cases to before the University was founded 800 years ago. Nominally there's a Fellow (Academic researcher/lecturer/tutor member of the College) in charge of each aspect of the College. In practice there's a staff Librarian runs the library, I'm one of three IT staff and so on. Some staff are elected as Fellows to satisfy requirements of the College Charter or to give weight to their input into policy, I'm sure the NSK could come up with a similar model. I also like the idea from elsewhere of having a kensho-like payment on every bout. Cut salaries and adjust per basho allowances over time so there's a smoother rise in basic income from bottom to top, but in order to get a "full" salary again you need to get at least KK. To encourage the upper ranks the threshold for Ozeki could be cranked up to needing 10 wins, and to discourage cosy agreements half the payment goes to a retirement fund and the other half is paid electronically. Set the kensho according to the higher ranked rikishi and you've also got incentives for the lower ranks to try harder.