mrwunrfl and anyone else out here who has seen sumo recently in Japan: Did you buy your tickets the day you went at the arena? How were your seats? I am getting feedback that the upper seats at Osaka Done are pretty far away from the action, and am thinking of trying to get better tickets when they go on sale in early Feb. Anyone done this while still in the U.S.? How did you do it?
Also, I found a very nice site on history and explanation of sumo, and how to know what you are seeing when you watch a match, etc.
See www.scgroup.com/sumo/faq/

oops, I meant to say the Osaka Municipal Gymnaisum, that is where the sumo is held (Osaka Dome is where the Buffaloes play...)

At the Ryugoku Kokugikan in Tokyo on Friday, they had plenty of seats available. It was day 6 of the tournament.

There are two levels in the arena. Lower level consists of box seats with 4 tatami mat seats per box. Upper level has comfortable seats like in a theater.

Each level has three sections, A, B, and C. On the lower level, the A seats were sold out. B available for 41,200 and C available at 36,800. On the upper level, the reserved seats were 8,200, 4,900, and 3,600. They also had unreserved seats available for 2,100 for adult and only 200 for child age 4 to 15.

I think that the unreserved seats are a bit too far, but the price is right. These arenas are not that large (but, then, neither is the dohyo). Small binoculars would be useful but not absolutely necessary. You could also bring or rent an AM radio as they have Engrish broadcast of sumo in the arena.

Oh, and I did look into getting seats for Kyushu Bassho before going on my 1st trip to Japan. JNTO couldn't help and a travel agent was not interested. You have to call and they only speak Japanese.

And to answer your questions: I got the seat at about 1:30PM on the day. They were good seats, not sure they were worth 6100 yen more than the unreserved.

I think we would also go w/the upper level more comfortable seats. I do have a Japanese speaking person (a tutor we are meeting with to prepare for the trip) who will call for us if we want that. We will be going the second or third day before end of the tournament.
That's great info on the am radio. We will definitely do that. Thanks very much for the tip.

btw, how was Kanazawa?

Bonjour Sumo Enthusiasts,

www.banzuke.com : videos of daily action, great article on making chanko-nabe (the "sumo" stew).

www.sumotalk.com : day-do-day comments and analysis of matches

www.sumonow.net : day to day comments with pictures

http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/index.html : english site of Japan Sumo Federation, all the infos you need on everything

Florence, greetings! You are back from whereever you have been. Thanks for those sites. My son has been assigned a research project by his health and physical education teacher on sumo and Japanese baseball (both of which we are indulging in in good quantity while in Japan). I'll pass these on to him and I will take a look also.

mrwunrfl, further to your comments on bringing a radio to listen to the broadcast of sumo in Engrish in the arena, I have done soem research and it seems that U.S. radios do not work in Japan. The frquency is different there. Sony sells special radios (some are small credit card size ones) that work in Japan or U.S. I am wondering abou tbuying one here, or did you rent one that worked at the arena?

They rent them at the sumo in Tokyo. It's 200 yen with a 2000 yen deposit. I chose not to rent one. Thought it would be more of a distraction than a help.

I checked the program. It's FM, 78.3 MHz for the "Engrish" program which doesn't start until 4PM. That frequency is below the range of my stereo that bottoms out at 87.5 MHz.

Thanks so much for checking; that jives w/what I read online today at Sony's site. I think we might rent one and see if one of us wants to use it, since it is pretty cheap to try out.