iPads and Sumo Wrestlers: Is It Even Possible?
For the rather rotund sumo wrestlers of Japan, fat fingers have their limitations. To compensate and keep up with the high-tech Jones’s so to speak, the Japan Sumo Association is giving them iPads because their fingers are too fat to dial on regular mobile phones. Already, some 60 iPads have been distributed among sumo training stables in an effort to improve communication.
The sumo association selected the iPad because that particular device was one of the few with keys that are big enough to accommodate a wrestler’s fat fingers.
“It seems rather easy to use. Sending emails was very simple,” said association chief, Hanaregoma, who confessed to the press that while he can read incoming text messages, he does not know how to write replies as he, like so many of his fellow wrestlers is unfamiliar with computer use.
The decision to go digital is part of a promotional campaign on the part of sumo officials to clean up the reputation of the ancient sport which of late has been sullied by scandals of illicit collusion with the underworld of gambling, gangsters, match-fixing and the brutal hazing of apprentices.
“If we place this (iPad) in all the stables, we should be able to contact them anytime,” said an association spokesman, Nishonoseki.
The iPad tablet PC is priced at 48,800 yen ($570 US dollars) and represents a baby step towards the modernization of Japan’s wrestling clubs.
Sounds like a good idea but perhaps the powers-that-sumo-association-be have forgotten one teeny-weeny thing.
Where are these roly-poly wrestlers who are usually almost naked supposed to carry these phones?
What do YOU think about this?
(Link)
By MDeeDubroff on 12-09-2010
