Eikokurai

Wow, I really have been away from sumo a long time. Enho is down in sandanme?! There has been so much change. I see now he was out for a whole year, which means I've been out at least as long as that too.

Just popped in to check on the forum for the first time in ages and felt duty bound to leave a note of gratitude for carrying on with this! Great work.

Sad if that's the case. A funeral is about the person who died. As a grown up, you put that stuff aside for them. You don't even need to talk to anyone, just be present.

Just saw this on the Guardian and of course had to log in to acknowledge it. 54 is no age at all. So sad. Sumo loses too many of its greats at too young an age. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/pioneering-hawaiian-born-sumo-champion-akebono-dies-aged-54

I'll have to update my infographic now. Terunofuji's win in Hatsu means he has now joined the small group of Career Grand Slam achievers. He has won at least one yusho in all six honbasho now. (Although, it will still need the asterisk for VENUE given the remarks above about the July 2020 win not being in Nagoya. I'm still giving him the CGS though as he still won that honbasho. The location is a detail.)

Hey. I didn't see much of the basho (though I did follow the results and caught a few key bouts), but of course I noted that Terunofuji won the yusho. This means he's now equal with Harumafuji for career total with 9, and the most popular choice in this poll has been reached. Can he reach the benchmark ten, as predicted by around 1 in 5 of forum users? By the way, in winning Hatsu, Terunofuji also completed the Career Grand Slam; that is, he's won at least one yusho in all six honbasho. I'll have to update my infographic when I get the chance.

Thanks. I'm going to try and drag myself back into it.

Hey, all. Long time no see. I can’t quite say why but I lost my passion for sumo around the time NHK and NSK began cracking down on the YT digest channels. That wasn’t the reason I lost it—I guess it had been slowly on the wane for a while—but it was a natural break and I never got the bug back. I keep forgetting basho are even on, though I have at least checked the banzukes and final results even if I haven’t watched a single bout for months. I’ve missed a lot of changes! People gone, rookies on the rise. Yet I just can’t muster the enthusiasm I once had to watch the daily recaps. Are they even still available? It’s becoming harder to follow this sport.

Hey, guys. This is a personal request. I’d like to connect with an old girlfriend of mine in Osaka, but have no idea how to trace someone living in Japan. She’s not on Facebook and her old emails all bounce back. She had bipolar disorder, and was often in periods of deep depression, so I want to see how she’s doing. It’s been 13-14 years since I last saw her. I’ve tried a few times over the years to find her again, but no luck. I know her name and vaguely remember the street she lived on, but I don’t have much else to work with. Anyone know how to find people in Japan short of flying out and lurking on her old street to see if she passes by (where she might no longer live anyway)? Any tips would be welcome.

I’ve worked around this by following online chess.

The only question is whether that’s motivating enough for people like Kintamayama to do. Small audience, no likes on YouTube, etc.

Or even just a Google drive link. I have a guy who uploads uncensored issues of The Economist (which aren’t sold in China) to a Google drive link and his followers can get them there if they have a VPN (he used to put them in a Chinese cloud server but felt it was too risky).

Is it possible to create an FTP site with videos and just share the link with a private group of members?

Just saw the video of his final 'bout' against his son on Twitter and I'm not going to lie, I choked up a little. It made it final. When he retired, it was post-tournament so we didn't know we'd seen his last fight at the time we watched it. Although this one was a humorous exhibition, it was still emotional knowing it was the last time we'd see him on the dohyo in a mawashi. For me personally, that's significant because my time watching sumo began shortly before his Yokozuna promotion (Haru 2007, when he won the first of the two Ozeki yusho), so basically the entirety of the Hakuho era was my era as a sumo fan.

Leads me to wonder what the record is for number of shisho and heya. That must be up there.