5/3 Uwajima Bullfighting

A while back I had heard about a special festival in the southern city of Uwajima, called "Tougyuu" or bullfighting. Since, I had never seen it before, I asked my professor if maybe we could have a field trip to go see it and he said sure. So, he planned to drive my classmates and I down to Uwajima so we could see it. We met up early in the morning at school, got in the van named "Noah" and took a nice trip south. I brought my classmate from Lodi, Jeremy, too.

We arrived at this large round building surrounded by cars and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and headed in. It was absolutely packed. Our professor handed us some tickets which he had bought earlier and we headed in. Since there was no parking, our professor drove across the city to park and took a bus ride over. He sent us updates while it took a while for him to come back. He bought some dango and we kept asking if he was ok. We sat down and handed each of us a pair of binoculars, so we could get the best view even though we were already pretty close. We still had time before it started, so some of us went to go buy snacks. Early on in the event I noticed that some of my classmates had actually come to watch the event too (because I told them) and they took the train from Matsuyama all the way down.

We had all received a flyer of the matches for the day, and frequently made jokes about one bull, who originates from the same neighborhood in the city as our classmate Ren.

They were all bull vs bull fights, and if they bulls didn't immediately want to fight the other, there would be no match. They weren't forced to fight. There was only one fight that was fairly violent, most of the matches just had two bulls trying to intimidate each other rather than attack until the other relented.

You can watch some clips below.

Afterwards, I introduced my class to my friends and vice versa. Then we took a picture together and walked across the city to where my professor parked. After that he drove us to a farmer's market/souvenir building by the water, and bought us a fruit called a "pomello." Then we drove back home.