OK, all you sumo fans. Here is the account of my adventure of buying tickets for the May basho.
According to info from Marc Lamphier, the way to get sumo tickets is to go to Kokugikan in Ryogoku the day before the ticket sales start on April 12 to get a priority number from the Sumo association.
I arrived at 6:45 pm on Friday April 11, just before the 7 pm cutoff. Guards checked the bag of every person entering the ground. Then I went up to the second floor outside where people were lining up. We were arranged in rows of four, and proceedeed in an orderly fashion (only would people be so disciplined in Japan) to collect our "seiriken", or priority number for the sales on Saturday.
I got number 523. It looked as though there were only a few people after me. I was surprised how calm and orderly everything proceeded, and I got the number by 7:30 pm.
Saturday, April 12, the day of the ticket sales. The back of the priority number says the following (rough translation):
1. Please line up in order of the number of this ticket by 8 am. 2. If you don't come by the meeting time (8 am), this number is void. 3. Ticket sales start at 9 am. 4. If you lose this ticket, you can't line up according to the old number. 5. Ticket sales are limited to 4 tickets per person. 6. The tickets being sold are 2nd floor chair seats. Ticket prices: A seat 8,200 yen B seat 6,200 yen C seat 3,600 yen When placing your order at the ticket window, don't order by the calendar date, but the day of the competition (i.e. 1st day, 2nd day, etc.) The toilet can be used in the building, but overnight sleeping is prohibited.
I arrived at 7:50 am, and again we lined up in numerical order in rows of four (how the Japanese know how to do this is beyond me). This time, the people with priority numbers were on the ground level and the people without numbers went to the 2nd floor. The cutoff time of 8 am came and went, but the guards were still letting people with priority numbers come into line. In fact, we left spaces open for the people with numbers who hadn't arrived. So on my left was a space for number 0521, on my right was a space for 0523, and then the man with number 0524.
Around 8:20 we went inside the building to wait for the 9am start of ticket sales. Some people brought small folding chairs (veteran ticket buyers, I suppose), but I just settled for sitting on the ground and reading my newspaper and book.
At 9 am the ticket sales started and we started moving every 4 or 5 minutes. There were many people waiting in line behind me, although only 550 numbers were issued the evening before. Maybe they were the people who didn't have numbers. (?)
Finally, at around 10:20, I arrived at the ticket window. There were about 7 ticket windows and we stood in single file line waiting for the guard to tell us which window to go to. Next to this line on the wall was a paper showing the available sections. When I got to the head of the line, C seats were available for all days, although the weekends were sold out of A and B seats. Some of the later days were sold out for A seats.
I ended up buying tickets for the 11th day (May 21, Wednesday) and got the A seat, row 3, seat 52-55. Although they seemed expensive at 8,200 each, I figured that I will only see sumo live once in my lifetime, and that is because my sister is coming from the States to Japan for the first time and wants to see "half naked fat men wrestling."
Well, that is how my ticket buying experience went. Now, can anybody tell me the rules of sumo ;-)
Thanks to the people who replied to my original message asking how to get tickets.
Matt matt@gol.com
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