You won't Believe What Happened..
Yesterday we went to Ryogoku, the Sumo district. In the months leading up to our trip to Japan, we got hooked watching Sumo wrestling tournaments together as a family. My son's favourite Sumo wrestler is Aonishiki Arata, a Sumo wrestler that's originally from Ukraine.
We would have loved to attend an actual Sumo tournament, unfortunately we came during the off season (it only occurs during specific days on odd # months). Instead we visited the Sumo Stadium (which has a Sumo shop) and we also visited the famous Takashi Sumo Shop. The district is filled with restaurants run by retired Sumo wrestlers. In the stadium's sumo shop, My son asked if they had the signature and handprint of his favourite Sumo wrestler and they did. (We told the lady at cash to mark it clearly for us since we are completely illiterate in Japanese). My husband asked for the signature prints of the best fighters and I asked for the wrestler who fought with the most heart. The original goes for about $350-$400 dollars, luckily for us a copy of the signatures we got are only $3.5 dollars a piece.
Today we had a magical moment, as we exited the subway station right by our hotel we saw a crowd of people surrounding real life Sumo wrestlers! In Japan these Sumo wrestlers are national celebrities. They date supermodels and are considered sex symbols! They couldn't walk, everyone was trying to get a photo with them. Their handler was getting the croud to go away, when a women with the Sumo wrestlers spotted my son. I head the woman say 'Chisana ko' a few times, something that translated to 'the little one'. She pointed to my son and told them to let the little one have a picture. The kind Sumo wrestlers immediately obliged, they couldn't say no to a child. The woman also invited us to get into the shot as well. She asked us to give a thumbs up (that's why my arms were flexed in the photo).
This was an unbelievable, magical moment. We showed the photo to the gentlemen working reception in our hotel, his jaw dropped, he could not believe it!
Japan is amazing, I still can't believe this happened. We went from buying sumo souveners to actually posing with real life sumo wrestlers in a photograph. What a trip!
