BuySumoTickets

At the risk of being told that we aren't the "popular one", I'll assume that you mean us. That message has been there since March 2023, when 2 of our customers showed up at the Osaka venue without their tickets and caused a scene outside. After tiring themselves out by screaming for a while (in English) and making an angry phone call to us, the customers went back to their hotel, found the tickets, and arrived back at the venue to see the basho. A tremendous amount of damage to our reputation had already been done though, and the Kyokai has had enough of all foreign tourists who arrive without their tickets. The day after the basho, that message about us appeared. For the record, despite the claim of that warning, in our nearly 16 years of business nobody has ever missed their event because of "trouble" we made. A few cases have been caused by international postal losses or bad shipping addresses provided to us, but almost all of the cases are customers losing or forgetting their tickets then going to the venue anyway to explain (in English) why their case is special and deserves an exception to the "no ticket, no entry" rule. One customer threatened that he was going to involve his embassy after forgetting his tickets in his country, another threatened to involve the Japan National Tourism Organisation when he decided that after a day out in the city he just didn't have time to go back to his hotel to get the ticket in time for the event. In the eyes of the Kyokai though, all of them are our fault because they were our customers. That's Japan. Anyway, it's not the first time that they've put that message on the site about us over the years, each time instigated by one or more of our customers arriving without a ticket and causing trouble. They've always taken it down after a while, but they seem more determined this time. We brush it off and continue to do what we do.

Our understanding is as follows: The 2-person Boxes are full-sized 4-person Boxes (and a few 3-person Boxes), sold for 2 people. This is part of the ongoing Covid protocols to reduce capacity in the venue, but also merges with a need to increase ticket sales. It's hard to tell one reason from the other right now. They have sold very well. 4-person Box 'B' are the entire front and back sides, 2-person Box 'B' are the entire east and west sides, which is the catch. 2-person Box 'C' are the normal 4-person Box 'C' being sold for 2 people and are on all 4 sides. Last Tokyo basho the 2-person Box 'B' were on all 4 sides, this time 2. We expect the 2-person Box 'B' to disappear entirely by the May tournament, as sales increase and Covid capacity-reduction protocols dwindle. Perhaps only 2-person Box 'C' on east and west sides next time. The "normal" 2-person Boxes with the awkward shapes are being sold as 1-person Boxes this time. The Arena 'D' are new this tournament, replacing the old General Admission tickets (which we think have not been sold since Covid began), and are marked as "only for this tournament". We expect them to disappear soon too, unless the Sumo Association has no intention of ever selling those on the day of the event again, which might be what they're thinking. The "only for this tournament" marking doesn't mean much, considering that from at least 2006 up until about 2017 or so, they used to have the Special 2-person Box 'C' marked as "only for this tournament".

Thanks very much. I find that most people appreciate some openness and honesty, as well as admission when an error has been made. In this case, the time zone problem wasn't caught before now because, well, all of our customers are in Japan at the moment, so nobody noticed. It's one of those things that we might only find once we start to get international customers again. I only started learning web development to give me something to do during the pandemic, so still a whole lot to learn and mistakes will be made. Good luck with yours!

You and Asashosakari were right about this, there was a time zone issue with the site. Thanks for pointing it out. The content management system that we use to feed data to the site was assigning a time zone to our dates, even though we couldn't see that, then it was getting adjusted to the user's location. I think that I've convinced it to not do that anymore, but if you ever notice anything strange like that again, please feel free to send a comment with our contact form. The website is fairly new and is still a work in progress. We have built it ourselves from scratch during the pandemic and are still tinkering with it, so it still hasn't seen its first full workout that it would get when the border is open and site traffic is at a normal level. I'm sure that there will be many other bugs found over time, but that is the life of a web developer.

Sorry, I screwed up with the date for Kotoshogiku! His ceremony is on October 1st. I've got the flyer in front of me now. I don't know who would be on September 30th, but they've never had a ceremony at the Kokugikan on a Friday in my time dealing with these, so if there is one it would probably be for a lower-tier rikishi at a hotel or something. I wanted to come here and apologise personally for any confusion that my incorrect response to Joann caused. I'm embarrassed about that. Nobody has requested tickets for Kotoshogiku's event yet because of the border situation, so my brain isn't as sharp about dates as it normally would have been. When the border opens, I should be back to my old self and ready to answer questions about these more correctly. Apologies again.