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| Super fast trains! |
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| My nephew Branden loves trains - I made Paul take a photo of me with the train for him |
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| There is a bullet train every 15 minutes |
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| We arrived in Nagoya (130 kilometers, ~81 miles from Kyoto) in under 40 minutes - these are sumo nobori flags |
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| Entrance to the gymnasium |
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| Paul and I competed by trying to pick the winner of each match |
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| These guys are big |
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| Who do you think won this one? |
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| Yup, purple won |
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| Lifting and stomping their legs is part of the shiko exercise meant to scare evil spirits from the ring (dohyo) |
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| They can be quite flexible - Paul theorized that the wrestler that raised his legs higher would win the match |
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| We watched for about 2 hours... |
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| Look how high they can get their legs up! |
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| They seemed to get bigger and bigger |
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| On your mark...get set... |
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| Go! |
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| Silver lost this one |
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| Higashi - East Team of sumo wrestlers gathered around the gyoji (referee) during the ring entering ceremony |
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| Nishi - West Team of wrestlers gathered around the gyoji |
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| This was a pretty intense match |
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| Lots of action |
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| Weren't sure who was going to win this one |
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| Look at the strain on this guy's face |
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| Oh no, he lost! |
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| This was a good match - I thought the bigger guy was going to win |
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| But the smaller guy pulled a fast one and moved away which made the big guy fall |
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| This was the last match we watched before leaving - click here to watch it |
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| Fun times! Paul won 6-5 in our little competition (only after we started to keep track) |
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| We left a little early and ran into one of the wrestlers |
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| The subway entrance looks pretty cool |
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| Streets of Nagoya |
