Sumo

I was travelling to Osaka with Martin and Reuben to see a Sumo wrestling tournament, but I was also going because I remembered what that crazy old man said the last time I was in Osaka. He told me I would find happiness the next time I travelled to the city. This journey filled me with anticipation, and if happiness failed to materialized, I would sue the old bastard for everything he had – which was bugger all.
Reuben’s mum, Gladys, was also coming along with us. She was in Japan for two weeks, and Reuben was showing her around the sights.
During the trip to Osaka on the bus she kept on making lewd comments like, “Ooh, spending a weekend with three handsome men. I’m the luckiest woman in the world.
She would laugh. Reuben would go red.
When we arrived in Osaka we checked ourselves into a capsule hotel before heading off to the sports arena which hosted the sumo tournament.

The place was heaving, mainly because the sumo wrestlers were plodding around causing the floorboards to creak beneath their collective weight. I always imagined sports men and women prefer the secreted quarters of a locker room where they can meditate and have a moment of peace, but the wrestlers were quite content to potter about half naked in their sumo nappies. Some were shooting the breeze with the pundits, others were going to the toilet, and a few were doing some curious warm-up exercises. I saw a couple of wrestlers bend their knees into an attack position before charging towards a solid wall and slamming their podgy forms into it. The ground shook every time they performed this kamikaze act.
Twenty minutes before the first fight, I decided to take a potentially glorious close-up photo of the fighters entering the stage. To do this I had to sneak into the fighters section and evade a spotty steward with a brutal side-parting. I hummed the James Bond theme as I crouched in a dark corner of the passageway leading up to the wrestler's changing rooms. Meanwhile, the spotty steward in the distance protected the place from the public with precise steps back and forth. He wore an unnervingly focused expression on his face. I thought all hopes of infiltration were doomed when suddenly another steward came running up to him. This new steward showed him a piece of paper and the spotty steward laughed and they both walked off. I spied an opening and walked crab-like towards the sumo dressing room. The door suddenly opened and out came a stream of coaches, business suits, camera-men and behind them were two sumo wrestlers. I mutated out of my crab-pose, hopefully morphing into a respectable gent about town with a reason for being there and not some pesky prat with a camera. The sumo brigade weren’t fooled, and a towering wrestler who suddenly appeared behind me grabbed my shoulder and moved me to the side like a rhino pushing an ant out the way.


The procession evaporated from sight and my glorious photo was never taken.
I met Reuben, Martin and Gladys at the merchandise section. I was pleased they were all stocking up on bottles of sake, and I bought some too.
We took our seats with high expectations. We wanted sweat, blood and violence. I wasn’t sure what Gladys wanted, though.
“What team are we supporting?” she asked.
“There’s no team, mum. Just individual fighters,” Reuben would clarify.
“Well, what individual are we supporting?”
“I don’t know. I forgot the names of the fighters.”
“You were always a forgetful child,” Gladys said, whilst arranging Reuben’s hair into a neat style. “I remember when you would forget to use the toilet when you were six and did it in your-“
“Mum!”
“Yes, dear?”
“Stop it.”
“Where’s that draft coming from?” Gladys continued. “It’s very drafty. Wouldn’t you say it’s drafty, boys?”
“No!” we all replied at the same time.
There was a cheer that went around the arena when the first two fighters waddled towards the fighting ring. They then began a strange warm-up routine. They would walk around the ring, eyeing their opponent sternly. They would then go to the corner of the ring and dunk their hands into a pot containing salt before throwing it up in the air. I had no idea why they did this. Perhaps they fight better when fantasizing about putting salt on a pile of fatty chips at the end of the fight. The fighters then crouch in front of each other before the referee – who was dressed like a funky wizard - orders them to fight. A loud smacking sound vibrates around the arena as these two gargantuan warriors bash into each other with their respective body fat. The fight normally lasts about 30 seconds, which results in a high turn-over of fighting action. It's understandable it finishes in a flash because the technique used by the sumo wrestlers consists of grabbing their opponent on the belly, throat or nipple before choking or tweaking with malicious force.
