Benevolance

It's just not a proper tournament without at least one chiyowithdrawal.

I take the blame for Jokoryu's performance. I dropped Ikioi from my office pool after the last two basho and switched to Jokoryu for Kyushuu and...yeah, clearly my fault. Any bets on whether Chiyotairyu keeps up his strong performance to finish the basho, now that the possibility of komusubi and marriage has arisen?

I think 4 might keep him out of Juryo.

Man. Kintamaya is good. Okay, let's try this one: "Goeido isn't ozeki material." Fix that! I dare you!

And really, as much as I love Urotura or however he writes it, he's got a Takanoyama's chance in Makuuchi of even reaching Makushita. They might tolerate the gimmick for a perpetual jonidan wrestler in photoshoots after matches, but I think he'd get a very different reaction if he tried that pose in the upper divisions or on the dohyo...

It's the unstable red clay of Kyushu.

Kagamio wins the lemming award for charging head first Gagamaru. I was going to complement Homasho on his nice resistance vs Hakuho on the ropes, but I suspect that Hakuho was simply being gentle to the most earnestly bowing person in sumo.

I found that a lot of younger Japanese in the general admission section couldn't identify any of the wrestlers, ozeki included. On more than one day I would hand off my English program because, with the romaji, they could at least identify who was wrestling.

This new Kisenosato is impressing me. Kinta forgot to include the first part of chiyotairyu's interview. It actual translation went something like, " There is no way to reach komusubi from my position on the banzuke right? Then I'm amazed how well I'm doing in spite of the eye problems."

Maybe Japanese fans just want to be entertained and so they cheer for the entertaining wrestlers? I know that's what I like, and I don't much care where they come from. Maybe this will at least put to rest the notion that bigger/stronger foreign wrestlers can come in and dominate sumo with size alone? There is more to athleticisim in the sport than simply size alone, and most seem to struggle against equally-strong and better skilled opponents with lower centers of gravity. But hey, I'm preaching to the choir. You guys already know how awesome sumo is.

Hockey. Man-games lost is a regularly-reported team stat. Endo really should have withdrawn. He hasn't looked very good. I really don't know whether he'll piece together 4 wins before aggravating his injury further.

The day that Goeido can get a 14-1 or 15-0 result at sekiwake is the day his sumo becomes interesting to watch.

Baruto missed out on his first Ozeki run despite getting the requisite 33 wins because of an 9-6, even with a jun-yusho in the tournament that made 33 wins. But he went 14-1 in the next tournament to make it definitive with 35 wins in 3 tournaments. Edit: That sounds a little unclear, because Baruto didn't have to start the ozeki run from scratch. But he had to extend his ozeki run to 4 tournaments, nail a 14-1 and a second jun-yusho in the mix in order to get his ozeki. I don't think Goueido is going to have to work quite as hard.

I am frickin' impressed that someone could do that in a mascot costume.

Would juryo be a bad thing for him, really? I mean, Endo's got style and skill, but I think he needs to be stronger/better conditioned if he's seriously going to be considered a rival for Hakuho, as Big H has called on him to be. Another Juryo yuusho and effectively 5 months to toughen up for Makuuchi might not be a terrible idea.

Goueido, who beat him because Hakuho was trying to be too fancy.

I can't believe the prices of CDs in Japan. When we were visiting there was a group called Superfly releasing their debut album. It had some catchy songs and we found ourselves in a music store and I thought, "Hey, might as well pick it up." 3900 yen for 5 songs! At the time, that worked out to $50 CDN. What the heck? Even pre-iTunes, I never paid more than $13 CDN for an album. I was even more disappointed when I found the DVD prices...

I think Osunaarashi will do just fine. Many of the sekitori around him in the banzuke are people he's already seen and beaten.

But that was no ordinary hornet. It was a GIANT hornet. That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered hornet you ever set eyes on. It's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer! He's got huge, sharp-- eh-- he can leap about-- look at the bones!

I think that sums up Hakuho's domination of sumo pretty well.

Kumamon will tear him apart in the cage match.

Now that Aran is gone, I just don't know who to vote for.

Emotional? He always looked sad, but I think that was due to the unfortunate shape of his brow.

NSK aren't planning to relocate the Fukuoka tournament are they? We're planning to do another Fukuoka trip in a couple years. I've seen tournaments at Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka, and Fukuoka was by far my favorite. Much of that was the nearly-perfect weather and the amazing food stalls, which really have little to do with the tournament itself, but it was such a cozy venue nonetheless. And it seemed we were always bumping into rikishi. That's probably less exciting for you, but as a foreigner with limited japanese skills, it was terrific.

Last year, my wife and I were able to walk up and buy box seats pretty much every day except the final weekend. We were going to pre-buy a bunch of tickets, but the NSK lady in the booth told us not to, so we ended up getting better seats for cheaper every day.