Bullfighting Japanese-style
Although it's said that the novelty wears thin fast, the best time to visit Uwajima is for one of its bullfights , or togyu , the bovine equivalent of sumo wrestling. Some accounts date the sport back four hundred years, while others pinpoint the origins in the nineteenth century, when a Dutch captain made a gift of bulls to the town, after local fishermen came to his ship's aid during a typhoon. The bulls, often weighing in at around 900kg and treated like pampered pets by their owners, lock horns and struggle either to push each other to the floor or out of the tournament ring. Fights are held at the Togyo-jo , a white-walled arena in the hills above the city, between noon and 3pm. There are always bouts on January 2, July 24 and August 14, and sometimes ones in April, May and November; call 0895/25-3511 to confirm. Tickets cost Y3000 and you should be able to buy them on the day at the arena. Uwajima is not the only place in Japan that hosts such contests - bullfights are popular in Okinawa , too, particularly on the main island Okinawa-Honto, where the sport is called Ushiorase . Here it's claimed the contests began in the seventeenth century as a form of distraction for farmers and their bulls during the slack farming seasons.
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