Chilling with the Yokazuna… You Could Say He’s Kinda a Big Deal

I attended the sumo tournament once again this last week. I’m a bit amazed by how much I’ve learned about sumo over the last six months, but I suppose that’s what happens when you count sumo wrestlers as your neighbors.

For two and a half weeks this month, my little neighborhood felt pretty trendy, with huge crowds around the sumo stadium everyday. Now, though, the January basho has come and gone, and life in Ryogoku is returning to normal.

Even cooler than the sumo tournament was an opportunity that came along a few weeks ago to attend early morning sumo practice at one of the many neighborhood stables, where the wrestlers live and train. Way back in September, I mentioned that I had met an elderly British woman at the bon dance in the local park. She’s been living in my neighborhood for something like thirty years. I’m not exactly sure what she does, but she once mentioned something about “correcting the English of Japanese bureaucrats.” She also moonlights as a Sumo commentator. Being friends with a sumo commentator is quite the hook-up in Ryogoku, and the woman was kind enough to take a friend and me to see sumo practice at the crack of dawn.

We walked only about two short blocks from the temple before coming to an altogether unassuming-looking building; it looked, in fact, just like every other building on the block except it had vertical bars covering the windows (which I assume are intended to keep intruders out rather than to keep the wrestlers in, since the sumo guys wouldn’t be able to fit through the windows to begin with). The interior was what I expected: a small genkan and a low wooden platform covered in zabuton where sat the stable master. Most of the room was taken up by the dohyo, the sumo ring where the wrestlers were standing around.

As we took our seats on our zabuton, the lower-ranked deshi wrestlers were in the middle of practice. Two guys would wrestle, and the winner would pick his partner for the next bout, and the winner would stay in until he lost a bout, at which point the new winner would pick his preferred partner. The consequence of using this system of practice was that after every bout all of the wrestlers would run into the ring hollering, “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!” In this respect, the practice resembled middle school dodge ball team selections, and I might have chuckled had each one of them not been able to crush me with his big toe.

Eventually, the deshi wrestlers finished, and the higher-ranked sekitori guys took the ring. My sumo commentator friend was scribbling notes (no whispering allowed at practice!) trying to explain what was going, but I can’t say I quite followed everything. Fortunately, sumo is, at essence, relatively simple: the first person to step outside of the ring or to make contact with the ring with any part of the body other than the feet loses. The stable slowly became more and more crowded with visitors sporting cameras, whom I later realized were journalists. The air was heavy with gossip—though, of course, I had no idea what was up. Then, in walked Asashōryū, and even I knew who he was. Asashōryū is sumo’s yokozuna—its grand champion—and he’s by far the most famous sumo wrestler in Japan (in the world, even!) and is one of the country’s most recognizable faces. Unbeknown to my sumo commentator friend, Asashōryū just so happened to choose the particular stable we were at for his morning practice. Practice wasn't quite the same from that point on; it was as if there were an elephant in the room. Word of Asashōryū’s whereabouts seemed to get around, and the place became packed with journalists. All eyes were on Asashōryū and his (comparatively) little sumo sidekick/servant, who was preoccupied scrubbing his boss’ (master’s?) arms and legs. Asashōryū sumoed it up a bit with his fellow sekitori, and I even saw him lose two bouts. He came, he fought, and he left. The wrestlers stretched, and practice wrapped up.

I got to see Asashōryū a couple weeks later at the sumo tournament. I’m pretty sure he didn’t recognize me, but I recognized him. It had been a year since he had won a tournament, and there was speculation that his career was finished. I saw him take a win, though, in the final bout, and the following day, he won the tournament, making him one of the winningest sumo wrestlers ever. Read about it here, if you want.

Not all sumo wrestlers are Japanese. Lots come from eastern Europe, Russia, and Mongolia. Asashōryū (and the other current yokozuna!) are Mongolian, which is a bit of a rumpus in the sumo world (get it?). This guy on the left is Georgian.

Never too old to find wedgies funny!

Asashōryū and the Georgian get ready to fight.

What happens to sumo wrestlers who misbehave.