The eventual winner of this three hour sumo-fest was a humorous character who insisted on wowing the crowd by pirouetting around his stick-like trophy much to the annoyance of the humorless Council of Evil.

As the tweaked victim is inspecting whether they are one nubbin short, his opponent has already shoved him out the arena with a crushing bear-hug. It is usually obvious who the winner is. The loser is the broken soul with the contorted body outside the ring, weeping like a baby. Gladys, meanwhile, was having the time of her life. She was in and out of her seat like a hopping frog.
“Go, on hit him!”, “Jab him in the groin!”, “Give him an upper-cut!”, and “Get up you pansy!” were just some of the forceful comments that launched out of her mouth.
The eventual winner of this three hour sumo-fest was a humorous character who insisted on wowing the crowd by pirouetting around his sword-like trophy. Gladys felt he had won unfairly and was content to boo him during his lap of honour around the stadium.
All in all it was a good evening which provided good entertainment. But if this was meant to be the happiness the old man had predicted then I would start contacting my lawyer. Happiness, for me, does not involve seeing obese men in nappies beating each other up. However, the night was still young with plenty of time to find happiness.
“My mum wants us do some karaoke,” Reuben said dejectedly.
Happiness was clearly going to have to wait.
The karaoke took place in the Dontonburi district, and it was a horrific experience.
Gladys was necking back double whiskeys, and was determined to do a duet with either Martin or myself. After murdering the already dreadful song of Lady in Red with Martin, she turned her attentions towards me. As she tried to focus her glare, I was trying to hide under the table.
“Sam, a little birdy told me you like the Rolling Stones,” she laughed.
I was under the table and remained silent.
Gladys suddenly poked her head under the table and terrified me with her quick reveal.
“Let’s sing the Rolling Stones, shall we?”
“No” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“No,” I said, determined.
She dragged me up from under the table with surprising strength, and hit the play button on Brown Sugar.
Singing a duet with a much older woman about a slave-boy having a night of pleasure at a brothel was not one of my finer moments. And after recovering from this horror duet, Martin and myself insisted on cutting short our evening with Gladys. Reuben respected our decision, and said he would check his mother into the capsule hotel before joining us later.
After receiving a hug and a kiss from Gladys, Martin and I were going to a nearby bar to meet up with one of his friends. She was called Ayumi and we met her at the entrance of the bar near the Glico running man advertisement. Ayumi greeted us with a kiss on the cheek and led us to where her friends were. Her three friends were seated at the back of the room, and were all beautiful. Not only were they gorgeous, they were also extremely hospitable and offered their seats to us. We declined their request with a Hugh Grant stutter and introduced ourselves. The prettiest girl of the group stood up and opened my jacket, to reveal my Japanese football t-shirt.
“I love a man in football t-shirts,” she cried with delight. I could already hear the man with the coin-beard say, “See, I told you would find happiness you pessimistic prat!” From then on, this girl was the focus of my attention for the rest of the evening. Her name was Shoko and she was an extremely fun girl to talk to. She had flawless English, and would quote Shakespeare, John Keats and Snoop Dog lyrics to me. Her brain was always fizzing with ideas that it was difficult for me to keep a hold of the conversation. Soon enough, I had forgotten that there were other people in our group. Shoko’s attractive appeal of beauty and lunacy had made me block out other interferences. When Shoko was talking about why she loved Macbeth, she stopped mid-way through to yell to the others at the table, “Let’s go to a club!” She downed her cocktail and dragged me off by the hand, as I continued to stutter like a fop as I commented on the sudden change of direction our conversation had taken. Inside the club, the girls in our group started to dance in a sexy way, whilst Martin and I just stood with awkward poses and glared at them. Shoko dragged me to where she was dancing and asked why I wasn’t joining in. I couldn’t tell her the truth and say I had two left feet, so I bullshitted my way out of this quagmire. “I’m too good a dancer. I only dance when the moments right,” I said. She looked at me with an expression that outlined she saw through my lies, and put my theory to the test by grabbing me by the shoulders and started to dance. “If this isn’t a right moment, I don’t know what is!” she yelled above the Hip Hop music. She was right. I therefore had to give the impression I could dance. I started off well by deftly moving my feet. I then made a fatal mistake by doing a waltz/moonwalk hybrid, which disturbed Shoko so much that she took four steps backwards and looked at me with concern.
