As we wanted to avoid the crowd in the malls we did our Easter shopping on last
Tuesday. Because of the partial lockdown in Bavaria I work in home office while
my wife works reduced hours in production. She does 30 hours a week and is on
the morning shift from 6 a.m. to noon. So she called me on Tuesday that she
would do the shopping, but I should fetch her at the mall. So I took my lunch
break got into the car and drove to get her.
There was a large queue in front of the shop as only a limited number of
customers is allowed to be inside at any given time. Ushers with tally counters
were at the door letting some people in after a group of them left the shop. So
I had time as my wife did not want me to stand in the queue as she had a mask
and rubber gloves on, but I did not have any of those. I was listening to the
radio and reading some twitter posts. Then a tweet came by saying that Inside
Sport Japan is giving away some sumo merchandize during the lockdown. There
were two mugs and 4 tegatas - a kind of sumo autograph with the hand print and
the name of the wrestler written on it.
To get an item one had to retweet and answer which item one desires. So why
not? I chose the tegata from Terunofuji as he is currently at the top of Juryo
(Juryo #3) and finished with double digit wins (10-5) in the March tournament.
As I began watching sumo again it was a really memorable moment seeing the
ozeki showdown in March 2017 featuring Terunofuji and Kisenosato. Kisenosato
defeated him twice on the last day because of a playoff as both had the same
number of wins. Kisenosato was promoted to yokozuna, but Terunofuji had to
undergo knee surgery and did not recover well. He had a couple of other health
issues and fell real deep in the ranks down to Jonidan #48. But I hope we‘ll
see him in Makuuchi soon.
So back to the giveaways. I chose the Terunofuji tegata and the next morning
there was the tweet with the winners mentioning me. Wow! I‘ve never thought I
could win. Inside Sport Japan wrote that they would be sending out the items
(all genuine - no copies) as soon as the Japanese post resumes service.
Really cool! I‘m so happy. Not because of what the tegata is worth (you can buy
one for about $25), but I have won! How great is this?