Stretching after practice.

Caption contest?

Someone's been watching too much BBC!

On my way to waku-waku class today, I passed one of my 5 year-olds, and (in Japanese) I asked, "Are you ready for class?" He stopped, closed his eyes real tight, thought for a while, and then belted out, "Yes, we can!" I sorta died.

The incident, though, reminded me of something I saw in a shop window when I was traveling through Kansai in December:

Taking out the Trash in Japan

Taking out the trash here is pretty complicated. Though I’m biased, I’d say it’s significantly more complicated than taking out the trash in the U.S. It’s completed enough, at least, to merit its own blog posting. There are just so many variables to keep track of.

The first obstacle is deciding what goes in which can. At home, I currently have six different kinds of receptacles, but it’s time to revise my system. At the most basic level, the Japanese gomi deities differentiate between trash that is burnable and is not. This may not sound too daunting, but let’s try a thought experiment: you’re getting up from your seat at a Starbucks-life café, holding a tray with your empty coffee cap and food wrappings. As you approach the trash, you notice several bins and chutes, maybe with some Japanese kanji on them to provide clues—if you’re lucky. A dozen pairs of Japanese eyes are on you, watching to see what the foreigner is going to do. What do you do?

If you’re like me, you’d slowly begin dismantling your tray, dumping the ice into the ice chute, the wooden stirring stick into the burnable bin, the plastic coffee lid into the non-burnable bin. What about the Styrofoam cup, though? And the Cellophane muffin wrapper? Are they burnable or non-burnable? Does it matter which city ward you’re in at the time? Usually, I’ve just about formulated an answer to these questions when the café employee walks up and takes the tray from my hands to finish the task. I might try to feign a protest and put on a little show, but I know the employee will insist on throwing out my trash for me. It’s a bit infantilizing, to be honest, but deep-down, I’m happy I don’t have to worry about it.

(I’ve also felt really infantilized lately by how often I leave a restaurant and am told, “Oh, you use chopsticks so well!” This comment—and it happened as recently as last night—is all the more degrading because I know that, in fact, I do not hold my chopsticks in the proper Japanese fashion. I wonder how a Japanese woman would feel if she were leaving a restaurant in New York and were told, “Wow, you sure know how to use a knife and fork!”)

For a little while, I worried I was the only one who experienced this daily dilemma, but the more I began talking to foreigners, the more I realized that one must be ethnically Japanese in order to be able to understand the country’s waste disposal system. A few days ago, I came across this humor article in Tokyo’s popular English-language magazine. If you’re so inclined, you can read the whole thing, but otherwise, here’s the best part:

I know our ward means well by publishing a colorful how-to recycling guide, complete with overly chipper cartoon characters acting as environmental gurus. But if I beat my head against the wall for three solid minutes, I would get the same result as attempting to puzzle out their guidelines. Milk cartons are cut and flattened, cardboard and paper bundled, wire binding removed from notebooks, buttons cut off old clothes, and plastic bottles… well, they’re given the equivalent of a prison strip search. Caps come off, labels are removed, and the tiny plastic ring around the neck is wrestled into the bin. Same with glass bottles (peel the labels at least), but they get put in a different bin.

Anyway, so the situation with the trash at home is a bit easier. I have the luxury of taking my time without anyone watching when I decide into which can to throw away a broken pen. Still, though, I manage to screw things up, and I’ve been screwing it up continually since I got to Japan. The temple folks always seem to be giving me pointers about how to take out my trash properly. You know how in Office Space everyone keeps telling Peter about how he can’t attach the correct cover sheets? That’s sorta how my life has been for the last 5 months, except instead of having supervisors hassle me about TPS reports, I have monks hassling me about trash.

After months of trial-by-fire, I thought I had finally figured out the trash system. Then, about 10 days ago, I had about an hour-long chitchat with one of the temple administrators about my trash. It appears I was not only sorting improperly, I was also taking out my trash on the wrong days, putting it in the wrong place, and using unauthorized trash bags! I swear I’m not making this up. As I learned, burnable and non-burnable trash get taken out on different days, and cans, cardboard, and cartons get taken out on a different day still! Burnable trash is on Thursdays and sometimes Mondays, recycling is on Tuesdays, and non-burnable is on Saturdays—well, odd-numbered Saturdays. I graciously accepted the box of authorized trash bags I was given and vowed to do a better job taking out my trash.

