The Sumo Encounter

In December before I went back to England Rambo Sensei, Emilie and I went out for dinner to the yakitori place right next to my house.

It's a nice little place run by a couple from Tokyo. They have a coal grill where they make all the yakitori and they do some traditional stir fries, and Japanese dishes. 

We've been there a couple of times and I've tried lots of new foods, some I really liked and some I really didn't 😂

Tonight though we were having a quiet dinner when two Sumo wrestlers came in to join a group of locals. 

At first I didn't really realise who they were, and I still don't really know who they were but apparently they are pretty famous wrestlers who were visiting okinawa for a match. 

I'll try and research who they are and how thier matches went and add it in, but I thought it would be cool to at least update about the time I got to meet some actual Sumo wrestlers.

Matsubayashi Ryu Bonenkai 2019

This is just going to be a short one, and now it's super late because I havent made updating my blog much of a priority with work and karate recently. 

This year (2019) was the Arakaki Dojo's turn to host the Bonenkai so of course sensei decided the venue would be Dojo Bar.

I think this actually made it one of the best so far- in my opinion the usual hotel ones aren't particularly fun and feel very inpersonal, at least with the bar one everyone seemed more relaxed -that could have been due to the open bar though!

I didn't manage to get many pictures because my job was to run the bar and make sure everyone had whatever they wanted to drink- the food was buffet style with the pig as the center piece. 

In total there was about 50 people and it was a private party so the bar was closed to anyone else. 50 people is about our capacity I would say. We bought in some extra chairs and it worked pretty well. 

James organised quite the spread of food with the whole piggy and sashimi alongside bar snacks and salads. 

If course there's was speeches and Paul played guitar for some entertainment.

Seikichi San also played some music once it was late and most people had left- he is more shy. We didn't get to train together this time because he has hurt his knee and I had to take the kids classes and work the days he was here. 

Hopefully when he visits next year we can train together.