Sumo is awesome.

I love the stadium…

…I love the build-up rituals…

…and of course – though they’re not easy to photograph! – I love watching the bouts.

See the black-clad umpires all around the ring? They’re called in whenever it’s hard to decide the winner. Laura and I have made a hard decision too.

Japan is wonderful in all sorts of ways, but we’ve now admitted to ourselves that for us it’s never going to be home. We’ve had a lot of fun imagining it could be, though. And we’re going to do our damnedest to squeeze everything we can out of the rest of our time here. 😀