Day 06 and we spent the day exploring places again in Tokyo. The amount of walking we’d done in the first five days though – and we’re routinely clocking in around 15,000 steps each day – has caused toes and feet to start getting sore, so much so that I had to drag myself out of bed this early morning for our planned visit to the Arashio-beya Sumo Stable.
The stable was fairly easy to get to from our Tokyo stay: we made our way to Hamacho Station, and from there it’s a short 5 minute walk and we’d arrived at about 8:30AM. The training session at this free to observe sumo stable starts at 8:30AM, and by the time we arrived, there were already a dozen other visitors observing the discipline. Most of the crowd at this point were Caucasians, and from overhearing the later conversations, concluded that they were a guided tour led also by an English-speaking westerner. The crowd got a little larger later as more visitors joined in. The somewhat later than planned time we arrived for this visit worked very well: because after the training segment ended at 9:15AM, presumably for a break, two of the sumo wrestlers came out for pictures with visitors, much to the delight of the crowd.
I saw from earlier research that the viewing side of the stable was half-height windows, so was pleasantly surprised to see the full-height windows, affording visitors a great view of the training. The observing crowd was remarkably well-behaved, I’m assuming in part because the guide led group had been already well-briefed on the decorum required for being able to observe the training.
Hopefully P does not get any funny career ideas! A friend in our Facebook post joked in reply “You never know.”, and another from our small group quipped that it’s actually a great profession: professional sumo wrestlers are wealthy, attain high social status, and wed some of the most beautiful models and actresses!
There is also a small souvenir shop selling all manner of sumo things just opposite the stable.
An hour visit done, we headed out to our next stop: the Cat Cafe Mocha Harajuka!