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All 4 grandsons of Taiho with their mother (ex-Otake-okamisan) were at the 13-kaiki (death anniversary - counting the day of death as 1) celebration at the Myokyu-ji on Dec. 24th (the death day is Jan. 19th). o o o with about 10 closely related persons, family and also deshi Otake-oyakata (Dairyu, has to hand over the heya after the Aki basho) o The temple has a calligraphy by Taiho on display, the kanji 忍 o

In an interview with Nikkan Sports, he says that in his post-sumo life he aims to open and operate an "abura-soba" (a kind of ramen but without broth) noodle shop, using what he's learned through sumo to overcome the many challenges he'll face in his new life.

I traveled to Utah and tried to talk (pun intended) sense into Mike. A very long process and I failed. Apart from that? There's this life thing going on. That peciuliar entity sends me avatars regularly, calling themselves strange names like "wife" and "children". It's all very confusing. But I'm lurking around, no worries. But it's a slippery slope. If I don't pay attention, I lose the basis for prticipating meaningfully. If that happens, engagement becomes less, etc.

At Tatsunami-beya today: with visitors Haruna Kokubo (25, talento, last year's runner-up Miss Earth Japan, daughter of Softbank Hawks coach Kokubo) and Ujigami Ichiban (65 - but like Demon officially born in the distant past: April 3rd 1690) from of the band KabukiRocks - and 2 other celeb visitors & more oooo o o o Meisei back from jungyo kyujo due to a neck injury o Sadogatake-beya with kids as visitors o o Kataonami-beya without visitors o

Will we still be alive to see the result of this poll?

Don't know if it's a big middle finger to the NHK (why would it be other than Harumafuji being there--though other than the "incident" he is and always has been a model citizen (building schools, etc.) and I think the Kyokai recognizes that), but what a treat it is for us fans to be able to have all four of these legends in a room together and hear their stories!

We currently have Asahifuji's toshiyori career as this: Time Kabu Name Holder Heya Ichimon Owner 15.01.1992 (KA) - 25.04.1993 (KT) 5-year-Toshiyori Asahifuji Seiya Y Asahifuji Seiya Oshima Tatsunami 26.04.1993 (KT) - 29.11.2007 (KC) Ajigawa[4] Seiya Y Asahifuji Seiya Ajigawa Tatsunami 30.11.2007 (KC) - Isegahama[9] Seiya Y Asahifuji Seiya Isegahama Tatsunami As Ajigawa-beya shisho he succeeded Mutsuarashi, who had to leave sumo early due to chronic health issues. However, Mutsuarashi's ja.wiki article (in footnote 2) states that he had made his intentions known the year before already, and that Asahifuji had consequently moved from Oshima to Ajigawa as affiliated oyakata to prepare for the takeover, specifically "after Aki 1992". Asahifuji's article implies the same but without mentioning any specific timing for the move. I note from ja.wiki that Asahifuji also had his retirement ceremony "after Aki 1992", so he was almost definitely still with Oshima-beya for that. According to this Kyodo image licensing website, the intai-zumo took place on October 3rd, 1992. Beyond that, I've been unsuccessful in finding an exact date for Asahifuji's transfer, assuming the ja.wiki claim about it is in fact accurate to begin with.

Nice to hear, hope he'll have some success. As far as I know ex-rikishi restaurants can be really hit or miss but abura-soba seems popular enough that he could do well. At least I like it

Haven't posted in years, but was dallying around here again when I stumbled onto this thread and was reminded of Sumo Talk. It was extremely useful in the old days, when it was hard to get video of the bouts and you could try to picture them through the ST descriptions. Despite some of the debatable statements or theories (especially by some of the writers), they offered quite detailed descriptions of the bouts, which I usually found very effective. My approach was always to see ST as less "serious" English-speaking sumo commentary, and I never really understood the presumed competition with this forum. Access to ANY sumo info in English was a major challenge in the day, and there was more than enough space for both for anyone who was interested in reading a bit more... To open another can of worms... whatever happened to the fantastic "NHK wrapup videos" that Dale used to post on his website along with the individual bouts ? I still have a bunch of those and some were really cool (Haru Basho 2003 to name one...). Do they still exist ? Can they be found somewhere ?

