Greetings

[Kuroyama]

Hello Sumoforum! My name is Chris, and I'm rather a beginner to sumo but I'm enjoying it tremendously.

I'd been attracted to the sport for a long time, but in the US information is not easy to come by, and after my initial interest I became too distracted by college and my own martial art (European-style fencing) to have much attention to spare for it. That was a very long time ago. Even after the Internet showed up I never even considered online sources for some reason until I happened upon some videos of recent sumo bouts on YouTube. That led me to look around, and the first place I found was... a certain other website. But I got into contact with Nishinoshima -- a name I recognized, since he'd posted many of the YouTube videos, and I've since been a customer of his -- and he gave me some links to a number of other places including this one.

I've been lurking here ever since, and I have to thank all the local experts for their most informative posts. I've learned more here just from listening in than I ever could have somewhere else.

At the moment I'm involved in a Wikipedia project to try to bring a semblance of order and credibility to the sumo-related articles there. As I'm very much not an expert and am still acquiring reference material (not reading Japanese is a hindrance) my contributions are mostly on the technical and editorial side. It's still a badly underpopulated project, in great need of people who know what they're talking about.

So now that I'm posting I can actually ask a question when I want to know something instead of waiting for someone else to. Sweet!

[Kuroyama]

Welcome indeed.

Isn't that what Mr. Roarke used to say on Fantasy Island when some guests arrived who were about to learn some particularly pithy life lessons? (Shaking head...)

[Tikozan]

(Laughing...) aboard and greetings from germany.

[Fujisan]

Welcome aboard Chris (Annoyed...)

Chuck in your salt (Laughing...) and join the fray.

Dont be afraid to ask question,its the only way we learn.