I lived in Japan during the late 1950s, as a teenager. That's when I became a Sumo fan. Kurt Easterwood, who currently lives in Japan, posted the following about the link following his post. (Do you follow?)

Intelligent and entertaining writing about Sumo stable life

With the first Sumo basho of the year just a few days away now, I crossed paths tonight with this wonderful ii timingu (good timing) find: In the Hall of the Mountain Kings: One little man's journey into the world of sumo wrestling It's by one Jacob Adelman, a grad student at UC Berkeley who has just spent a couple of weeks at Hanaregoma Beya in Tokyo's Suginami Ward, not with the purpose of becoming a professional sumo wrestler but just to write about it for his Master's thesis, and write about it he has done for the last 3 weeks in this blog. As Adelman explains it in his first post: The idea for this project, like many things in my life, was born out of laziness. The two masters' degree programs I'm in—journalism and Asian studies—each require me to write a thesis. When I started considering thesis topics, I tried to think of something that I could count for journalism and Asian studies, thereby saving myself the trouble of writing a second thesis. Everyone I ran the idea past was intrigued by it, though no one thought I might actually get a sumo "stable," as the training houses are called, to let me in. Through some tenuous connections Adelman is eventually allowed to temporarily join the Hanaregoma Beya. He is clear with his hosts as to what he's up to (and even had he not, his uh, not exactly sumo-ish build would've let the cat out of the bag fairly quickly), and as he himself notes, it seems that many of the wrestler's in the stable are eager to chat. And while Adelman originally had wanted to be treated as a rookie within the stable, in effect he was treated as a guest, and therefore had access to parts of the heya (and conversations with some of the rikishi) that most rookies will never have.

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In the Hall of the Mountain Kings
One little man's journey into the world of sumo wrestling

So there I was, alone in the upstairs bedroom, snooping through Iki's photos. I was about to put them down and move back to my little encampment on the floor when I noticed the laminated image taped to his metal briefcase. It seemed to an advertisement that featured him holding a bottle of MOET champagne while he did a variation of his "Japanese geisha boy" pose. I was trying to puzzle out the writing on it when I heard someone coming up the stairs. I rushed back to my rolled-up futon and leaned back, pretending to read book

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