Bourdain's Trip To Tokyo, Japan

There are many forms of entertainment provided by a variety of entertainers that cause pleasure all around the world. In A Cooks Tour, Anthony Bourdain travels around the world in search for the perfect meal. During one of his many trips, Bourdain gets a chance to visit Tokyo, Japan for the second time. “Tokyo is like one long film trailer- one of those quick-cut, fast-moving highlight teasers for a noisy action flick with only the best parts shown, in molar-shaking, heart-pounding surround sound, the pace getting quicker and quicker, the action more frenzied, leading up to sudden blackness and the promise of more excitement to come (136)”. While on his trip in Tokyo, Bourdain gets to experience something little Westerners have ever had the

Sumo wrestling is a type of martial arts and has a lot of Japanese history. Sumo has been around for a long time, historians set out to believe that the origins of sumo date back as far as two-thousand years but sumo only began to flourish as a sport during the early 1600’s (“The History and Traditions of Sumo.”). Sumo was believed to be performed to entertain the gods and for other various important occasions. In earlier times, sumo wrestling was performed as a way to pray for a good crop around the time of harvesting and was also an event held in Imperial court ceremonies. Matches were held to help raise money to construct shrines and temples or to replace bridges, and the professional sumo wrestler was born (“Kids Web Japan”). In a sumo wrestling match, two people who are wearing nothing but a mawashi,

Aside from their hair, wrestlers have special names that derived from their sumo master or from their place of birth. Most of their wrestling end with –yama meaning moutain, -gawa meaning river, or –umi meaning sea, such as Musoyama “two battling mountains” (Hays). After a wrestler retires, there is a large tearful ceremony held in front of a large crowd called a danpatsushiki. During the danpatsushiki guests and other wrestlers take turns cutting off the wrestler’s hair. The table master then proceeds to cut and remove the wrestler’s topknot meaning he is no longer a sumo wrestler and after doing so the now retired wrestler bows in all four directions of the dohyo and retreats himself off to his dressing room(Hays). Wrestlers are not allowed to keep their wrestling name once retired, as it technically belongs to the stable they once lived