AdventureTime: The Balance Between Tradition and Innovation

The weekend started with a fantastic day in the sun with antiques, home made wares and delicious food but was finished of with a bang over two days with Robot Restaurant and Sumo Wrestling.

Day Six: Saturday 18th May.

The day started innocently enough with a bike ride around Minato-Ku district. From shop to shop I flew like an absent minded sparrow. Alighting here for a browse and there for an ice cream or two.

A new friend

Tenugui, a traditional multipurpose towel

One of Many Don Quixotes. They are huge tax free stores where you can buy anything.......anything.

Kiwi and Pomegranate sorbet

For all you foodies

On the way into town

Yakitori for dinner

In the tiniest of Yakitori restaurants


Shinjuku at night is a thing to behold

And then we got to Robot Restaurant. I had know idea how my life would change for the better that night.

You are greeted at the front door by these lovely ladies

And this rocker

The lounge to eat, drink and wait for your show to start

Pleo the friendly interactive dinosaur robot

And so it begins

I am not sure either

Incredible disco robots.

Needless to say, it was a crazy night.

A video of one of the shows below :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXDaOcRtEcg

Day seven. Sunday 19th May.

After the night before we all needed a break, not only to rest but to rethink how we perceive this world now that Robot Restaurant had touched us in such a powerful way.

So I went for another bike ride.

And then.....

Sumo!

The calling of the wrestlers names

Cleaning the ring from the previous fights that day.

The Sumo competition lasts for 15 days and everyday each wrestler will fight one of their opponents in their class. at the end of the 15 days the overall winner is named, usually having only lost now more than two fights.

There are five national competitions through the year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and New years. Each one is hosted in a different city.

The officiator

The judges

The Egyptian

There has recently been an influx of foreign wrestlers from Georgia, Brazil, Egypt and more. This has had a effect on the amount of top Japanese wrestlers. The top Japanese players have a huge following because of this and the atmosphere was electric when they were in the ring.

As above, salt is thrown into the ring to "clear the space" in a ceremonial fashion. This happens each time a the wrestlers enter the ring.

The banners are both sponsorship and a form of trophies.

The fights have a three minute time limit and so for the first 2.5 minutes the wrestlers will psych each other out. They will play with each other by pretending to be ready then at the last moment standing up and moving out of the ring to retrieve more salt. Both wrestlers must have their hand in a ready position for the fight to commence.