Sumo-A battle of Wedgies

Max and I went on a trip to Tokyo to see the Sumo Tournament. We rode down on a tour bus on Sunday. He started out throwing up on the bus twice before we left the city limits, but did fine on the rest of the 8 hour ride. Though he was real angry that I wouldn't let him get ice cream at each of the rest stops! He did get some the next day at the tournament. We got to Tokyo and went on a walk to see The Temple. Being Sunday it was closed but he enjoyed seeing it and I again felt a great sense of peace just standing on the corner in front of the temple gates. We then went and found some dinner, Max- McDonalds and me Subway, yes I am getting tired of trying to find food for Max and sometimes myself to eat in Japan, kinda wanted to have some american food around but didn't want to take the Subway to Outback (Tokyo actually has a few american options).
We spent the rest of the evening in the hotel reading and we watched a conference talk of President Monson for our spiritual dinner.

Monday was the tournament. Our tour, through the Misawa Travel Agency, took us to the Edo-Tokyo Museum and the Sumo venue which are neighboring buildings. The good Sumo wrestlers don't fight til later in the afternoon so we spent the a few hours at the museum first. They had free museum guides and she was great. If you can make the history of Tokyo, (how it started out as a little town in the 1600s called Edo and then grew through the powerful influenced of the Tokugawa Shoguns into a thriving city which became know as Tokyo as the Emporer Meji allowed the Western influence to enter the Japanese culture), interesting to a 9 year old and a 33 year old, then you are a fabulous tour guide. It was fun. It took you through scale models of what Edo looked like and had some life size building replicas and so on and then took you into the transition from Edo to Tokyo. 

After the Museum we headed to the Kokugikan, the Tokyo Sumo Arena. We ate lunch and watched the lesser Sumo guys while we ate lunch. We enjoyed it a lot. It was fascinating stuff with a lot of ceremony. Each match takes about 5 minutes and the wrestling part is about 5 seconds. It rivals baseball for excitement. I definitely got into it and cheered. There were a lot of good matches and  a few that lasted less then a second as one wrestler would move out of the way as they lept for each other causing the other to fall on the ground. (One wins by forcing the opponent out of the ring or to touch the ground with any body part.) There are numerous moves one can do by grabbing their loin cloth, thus making a "Battle of Wedgies." Sam thinks they are all immodest. After an exciting final match, where the guy who was undefeated almost lost but pulled off a great victory, we headed back to the hotel for dinner, where Max forwent his hot dog and had two salads!, then went swimming.

I turned my reading light out around 10:30 and later heard Max exclaim, "Wow. It's 12:30!" as he turned his off. He had tried to finish Harry Potter Book 5 but just couldn't pull it off. The next morning was comical. I could barely get him out of the room to go the breakfast buffet, his favorite thing in the world. After one bite of french toast and two bits of pineapple he took the room key and left me eating my yummy scrambled eggs and potatoes. I returned to find him back in bed, which is where he was when I left at 9:30 for the Temple, leaving him with some Filipino hotel babysitter, and where he was when I came back at 12:30.

I eventually forced him back out into Tokyo and we visited the Sensoji Temple, dated back to 1600's.

 Max finally got his souvenir samurai swords, he's been wanting for 2.5 years. After this we took a variety of subways and monorail to get to Odaiba island, a man made island where one can find Joypolis (the spelling still bugs me I want it to be Joyopolis), an indoor Sega themepark.

Max loved it. There was a giant half pipe where you were strapped to a giant skate board and could try 360's. Max screamed the whole time, awesome. At the end of the evening I started feeling sick and Max had to go on the last ride by himself. Outside, despite a growing sense of queasiness, I stopped to take some pictures of the beautiful night scene of the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo skyline.

Then I looked around for a garbage can and barely made it to one before I throw up. Let me tell you, I did not like having the Tokyo subway system between me and the hotel with my queasy feelings. I made it eventually, only having to hover above a squatty potty in the subway station for a minute before my body thought it was ridiculous to attempt that one!

We eventually made it back to Misawa the next day and we glad to see Em and the other 3 boys again. It was a fabulous trip with Max. He is such a good kid. It was nice to share this trip with him.