Tourism JTB promoting sumo to foreign tourists

The tour cost 9,800 yen ($65) per person before the pandemic. Ticket prices have since gone up, and the tour now sells for 13,000 yen to 25,000 yen, depending on seat location. An Australian man who was visiting Japan with other members of his family said he had wanted to watch sumo matches since seeing a morning training session on another tour. "The explanations enabled me to see the difference in character between sumo wrestlers," he said. In another tour, JTB packages two spectator experiences, sumo and Kabuki. "We would like to promote cultural tours, placing sumo at the core," said Takahito Suzuki, a senior producer at JTB Global Marketing & Travel, a group company that organizes tours for inbound tourists. Suzuki senses a lot of demand for tours that combine different traditional performances, like sumo and Kabuki.

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Although the sumo tour was popular before the pandemic, many tour-goers would leave while the matches were still taking place. When JTB resumed its sumo tours last January -- they had gone on hiatus during the pandemic -- it arranged a pre-event lecture on sumo and explanations between each bout. The lecture was available to all attendees, which was not the case before the pandemic, when only tour-goers who gathered in certain locations could take in the presentations. For the sumo tour in September, a guide explained the history of sumo and how wrestlers fight. The participants were also given an English pamphlet before they headed in to watch the bouts.

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