In the days since then, I’ve learned that the laws concerning what is and isn’t burnable were recently changed. My Cellophane rice ball wrappings, which used to be non-burnable, are now burnable—at least in my city ward. I’ve been told this change should make things much simpler, but I’ve also been told Japanese isn’t such a difficult language to learn. Because of my Pavlovian-like fear of what happens when I try to take out the trash, I try not to do it too often. Last night, though, I summoned my Japanese domestic side and did it. This morning, when I went to work, I received the usual flurry of morning greetings—ohayyyyyyoooooou gozaimasu! And then this from the principal: “Rob-sensei, do you have a minute? I’d like to talk with you about your trash.”

Since I seemed to be making so many mistakes, the temple administrator finally gave me some fliers to hang up to explain trash procedures.

New Year's Eve in Kyōto: Ringing in the New Year... 108 Times

I spent New Year’s Eve at the headquarters of the Pure Land school of Buddhism, watching 17 monks cast away their sins by ringing the largest bell in Japan 108 times. It was different from my previous New Year’s experience, which involved getting trashed at a Princeton party in TriBeCa.

The tradition, known as joya-no-kane, takes place at temples across the country, where monks ring bells and sound gongs at midnight. Each sounding is meant to cleanse listeners of one of the 108 Buddhist temptations. This particular bell weighed 84 tons and was sounded by a large battering ram, from which hung 17 ropes. An old monk, in purple and gold kaftan-like robes, presided solemnly over the whole affair. The Jōdo shū temple, founded over 500 years before the United States, would have been impressive even without the massive bell. Approaching Chion-in, the first thing I saw was the temple’s colossal gate, which, I learned, is also the largest in Japan. Illuminated at night, the sight of the gate was pretty awe-inspiring.

From the temple, my friend and I walked downhill through the hundreds of colorful festival fast food rotensho stalls lining Maruyama Park. We passed Yasaka Shrine and saw thousands of people lined up behind police barricades, waiting for hatsumōde, their first shrine visit of the year. We decided to skip partaking in Japan’s version of Times Square and managed to catch a cab back to the hotel.

As I stood at Chion-in, one of Kyoto’s coolest temples in my opinion, in the cold at midnight, I really couldn’t stop thinking about how much has happened over the past year and—at risk of sounding old—how quickly the year flew by. As I mentioned, I spent the previous New Year’s surrounded by a lot of Cap friends in New York. I remember talking to a guy who was in Cap and graduated ’07; he was spending the year in China through PiA and was back just for his winter break; I remember him telling me about his experience in China, and I distinctly remember thinking that it sounded really cool but that there was no way I’d ever move to Asia after graduation. Life is funny that way, I guess.

I seem to have blacked out the next few months, the period in which I spent every waking hour slaving away at my thesis on the A-floor of Firestone and in the basement of Dod. My memory kicks back in, though, around mid-April, when I turned in my thesis, went crazy for a couple weeks, and attended my final classes as an undergraduate. Then, it was Houseparties—everyone’s favorite unnecessarily decadent 3 days of formals, semiformals, and lawnparties. Then, Dead Week in (North) Myrtle Beach (which, coincidentally, coincided with Black Biker Week). Then, I graduated, and Princeton was snatched from me in three short days. From there, I had an incredible, carefree summer in New York followed by a (surprisingly?) really fun family vacation in Hawaii. In mid-August, I relocated 7,000 miles to Japan, moved into a Buddhist temple, learned to bow, and began saying things like “Forgive me, for I am committing a rudeness.” And then my Tokyo adventures got underway. It was definitely the most momentous year of my life.

