Re: [sumo] Musashimaru in Washington

["James J. Marshall" <marshall@astro.umd.edu>]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004 at 18:37, Jim Bitgood (jimbit1@starpower.net) wrote:

>I seldom read the post. But I had marked my calendar because somebody in 
>the list mentioned it a month or so ago.

Right, which is how I knew about the event to decide to go to it.  I tried
to look at the article linked to earlier in this thread, but the site
required registration so I passed.

>Musashimaru was looking quite dapper in a white shirt and tie. He observed
>the amateurs who were demonstrating some techniques and movements. I think
>the crowd enjoyed the matches with the children that ended the
>demonstration. It was not a nice day in D.C, cloudy, breezy, chilly, so I
>didn't stay around for the second demonstration at 5pm.

They did an early one, too?  I missed that one.  I had to stick around to
see the 5pm one.  It was pretty much the same thing.  Before they started
though, they had Musashimaru hand out some awards or something.  The sound
system at this particular location was pretty bad; even though they had a
mic, I couldn't hear most of what they said.  And I wasn't stuck *that*
far away from the podium either.  From what I gathered from people talking
around me, there was some sort of east coast / west coast sumo competition
earlier (or held very recently) and the awards were supposed to be related
to that.  I think.   Anyway, as you said, the amateurs demonstrated some
basic movements, fighting and winning techniques, and had a few matches.
Then they had some children volunteers participate in some matches which
of course they won.  :)  They had enough time then that they gave a couple
adults a go at it, too.  They finished off with a question and answer
session and the amateurs doing some shiko again.  Not bad, but the demo
itself wasn't all that exciting.  Getting to see Musashimaru in person,
even though he didn't really do or say anything, was still fun though.
And there was a lot of other stuff to do at this festival, too, so I had a
good time checking things out.

>But I did get to chitchat with another member of the list whose name I have 
>already forgotten ("short term memory is the first thing to go"). I was 
>hoping to get a chance for an autograph, but Musashimaru was kept just out 
>of reach by whoever was running the show.

I thought about bringing my copy of Mina Hall's Big Book of Sumo to have
him autograph (there's a section in the back about Hawaiians in sumo),
but decided not to.  I figured they probably wouldn't have him do anything
like that.  It looks like they did sneak him in and out pretty well.
I think a few people around when I was wanted to get photos of him after
they finished up the demo, but weren't able to.

>What turned out to be the highlight of the day for me though was finding a 
>volume of prints that follow each chapter of the "Genji Monogatari", now 
>I'll have to go and read the whole book again.

I spent a good amount of time first at the martial arts stage until I found
out the sumo demo wasn't on until 5pm and later at the go tables watching
some games and playing one (which I lost badly, but I'm a total newbie at
the game so that wasn't a surprise).
-- 
      .      .        .       .         -- James Marshall     (CAS)   .   .
 ,.  -- )-- ,   , . -- )-- ,            marshall@astro.umd.edu   .,  .
          '             '       http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall
"Equations are living things."                                      .

[EndPost by "James J. Marshall" <marshall@astro.umd.edu>]