Experience Japan

Today started off with me waking up just a half hour later than yesterday. It gave me an early start to go and see the imperial palace gardens. This was an amazing garden area and park area inside the imperial grounds. The garden is the only place that is open to the public right now, but it is well worth the stroll around the area. It's extremely hard not to take amazing pictures with such nice scenery. I spent a few hours walking around and taking in the scenery and also made it to Yasakuni Shrine which is nearby.

After a quick lunch, I went to my first Sumo Wrestling Tournament event. Today is the first day of a 15 day long May tournament, and I got tickets to see it. The event starts early in the morning and fights happen all day long. The inexperienced wrestlers are usually in the morning and the main attraction is in the afternoon. I got there at about 1 pm so I saw a little bit of the morning event. People really got excited at around 4 when the larger and more experienced fighters came in. After watching 5 hours of match after match, I think I finally figured out the Sumo Wrestler's 5 minute ritual performance before actually starting the 10 second bought. There are 3 times that a wrestler enters the ring before the fight actually starts and each time includes throwing white chalk into the ring, slapping himself in various places multiple times, stomping the ground, squatting, practicing the initiating ground touch, and in general synchronizing his movements so that he looks good. But really, how good can you look when your 500 lb body falls 3 feet off the ring mound and onto some poor guy sitting ringside in the audience.