***

I’ve been a bit MIA from the blog over the last few weeks because I’ve been traveling. I spent a week in Arizona with my family and then two weeks sight-seeing in Japan with a friend. It was by far the best time I’ve had in Japan so far, and maybe I’ll try to post some highlights from the trip. A current resolution, though, is at least to post photos from the trip online—lots of really spectacular pictures (not taken by me). For now, here are some photos from New Year’s (all taken by a friend).

Chion-in's San-mon gate is the largest in Japan.

The bell is 11 feet in height and 9 feet in diameter. Intense.

The important-looking guy in the middle on the right seemed to be in charge.

It took 17 monks to ring the 84-ton bell.

After the bell was rung 108 times, the monks gathered around in a circle and prayed.

A huge crowd waits to enter Kyoto's Yasaka Shrine for hatsumode on New Year's. Thousands and thousands more people were lined up as far as I could see down the street.

Japan Birthday

Spending my birthday in Tokyo has not been a highlight of my time in Japan. The day started off pretty great, but by lunchtime the loneliness had set in.

Ordinarily, I suppose I would have tried to celebrate somehow, but I was feeling exhausted from a couple weeks of awesome traveling, and I start back at work tomorrow, so I didn’t have the energy. I spent most the day at the temple, taking care of old e-mail and doing laundry.

I thought about the samplers I’d be doing if I were at Triumph in Princeton, but I realized that even if I weren’t in Japan, I probably wouldn’t be spending my birthday at Triumph. I also thought about my other international birthday—my 20th, spent drinking heavily and heartily in the bomb shelter of Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem. My Japan birthday was far less exciting. I was planning on just going out for sushi alone and then coming home and doing more laundry, but I received a surprising midday phone call from Keiko-sensei, the temple matriarch, to wish me a happy new year. As it turned out, she was calling not to wish me a happy new year but a happy birthday (the two sound very alike in Japanese). I was a bit taken back, as I had no idea how she knew it was my birthday. I was even more touched, though, when I realized she was inviting me out to dinner for my birthday. It was a good birthday moment.

I met Keiko-sensei in the evening in front of the temple, and we walked together to a yakiniku restaurant nearby (this reastaurant), where a party was waiting for me. The “party” consisted of the school principal and Keiko-sensei’s 30 year-old son, one of the monks at the temple. It was modest, but I was, again, touched by the thoughtfulness. The yakiniku was oishii and a welcome change from what has seemed like weeks of fish. Dinner consisted of varying parts of cow in varying degreed of cooked-ness, ranging from somewhat cooked to raw. It was also pretty filling, especially compared to most Japanese food. It wasn’t the most traditional birthday food, but neither was the conversation, all of which was in Japanese. I was able to partake in conversation for about the first 10 minutes, in which time I informed them that I visited many beautiful shrines and temples in Kyoto but that they were crowded. The three of them nodded along understandingly. Then, I reached the limits of my Japanese, and I spent the rest of the meal quietly eating my yakiniku, smiling occasionally.

It would have been nice to have some Anglophone company over dinner, but I was mainly appreciative of Keiko-sensei’s efforts for me not to spend the evening alone. For a variety of reasons, this will be a birthday I’ll remember.

Irony Bites Hard

Santa Clause seems to have taken his revenge for all the times I bitched as a kid about having to sing "Silent Night" in school. (And no, throwing "Dreidle, Dreidle" into the mix along with fifteen Christmas songs does not make it OK.)

At the beginning of the month, the temple asked me to begin teaching the kids about Christmas. As you might expect, this caught me by surprise. What, exactly, did they want me to be teaching? I do think I have a pretty decent, above-average knowledge of the Synoptic Gospels (especially for a Jew), whence the Christmas story is derived. As it turns out, though, what I was supposed to be teaching about was Santa and gift-giving and reindeer and Christmas trees (they love their Christmas trees in Japan!). Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m certainly no ACLU member, but I’ve never really been one to be comfortable with Christmas in the classroom. I’m probably one of those "secular progressives" [read: Jews] that Bill O’Reilly has in mind when he gets prissy about the so-called War on Christmas.

