[sumo] Nagoya basho comments - yobidashi

[Jezz]

Hi everyone,

Below is a copy-and-paste from a new topic that I have just started
over at Sumo Forum.  I know that not everyone on this list reads the
forum, so I would like to share here too.

Jejima

[quote]
I wanted to share some of my experiences from the past week in Nagoya,
before I forget them all. Due to the computer here at Hong Kong
continuously crashing, I will (probably) add them in chunks.

Yobidashi

The yobidashi are a busy bunch.

In the lower divisions, the yobidashi are (of course) much younger -
some probably just out of high school. Possibly because of the
emptiness of the hall at that time, their announcing of the bouts are
a lot clearer, and (to my ear at least), a lot more musical.

During the early bouts, before the bulk of the paying cutomers have
turned up, they were all sat along the side of the Nishi Hanamichi (or
was it Higashi?). As soon as the shimpan step up for a mono-ii, they
rush in. They get the ?blankets? ready for the shimpan for when they
sit down again, and neaten the shimpan's slippers.

One yobidashi also has to help wire up the head-shimpan after every
shimpan change-over.

We saw one yobidashi leap into action, and politely ask a young child
(aged about 10 I guess) to move away from the front zabuton that he
was sitting on - no doubt to protect from injury as much as any other
thing.

During the sekitori bouts, they sit at the corners minding the salt
buckets, ready to whip them out of the way, in case a rikishi comes
crashing their way. The stools that they sit on are (disappointingly)
made of polystyrene.

When a sekitori comes up the hanamichi, the first thing he does is
hand his 'towel' to the yobidashi. There are a couple of compartments
on the 'chikari-mizu' water bucket to stow these towels away, and the
yobidashi have a way of rotating the towels of the rikishi. They hand
back the towels as the rikishi head up the hanamichi.

There are metal spitoons built into the side of the dohyo where the
sekitori spit out the chikari-mizu before wiping their mouths with the
paper. The paper gets thrown into these spitoons, which the yobidashi
later fish out with a pair of tongs before the next rikishi's turn.

Immediately at the end of the day, after the bow-twirling ceremony,
one of the yobidashi hops up onto the dohyo to repaint the shikiri-ken
lines. They then put one of the polystyrene stools in the centre, and
then place some things which look like tiny tatami mats at an angle
against the stools. A covering is then put over the whole dohyo. The
stool pyramid no doubt being in place to keep the cover off the fresh
paint.

On the subway after the day's end, Viki (ilovetochinoshin) waved to a
yobidashi friend (or it may have been a gyoji) on the station. Unlike
the rikishi - who have to enter and leave in their yukata, I learnt
that the gyojis and yobidashi can travel incognito (except to the
mega-fans, like Viki), as they wear a suit-and-tie to-and-from the
basho each day. Basically they are indistinguishable from
'salary-men'.
[/quote]