[sumo] NY Times article

[Lon Howard]

On Jan 21, 2010, at 4:12 PM, Jezz wrote:

> It was refreshing to read the views of a visitor, however it is a
> little disappointing when a quality paper makes silly errors like the
> shinitai.  Sumo is not that obsucre a sport - surely they could have
> found someone in their Tokyo offices - or back in the States - who
> knows enough about the sport to give it a quick read-through to look
> for these errors?

Alas, after following sumo as a foreigner for 45 years, and mostly  
living among them outside Japan for most of those years.  I must  
conclude that sumo is indeed an obscure sport to almost everyone who  
has never lived in Japan.  I have found it most difficult to engage  
foreigners in conversation about sumo.  Americans in particular are  
not very curious about the rest of the world, although they love to  
tell colorful "sea stories" about their overseas exploits; so I am not  
surprised at all that a NY newspaper would deem it more important to  
embellish and to even engage in cultural titillation than to be  
accurate.  This kind of piece is a "get it down, dress it up and get  
it to me tonight" thing.

I would also be inclined to call the errors in this article silly, but  
that implies that they actually cared about being factual, so silly  
isn't the word I would apply to them.

Although I subscribe to a Google service that emails me articles  
containing the word 'sumo,' I almost never click on them anymore  
because I know they're probably going to be similar to this one.

More and more the cynic, I am...

Shomishuu