We’re just back from Nagoya where we saw: a robot museum (or at least it’s shop, home of Robo Kitty as pictured above), a man walking through the train station wearing only a t-shirt and no trousers or underwear, a man passed out in his pyjamas in the ‘entertainment’ (red light) district and loads of very deadly sumo wrestling. We went along with Cormac, Ã?ris, Chris and Mateusz. Ã?ris and Mateusz had been out with us until late the night before so we were all a little sleepy today - there were red eyes and grumpy frowns on the 2 and a half hour train ride. We all became cheerier at the sight of fat men wrassling from about 2.30pm. As the afternoon progressed, the higher ranking wrestlers made their appearance. Giita had managed to sneak down the front for the lesser wrestlers, but was unceremoniously chucked out of the posh area once the important lads were about. Here are a few of the photos she took.

Loads of pomp and ceremony made the whole thing more exciting than Giita had expected - we were all pretty pleased but the real highlights came at the end as the yokozuna (Grand Champions) made their appearances. Newly promoted Mongolian Hakuko won his first bout as yokozuna, but favourite Asashoryu had a surprise defeat, which the crowd weren’t at all pleased about, as you can see on my wee videoclip here. Here’s one more photo from my more modest seating position.

Other than today’s exciting events, this week Cormac and I went to see the Sanga playing against Cerezo Osaka, a sort-of local derby. The Sanga were fantastic for 30 minutes, captain Saito scored with an amazing dipping volley, then it all became a bit dull and Cerezo got one back. Ended 1-1. Giita had a couple of cooking lessons with Emi Hirayama which I’ll leave her to write about. We had our class booze do on Thursday night, which was pretty fun and we got to meet my classmate Dan’s girlfriend Rika who’ll be in DCU next year. There are 2 others from Kyoto who will be coming over and all 3 seem very nice. Kazuha from Ritsumeikan, who I met when I gave a presentation about DCU and Ireland last year, and Takeshi, also from Ritsumeikan, who’ll be staying in our house for a couple of days when he gets over before college dorms open. Nowt else to write about, other than that we’re one year married today. Yay!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 11:39 am and was written when Joss was feeling jumblings, smiley, sleepy.