I didn’t really think this was the appropriate opportunity to deliver a lecture on plurality and diversity in the U.S., so I bit my lip and agreed to teach about Christmas. It wasn’t really as bad as I was expecting. I had to read some Christmas books, and I found myself rewriting a few popular Christmas songs to make the lyrics easier for the kids to sing, but other than that, it was pretty easy. I confess that I really enjoyed the Christmas parties Takahashi-sensei and I had in the waku-waku classes on Thursday and Friday; I think I may have finally found a little Christmas spirit. Takahashi-sensei engineered a pretty impressive-looking Christmas tree out of construction paper, and all the kids made origami ornaments to put on the tree. I was certainly kvelling watching my little five year-olds make origami flowers and boats and samurai helmets; they all looked really cute and really… Japanese. I even learned how to make a crane! I’m actually looking forward to the coming week of Christmas parties with my elementary school classes.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. In case you have 3.5 minutes to kill, here’s another fun clip of ol’ Bill. Enjoy!

My waku-waku kids hard at work on their origami ornaments.

Reaching to hang an ornament at the top of the tree.

Ushering

What a huge change and what an experience it was this evening being surrounded by tons of old Japanese people, considering I spent the first hour of my day drawing pictures of different kinds of transportation in the dirt with a 3 year-old. I served as an usher this evening at the temple’s annual charity concert for UNICEF. I sorta felt like I was back in the Sunbelt doing thesis research—except all the old people were Japanese, and it was 45 degrees.

My first task as usher was working on an assembly line making origami goody-bags full of candy to be given out to the concert attendees. My origami skills apparently didn’t pass muster, for pretty quickly I was assigned strictly to putting the candy in the bags. Of course, no Japanese person would ever tell me my origami sucks; instead, one must say it indirectly, like this: “You’re so good at putting the candies in the bags! Why don’t you just focus all of your efforts on that?!”

The actual concert was held in this tiny theater next to the temple, the same place I saw the Japanese rendition of The Magic Flute back during my first week in Tokyo. At first, I stood by the entrance looking official, collecting tickets and distributing programs. Lots of deep, deep bowing was involved. Keiko-sensei tried to point out prominent professors and local politicians to me, but I couldn’t really understand. During the actual performance, I stood by the theater door and smiled obliquely as old people entered; I think I was supposed to help direct them to their seats or something, but no one ever explained the seating chart to me.

Like all the performances I’ve seen in Japan, the concert was realllllly long. The first act featured some famous traditional Japanese storyteller. Unlike, say, opera, however, Japanese storytelling cannot be appreciated on the basis of aesthetics alone. I stood in the back of the theater for a long, long time, listening to a man talk and chant in a language I couldn’t understand at all, and all I could think about was food. So, it actually felt a lot like that very last hour-long “please rise” part at the end of Yom Kippur, when everyone is woozy and tired and hungry! The concert picked up a little bit from there. There was a flutist and a pianist and a tenor, and they took turns performing solo and together.

After helping to clean up, I was exhausted and was looking forward to retiring back to my little temple apartment. In an eerie occurrence of déjà vu, however, I found myself corralled into a special, private room at the temple, where five dignified-looking individuals were sitting around a table. It took me a minute to realize that these were the flutist and the pianist and the tenor and the storyteller from the concert (I later learned the fifth individual was a famous composer who had debuted original work at the charity concert). Maybe I’ve taken too many LSATs in the last month, but I felt the situation would have been perfect as the prompt for one of the logic games: if a Japanese flutist, pianist, tenor, storyteller, and composer each occupy exactly one seat around a table… Anyway, I was introduced to these eminent individuals, and they were told I was supposed to entertain them. Then we were left alone. They stared at me, and I stared back at them. Awkward. Finally, one of them asked me to repeat my name; it took about five minutes to get them to pronounce "Rob" in a recognizable form. Then, they asked for my last name, so I told them—and they all died laughing. I was really embarrassed, and I couldn’t figure out what was so funny. Then I realized that they all thought I was joking about my last name; I suppose it would have been like telling a room full of painters that your last name was Mondrian. I managed to convince them that I wasn’t joking about my name, and there were all amazed. Things lightened up from there. The composer even gave me his card and invited me out drinking with him next week!