Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Sumo Wrestling

In history lessons, recently, we learned that sumo wrestling allowed Japanese warriors to fight without blades or bloodshed. So, of course, we had to try out our own 'sumo wrestling'.
We made a "dohyo" ring with colored paper representing the pillars in the North, South, East and West. Lindsey wore her hair in the "mage" sumo hair style. Austin and Lindsey marched into the circle, squatted and clapped once (called a chirichozu ritual). Then they did the "shiko" ritual of exaggerated foot stamping. After that they drank water to purify themselves and tossed a handful of salt into the ring. They did a "glare-off" and then lunged at each other (called a shikiri). The kids had a memorable history lesson and we parents were glad that we only saw one neighbor on this Saturday morning.

1 comment:

Merri said...

I love these pictures! And my first thought was "I wonder what the neighbors were thinking" So I laughed when you mentioned only 1 saw you!