1 May ? Today?s an early start and I?m determined to try a different breakfast venue. I hit Mauna Loa, a Hawaiian joint where they apologise to me because all they serve is something called a continental breakfast, ?I am sorry,? the maitre de says. ?But we have only breads.?
That?s fine, I think and say and load up on all manner of pastries some of which are, well, not something any European might recognize as normal breakfast pastry fare. Like the fish, potato salad-topped pastry. But in any event, I eat more white flour products than it is healthy for any one person and proceed to follow suit over lunch, with a cream cheese pastry and chocolate cake. Not to be repeated.
We head out to the Konikugan, the National Sumo Centre where a day-long series of parades, speeches, displays, panels, presentations, the Crown Prince and Princess and a rousing finale in the form of, ?It?s a small world afterall,? in Japanese.
There?s a lot to tackle, including, quite literally, the aggressive Japanese press, whom we have to elbow back as they try to literally move us out of our space in various royal family stakeouts. But we persevere and get our shots of Crown Prince Naruhito and the elusive Crown Princess Masako.
The non-work highlight of my day is when I am trying to take a photo of a group of kids, and instead find most of the frame filled with an impossibly large man in a blue and white yukata (robe) on a spindly bicycle. It?s a sumo!
Then I spot a bunch of sumo wrestlers out on the street. They are attracted out of their training club by the sounds of the children?s parade we?re staging and covering. At first they stand a block away, towering huge even in the distance. My Japanese colleague and I head over in their direction and they meet us part way and oblige to pose for a photo.
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