Hi friends! I hope that your finding yourselves in warm temperatures. It is awfully cold and windy here in Minnesota.

Since it is cold and I don't want to venture out these days, I have really been enjoying watching the New Year's sumo tournament on television when I come home from work. I really enjoy sumo. I would say that besides baseball, sumo is my favorite sport.

One of the best things about sumo is that it is played in a series of six two-week tournaments throughout each calendar year. This allows for two straight weeks of intense sumo-watching, followed by two months of waiting for the next tournament to start. It gives you time to ponder and speculate over what will happen during the next tournament. It is like American football how the anticipation between contests makes the whole experience more enjoyable.

The current tournament has been really interesting. Asanowaka (’©”TŽá) won his eighth match today, meaning that he has earned his "kachikoshi" (more wins than losses for a tournament.) That is really good for that little guy. I really like his spirit. He tries really hard, but he keeps getting bounced back and forth between the upper division and the second-highest division.@I wonder whether he'll do just as well in the next tournament when he wrestles at a higher rank. It always seems that as soon as he hits his limit, he bounces back to a lower division.

I have also been impressed with Yokozuna Asashoryu (’©Â—³.) He hasn't lost a match yet in the first eleven of the tournament. He looks super-strong. I don't think that I have ever seen any wrestler look as dominant as he has during a tournament. (Granted I have only been following sumo for eight years.) The two that come close may be Akebono and Wakanohana during some of their better tournaments.

That's all for today. Maybe I will write something more "mainstream" in my next weblog entry.