Fan interaction - the lifeblood of sumo
In many sports, opportunities to meet the players or athletes is nigh on impossible without the right connections. Barriers position fans and the targets of their adoration on different planes much of the time.
In sumo though, if these barriers exist at all, they are small enough to be considered negligible. Fan interaction plays a huge part in keeping the fans happy and thereby coming to watch the sumo, and numerous days each year are spent on tours around Japan that enable the rikishi to go and meet the fans that can't come to them.
Autographs and tegata handprints are regularly given out on such tours and many rikishi probably end up posing for more pictures during their careers than do some top models.
Access is easier for those in Japan of course, but foreign trips will continue to take the sport to non-Japanese fans in the months and years ahead with Israel, Taiwan and Mongolia all slated for visits from contingents of rikishi in 2006.
So, be you in Japan or one of the nations mentioned above, keep an eye out for a large chap with well oiled hair because you never know who might be sat next to you on the train!