I took my leave and sat at a table to drink just incase I was thrown out of the club for crimes against dancing. At this point Reuben joined our party and sat down at my table. He had the look of a defeated man.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“My mum,” he said.
“What happened?”
“I’ve got 10 more days with her!”
“She’s your bloody mum. Be nice.”
“You want to swap with me?”
“No,” I said swiftly, and ordered him a drink. He looked like he could have done with one.
After a while, Shoko returned to where I was sitting. The other guys had decided to explore the club. Shoko said she loved the music they played at this club and loved to sing along. Immediately I suggested that we both go to a Karaoke bar to indulge our shared love of singing. I was lying. I just wanted to be alone with her. Besides, I could barely have a conversation with her above the loud music and I wanted to blot out the memories of the karaoke session I had with Gladys.
Shoko agreed to go and got her coat. I was about to notify the other guys when I saw Martin kissing two girls at the same time and Reuben throwing up into his shoe. I decided not to interfere with their activities.
Shoko and I went to a nearby Karaoke place and rented our little booth for one hour, and I insisted that Shoko sing first.
She began to sing a Carol King tune, and had a lovely voice, which made it all the more distressing that I had a dreadful voice. It was my turn, and I deliberately picked a Sex Pistols track because everyone knows Johnny Rotten can’t sing. I snarled my way through EMI and was relieved to see Shoko clapping with vigour at the end of my performance. “I love crazy English singing,” she said. The game was up, though, when she insisted we both do a duet of Put a Little Love in Your Heart. Shoko recreated a lovely jazzy version for the Annie Lennox part, whereas I ripped to shreds Al Green’s part. “I thought you said you were a good singer,” Shoko said, with mock annoyance at the end. “I am. I was just doing a punk version.” “Hmmm, I like your crazy English singing,” she laughed. If she thought I represented English singing then she must have had a low opinion of the British music scene. When the hour was up, we extended it for another hour and we continued to extend our time until we were there for six hours. By this time both our voices were hoarse, allowing Shoko to limit herself to Janis Joplin songs and Tom Waits for me. We had time for one more song before we were kicked out. I went for the jugular and picked Marvin Gaye’s Lets Get it On. I crooned through it and flashed Shoko my most charming smile, which in hindsight must have looked like a drunken leer. Shoko laughed and stroked my arm as I was singing. It was all I could to stand up on the drinks table and shout, “That coin-bearded old hippie with the smelling salts was right. I have found happiness!” I quickly realised that if I did say this, I would scare off Shoko and lose the happiness. With alcohol induced confidence, I leant in for a kiss at the end of the song. “What are you doing?” Shoko said. To explain to the recipient for the second time during my time in Japan that I was trying to kiss them made me believe that it was culturally wrong to kiss in this country. “Errrr,” I floundered, believing for certain that Shoko’s arm stroking was a solid invite for a kiss. I sat back in my seat with a forlorn expression, cursing the coin-beard man. He lied to me! “Sam, don’t worry. I like you. I want to see you again,” Shoko said. The coin-beard man was back in my good books, and I quickly exchanged numbers with Shoko. As I walked Shoko to Umeda Station at sunrise before she got a train back to her home town of Kobe, I told her that I had had a wonderful night. Shoko smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and waved goodbye to me. Before she went into the station, she turned to me and said, “Will you call me?”
“I Promise!!” I shouted like an overenthusiastic schoolboy. “Bye Sam,” she said, and went inside the station. “Bye Shoko,” I said, waving to the empty space she had previously occupied.