Election results, jiggly men, and showtunes.

The results are in, and I'm the new National AJET Vice Chair! I was very excited to get that email this morning. I'll be working with two JETs I met at last year's Tokyo Orientation, so I think it will be fun to work together. In May we'll have our first meeting (in Tokyo!) where I get to meet the current Vice Chair and we do a sort of changeover. Apparently we'll be working together for a month or so, and then I'll be on my own some time in June. I can't wait!

Last Tuesday was a holiday (the first day of spring is a national holiday), and a bunch of JETs went to Osaka to see some sumo! It was really fun. Walking in and around the stadium is kind of nuts because every once in awhile you turn around and there's a huge sumo wrestler walking behind you. When we first went in, I was walking towards the door to our seats, and I happened to turn around and Baruto was right behind me!

This guy, only real. 

So here are some highlights of the day.. beware of the excessive amount of scantily clad butts:

*I realized that if you click on a photo, you can see a sort of slide show of all the photos in the post, and they're larger and easier to see.

Front gate leading into the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium.

The ring inside the gymnasium.

All the wrestlers from one stable entering the ring.

At first they face outward. 

When they turn inward to face each other, they do a cute little dance.
It's probably not meant to be cute, but it is. 

Notice the size difference. The guy on the right weighs almost twice the guy on the left.

And this is the guy on the left throwing the guy on the right out of the ring. 

More throwing.

Lots of throwing. 

This is Baruto and the flags are all of his awards or sponsors or something. I'm not entirely sure.
He's extremely famous, and I've even seen him on TV a couple times, which is why I thought it was so cool to be almost run over by him in person. 

This is Baruto putting his competitor in a headlock....

...and throwing him down. He then stood up and walked away without looking back. Because he's Baruto.

Overall, the individual matches went very fast. The actual wrestling part, anyway. When the wrestlers get into the ring, they spent a full 4 minutes (that's the maximum time they're allowed to have) trying to intimidate each other by squatting, staring at each other angrily, standing up suddenly, slapping their thighs, throwing some salt and then squatting again and beginning the whole thing all over. It's meant to be some psychological thing, and apparently they used to be able to do it indefinitely, but the time was limited to 10 minutes in the early 1900s, and then finally decreased again to 4 minutes in modern-day. The younger, lower on the totem pole wrestlers usually don't take as much time, but if there are big names in the ring, you can bet they're going to take the full 4 minutes, and maybe even a little bit more if they can.

Leaving the gym. The sign above the gate is wrestler's names. 

Some gaijin giving it a go. They're wearing too many clothes, maybe. 

This Saturday, I decided to go see my school's brass band club's concert at a nearby university.

It began like any other brass band concert....

...until they remembered that they were Japanese. That's when Mario and Luigi came out.

Together they defeated the boss.

And saved Princess Peach.

Afterwards they did their version of an AKB48 song (a girl band with 48 members) while 5 of the girls in the band dressed up in AKB48 school girl uniforms and did the dance.

And then they proceeded to do their well-rehearsed encore (complete with fancy trumpet dance moves) that happens at every single performance, because in Japan "encore" seems to mean "the song that you play last."

The whole thing was a lot more showy than I expected. They even stopped in the middle to have a quiz game and a sign-language sing along. It was basically set up like a variety show, which is certainly quite the contrast to the long, boring concerts I used to play in. I'm not sure I would have wanted to be part of a variety show, but the Tomogaoka kids seemed to be having fun with it, and I suppose that's what counts.