I remember when ST came on the scene, it was really exciting for me to have another english source of information about sumo. And the site was interesting for a long time, it had good contributors who wrote interesting and funny reports. I didn't agree with everything they wrote, but it was refreshing to have another viewpoint on sumo. It even featured Alice Cooper's guitarist (Kane Roberts) as a writer at one point. But as others have said, when the contributors left and it became a oneman show, the site descended into parody. Everything in sumo is a conspiracy became the narrative. Come to think of it, that outlook is almost kind of racist, e.g. the evil japanese NHK who seeks to ruin the chances of the valiant mongolian rikishi. The most annoying thing for me, was when the things that Mike said would never happen, happened. For instance, Hakuho would never be allowed by the NHK to beat the record for most yusho. But Hakuho did do it, and there was never any soulsearching by Mike on how he got it wrong. Further, if the evil NHK runs everything by way of yaocho and other shady business, why are mongolian rikishi still winning almost every yusho? Makes no sense. It really is a shame how it ended up, because ST really was worthwhile when it sprang onto the scene all those years ago. It was a good supplement to this site, kind of what I think tachiai.org has become now. And it was fun. Now it's just sad.

The person known as Kaikitsune.

If the ST forum would be operational, I could go full forensic on that one, but alas! From memory it was like this: Mike, who never posted enything in the forum, was quoted as trying to set up some stream. He obviously involved more tech savy guys, most likely Mario, he of the LHC and Estonian persuasion. From what I gather, it involved some person with access to NHK coverage (I assumed Mike himself with some sort of expensive subscription; maybe some of the people in Japan, like Clancy) to grab the signal and splice it into some server, hence the gadget comment. The link was then shared in forum. At first openly, but then some mass paranoia ensued, so after a while, it was hidden in a section open for specific usergroups, with invitations shared by and to "trustworthy" people (a lot of SF regulars suddenly turned up, I remember...). It was all a bit childish, but exiting. So when I wrote "the masses", it was actually a bunch of massively hermetic freaks. But that was running for about two years IIRC, and stopped, when the NSKs free lizard people stream got upgraded. Don't quote me on any of that, it's some time ago and the plot was lost with the forum. See, I didn't know any of that, or I may have partly forgotten. The translation thing rings a bell, as well as the Clancy thing. You might have mentioned that. Clancy always was quite the character, as were others in that special webitat. Who is our forum owner? That part is really news to me. No worries. Your first post to which I reacted sounded to me less hostile, but instead underinformed. You have to realize, conversation about ST has become highly symbolical and in part near-fictional here in SF. At least, if people try to reconstruct the situation 10-15 years ago by deducing it part from (bad) memory and mostly from the zombie-like activities there from today. Thus, most of the occasional ST talk around here is to be considered condensed and symbolical at best. We were not all Flat Earthers. If (my) memory serves, the two tribes thing went from "I don't know them but they suck" to some genuinely warm crossover teasing, with a small group of people posting both here and there. ST even had a team of players under that banner in one of the more popular sumo games, bantering along with the other ichimon from here or e.g. the German groups (and we were good!!!). All this somewhat imploded after a while. Traffic on the forum, which was always much less than on SF, reached the critical lower threshold and eventually died. Several people moved to the busier place, i.e. SF, since the welcome had turned out to be friendlier than expected. Many people just disappeared. That Mike's commentary slowly moved from controversial but informed to fringe/cringe to comedy to self-parody didn't really help. If I was asked how I would see myself in all of this - which I wasn't, but I indulge myself: I am happy to have found a healthy, enduring harbour for sharing sumo interest, collecting likes for inconsequential one-liners, dropping silly photoshops, being geeky. And: This is a place with quite a few selfmade experts, who invest an immense amount of time in gathering, processing and relaying highly intricate and detailed knowledge for others to share in. Every good forum has a couple of those, but here it seems to me a rather large group (and I don't count myself into that bunch at all; very far from it). That being said, I see myself as a corrective voice when certain ST related comments pop up (provided I notice them). Even in a generally enlightened place like here, people are craving for dichotomy. Prominent SF figures (and I'm only naming who is already involved in this particular thread, either by Post or Like) have positioned themselves in various ways. The most honorable Kintamayama-san is - like is his habit - the furthest on his Dao. From personal comments I gather that for himself he transcended the original purist-nutcase-struggle. Another guy like Randomitsuki always went full sciency on all or at least the nuttier parts of the ST spectrum. All the while he kept an open mind at all times and is a joy to converse with (alas, too little for years now). Others with stricter positions tend to keep silent or at minimal level of involvement (albeit peppered with snarkiness). And finally, there still are the real-for-real no-nonsense purists, who are also very knowledgeable, but keep a long stick up theirs butts since forever. The latter are not for me to convince about anything. I tend to react to newish people who don't know better and tend to pick up on the quote of the quote of the quote, effectively lending themselves to the legend-building machine that is all human conversation about the past. If it turns out fine - like with you - I'm happy, if not and continously, there's always the ignore list.

