Bull fighting is a big deal here. There have been a couple of events since we arrived, but were told this was the best one. We can see the Ishikawa Dome when driving down the hill to our house, so we decided to walk over since parking is non existent here.
We paid around 4000 Yen, which is a little less than $40.
There were 13 fights scheduled and were told they could last anywhere from seconds to up to an hour.
The flags shown in the photo below are the flags of each of the bulls fighting.
Each team walks their bulls in and gets them to "engage" before dropping the rope that is tied to them.
The handlers scream and yell and stomp their feet in order to get the bulls to stay in the fight. The bulls are literally just pushing on each other. They aren't trying to hook horns or gouge each other - and we heard that if one of them were to get gouged or seriously hurt, they would stop the fight. These people treat the bulls like their pets. We've shown you that they walk them on the beach and we often hear of them being walked on the neighborhood streets, people throwing their kids up on them. After a fight, they would pet and caress the bulls just like you would a dog. It's actually pretty interesting.
We took lots of videos, which I can't post here, but if you'd like to see them, let me know and I'll get them to you.
The first fight we watched only lasted just over 3 minutes.
The longest fight lasted just seconds under 48 minutes!!
It was by far one of the coolest things we've ever done and I'm sure we'll catch a few more tournaments during our time here.
