To paraphrase a Primus song from when I was in high school, “The air was thick with fat calls, pun intended.”

Last Friday I went to Ryogokan, the veritable home of sumo wrestling. It’s a sport that defies belief: men load themselves up as heavy as they can get, and then throw themselves at each other in a re-enactment of esoteric Shinto rites. Spectators get loaded on booze and yell themselves hoarse during the handful of seconds that each match lasts.

My fascination with sumo comes from this one time at band camp… I’m kidding. I never went to band camp. But watching sumo on TV doesn’t do the sport any justice. Although the men are humongous, bigger than any adjective can truly get across, they are fast and without a doubt, they are strong. The best of them, like Yokozuna Asashoryo, have made an art of moving their bulk around with skill and force.

The air Friday morning was chewable, the humidity was so thick. Usually, when it gets like that the humidity sits on your soul like the fat kid that bullies everyone in fifth grade.

Strangely, it was not oppressive. The thick air carried through the afternoon, dampening all sound. Even in the middle of the day, Tokyo was eerily quiet.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, I walked up to the Kokugikan, the arena in east Tokyo where the sumo matches are held. Only the nosebleed seats and the front-row, look-there’s-a-giant-about-to-fall-on-me seats were sold out. The nosebleeds run about 2000 yen; the front-row goes for more than 20 times that. I put down my 3600 yen for section C, just below the ceiling, and walked in.

The building is essentially a shrine to sumo. Nothin’ wrong with that. There are rows and rows of vendors selling sumo-related tchotchkes and souvenirs and paraphenalia. It’s circular, and sort of fascinating to walk around the interior, looking at the trophy case (how very high school) and the paintings of various sumo champions.

I chose a entry at random and sat down. The seats on the lower level are arrangements of four cushions with a small raised platform for tea. Quite traditional.

At one point I got booted, and found another unoccupied seat to fill. Everyone assumes that gaijin are stupid and don’t know which way is up in Japanese culture; I’m not above making the most of this in ways that aren’t any different from how I would act in the U.S.

A sumo match begins as the previous one ends. The new fighters are already on deck, as it were, ready to step up to the ring. An official not wearing a hakama at this point does one of two things. He either announces the winner of the last match, and the records of both winner and loser; or he announces the coming competitors and their records.

Or he does both.

Or neither. For all I know, he’s screaming out his favorite recipe for quiche. The beauty of not understanding much Japanese is that everything that gets said in my vicinity is multiple choice.

Anyway, the action – such as it is – begins with the fighters in “corners” on the same side of the ring, which is circular. The each lift one leg high and then slam it down. Rinse, lather, repeat – a common theme in sumo matches.

They grab salt and chuck it into the ring, I imagine as a kind of purification process. Then they move to the center of the ring where they face each other and the leg lifting is repeated. After the judge shouts something, they repeat.

And then they repeat again.

The leg kicking is only done three times, but they often set into their ready position only to get up and get rice to throw, or pound on their muscles to keep them warm, or wipe the sweat off their bodies. (Remember, they’re huge, this takes awhile.)

Finally, they’ll set and their legs will be in a slightly different position. Still hunched over worse than geriatric linebackers, their fists barely touch the ring, and then they lunge at each other.

Worst place to be in a sumo match: in-bewteen the two wrestlers during the initial lunge.

The sound of the wrestlers took me by surprise. When they do their high kicks at the beginning and their feet hit the ground, I was expecting something measurable on the Richter Scale – or at least in double-decibel digits. But it had that same muted quality of the ambient noise of Tokyo earlier in the day.

Even when they hit each other, there wasn’t much beyond grunting. It was a bit disappointing. Maybe it’s my American heritage of “bigger better faster more,” to which we can add “louder,” but with such great size I expected more, I dunno, Hulk-ishness. Loud, mean, screaming.

Of course, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but when the reality didn’t match my pipe dreams of sumo it nevertheless tweaked me a bit.

The slaps they deliver to each other are not deafening. This battle of titans does not have the pulse-quickening sound of a Godzilla flick. What is amazing is seeing the hits delivered. The throat, the side of the neck, the kidneys, the underside of the chin, all stunning in their potential lethalness.

During the match, the main judge shouts something. It sounds a bit like “batta batta batta batta batta,” but he never gets to the “swing” part.

The match is determined by the first one to hit the ground or to leave the ring; the winner stays on to receive his acknowledgements before the next fight.

At 4:30, the real matches begin. The top-ranked fighters, the A-list – these are the men that are the cornerstone and pinnacle of Japan’s sumo obsession. They come out group by their division, either East or West, in a long procession where they spiral in on the ring, and then leave it the same way they came in.

The only noticable different between these matches and the earlier ones is the ability of the fighters. The fights last longer, usually. The top wrestlers simply know how, when and where to throw their weight, and how to adjust for little mistakes and tactical errors.

And, perhaps as a nod to the skill of the opponents, the bows that close each fight seemed to be just that much deeper.