Really? Did not know that. Can you divulge some more details? I actually did some translating for ST for a while, everyone was really nice to me, especially Mike. Our forum owner contributed excellent professional commentary as well. I got into a really wild flame war with Clancy Kelly, one of the more controversial contributors there, and we ended up becoming great friends and he even was here for a visit and we met.

Those are difficult question to answer satisfyingly in the off-topic hijacking of another thread. Let's say back then (my contributing career spanned from Nagoya 2008 to Hatsu 2013) the ST community (i.e. forum) was still existing and actually (in a very toxic, early-YT way) healthy. At that time, there was a (partly imagined) rivalry ongoing between SF snowflake purists, who wouldn't accept the thought a thrown bout, even if confessions written in the rikishis' own blood were filed to the Vatican archives, and the nutcase tinfoil hats of ST, who would not accept that any consequential bout could be untarnished. Naturally, it was more fun to rile up the purists. Note that I was and am moderate, at least that's my self-perception. Some insights from the time were valuable, IMHO. Nowadays it's pretty wild, but honestly, I haven't read anything there for years. And the forum is long dead. If you are interested in what I poured out back then, here's my debut report, and two other random days, like here and there. For all the criticism towards Mike, he was the one who organized some semi-legal stream acquired through some technical gizmo in order to provide live footage back then for the masses, when no-one else could watch otherwise.

So, would you like to talk to me about anything?

Sumotalk claims to provide "Expert Sumo Analysis", but the comments that Sumo Forum members have made are right-on. Their whole emphasis is on conspiracies. It's really strange how fixated they are on them. This is what they say about themselves --- "The tone and style of Sumotalk has drawn criticism for its abrasiveness, arrogance, and irreverence, but the website was born from the emails of two friends who never shied away from telling it as they saw it while running a little smack and trash-talking along the way. To our critics we say, 'we talk about sumo, you talk about us,' and to our fans (both of you) we say 'thanks mom and dad!'"

In short, the site was a really big deal starting some 20 years ago, because they were the only ones dedicated to writing detailed match summaries in an era when it was very hard to get video coverage unless you either lived in Japan, or paid for TV Japan / NHK World Premium, or were able to align your life schedule with the broadcast of the Kyokai's grainy live stream. People were also doing summaries here and on the old Sumo Mailing List, but only intermittently and not anywhere near as focused as Sumotalk's writers did. Unfortunately, their most prolific writers were the type of foreigners-living-in-Japan who think they know everything better than their hosts do, which got expressed in a massive pushing of a Japan / the Kyokai vs. the World narrative in their sumo stuff. That first led to them being some of the world's biggest Asashoryu apologists during his various misadventures, and after he was forced out of sumo, they went off the conspiratorial deep end altogether. At some point their remaining audience became essentially cut off entirely from the rest of the international sumo fandom. I have no idea how much of a following they have these days. Around the same time as Asa's exit we also started to get much better video from the Kyokai for free for a few years - ironically because of low popularity (NHK BS ceased broadcasting from jonokuchi to sandanme, so the Kyokai had to step in) as well as scandal (NHK refused to broadcast Nagoya 2010 altogether after the gambling scandal) - which probably contributed to Sumotalk's marginalization over time. Since they were mentioned as a modern-day version: For as good as Tachiai's written tournament coverage is, relative to the overall "marketplace" of sumo content, Sumotalk was a much, much bigger player in its heyday.