English Recordings

The Age of the Blond Topknot
Even in the nosebleed seats at the Nagoya tournament, where signs outside the stadium warn, "Gangsters keep out," one major change in sumo is immediately obvious. Here are the blond topknot of an Estonian ex-bouncer called Baruto (real name: Kaido Hoovelson) and the hairy chest of Bulgaria's Kotooshu (born Kaloyan Stefanov Mahlyanov). There is the telltale cellulite of a trio of Georgian wrestlers, whose bodies accumulate fat quite differently than those of the Japanese. And everywhere, it seems, are the wide cheekbones of Mongolian wrestlers. Since 2003, only two men have been promoted to the exalted status of grand champion. Both are from the land of Genghis Khan: Asashoryu (né Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj), whose career was cut short by that nightclub brawl, and 2010 Nagoya victor Hakuho (formerly known as Monkhbatyn Davaajargal). In just over a decade, foreigners have come to so dominate sumo that in Nagoya there was only one Japanese competing in the two highest ranks — and he is well past his prime. "The foreigners are trying very hard, so they deserve to win," says Koji Mizuno, a 67-year-old Nagoya spectator. "But watching my national sport, I do feel a bit forlorn that there aren't more strong Japanese wrestlers." (See pictures of Japan and its relationship with the world.)
The presence of foreigners is being felt in many sectors of society. Japan is getting older, but its young people spurn menial jobs, so foreign workers are one solution to the labor shortage. Already, Southeast Asians staff nursing homes, and Chinese swell the ranks of high-tech companies. Sumo has no alternative but to accept an influx of foreigners, since the number of Japanese recruits dwindles each year. "You look at the Mongolians who come today, and they have the hungry, strong bodies of kids who grew up doing hard labor on the farms," says Michinori Yamada, the coach of the Saitama Sakae high school team. "Japanese families used to send their boys to sumo stables to ensure they got enough food. Now, Japanese kids eat what they want, they go to college, and they don't want to work so hard."

But sumo, like Japan itself, is ailing. The sport has been racked with repeated scandals and troubled by an influx of foreigners. The hidebound Japan Sumo Association (JSA), which governs the sport with a secrecy and cohesion that rivals that of any national intelligence agency, is in desperate need of reform yet is seemingly unwilling to muster the courage for true change.
On their face, the recent crises shaking sumo to its fleshy core don't seem that earth-shattering. A couple of Russian wrestlers were busted for marijuana use in 2008. In January a Mongolian grand champion got caught up in a drunken scuffle outside a Tokyo nightclub. In the current indignity, wrestlers were caught participating in underworld betting rings, wagering on sports other than sumo. The scandal brought about the suspension of more than a dozen athletes from an annual tournament in the city of Nagoya — the summer's sumo highlight.
Objectively, only one recent incident deserves outrage: last year, a sumo coach was sentenced to six years in jail, following the death of his 17-year-old charge. The sumo apprentice died after his superiors beat him with a beer bottle, a wooden stick and a metal baseball bat in a form of hazing perversely called "cherishing" in Japanese. But the cumulative effect of sumo's scandals has disturbed many Japanese. Sensing the mood, some corporate sponsors pulled out of the Nagoya contest, while NHK — the country's largest broadcaster, which has for decades dedicated weeks of airtime to sumo's six yearly tournaments — halted live coverage of the competition. It was the first time since 1953 that a live sumo feed had been cut. "This is the kind of crisis you may only see once in 100 years," said NHK president Shigeo Fukuchi, explaining the network's sumo embargo. The subtext — for there always seems to be subtext in Japan — was even more alarming: Will sumo even survive the next 100?
Beyond the scandals exists a troubling reality. Sumo is suffering an existential crisis. What Japanese kid wants to become a sumo star today? Training is too rigorous, the bared bottoms too undignified, and all that fat is both unsightly and unhealthy. And wrapped in useless layers of blubber is the JSA, a tradition-obsessed bulge of bureaucracy that shows none of the surprising nimbleness of its charges. "Japan must change," says Takanobu Nakajima, a university economist and vice chair of an advisory committee formed last month to rejuvenate the sport. "Sumo must change."

The 12-year-old already weighs 230 lb. (105 kg). He has breasts. His thighs chafe when he walks. All this is good news in Japan's sumo world, where excess flesh acts as indispensable armor in the sport's brief and brutish bouts. The older recruits at Saitama Sakae high school, which boasts the country's No. 1 sumo team, coddle the boy, passing him choice morsels during the intense, silent gorging that constitutes meals for these growing behemoths. After all, he is a child with an impressive lineage: his grandfather was a yokozuna, a member of the grand-champion echelon into which only 69 wrestlers have lumbered since 1789. For several hours each day, while other youths might be playing computer games or watching cartoons, the boy practices endless leg squats, sweeps the sand of the sumo ring into a divinely stipulated pattern and works on perfecting the glare he will need to intimidate his foes. But even the likes of this born-and-bred wrestling scion may not be enough to save the mighty sport of sumo.
More than any other athletic endeavor, sumo embodies the soul of Japan. The sport's museum in Tokyo explains the improbable importance of a rapid, nearly naked grapple in a sandpit: "According to Japanese legend the very origin of the Japanese race depended on the outcome of a sumo match." With a 1,500-year history that inextricably links sumo to the national religion, Shinto, it's no wonder tradition weighs heavily on the sport. Clad only in loincloths, their hair swept into topknots that were the peak of fashion 150 years ago, the wrestlers are supposed to serve as oversize poster boys for the ultimate Japanese virtues: dignity, honor, discipline and strength. "When we visit retirement homes, old people like to touch us and sometimes are brought to tears," says former wrestler Yoshinori Tashiro, who fought under the sumo name of Tououyama. "There's something spiritual about sumo."

I think we all know that people are sometimes acquitted, in clear breach of the rules, for these reasons. A barrister friend once told me about a case he prosecuted, against a woman who had broken into a former boyfriend's flat to take a video he had made of the two of them having sex. She was charged with trespass and stealing. "Of course she was guilty of those technical charges," he said "but we all knew the jurors were never going to convict. I couldn't blame them. The boyfriend was revolting and the poor woman had everyone's sympathy."
I do feel uncomfortable, knowing how naturally we all speculate on each other and judge our personal relationships so often on the basis of what is meant rather than what is done, that we must struggle to switch that off when it comes to defendants. Why strive to turn ourselves into electronic calculators? Every day of our normal lives there is an opportunity to forgive someone who has done something wrong if you think they meant no real harm. It might be your lover, your boss, your employee, your mum; if you can see an innocent instinct behind the horrible words or gesture then, wherever you are, outside of a court, you are the better person for letting that prevail. Sympathy is one of the finest human emotions; why should 12 jurors fight against it?
Write in if you think you must, but I already know this is a contentious opinion. Friends and acquaintances have yelled at me for it, so perhaps I am wrong. Maybe I am too affected by poor, kindly old Michael Arnold shuffling off to prison. Certainly, admitting these thoughts might make me ineligible for any future jury service.
If so, good. Sitting in judgment on a fellow person, then living with it afterwards, is far more stressful than I ever imagined. I am working hard to block out every minute of the entire grim fortnight – except one: after my last trial, watching tears course down the face of an innocent, flawed human, just like the rest of us, when the foreman pronounced: "Not guilty."

But this is surely the point. Memory, opinion, intuition and whimsy make up the national population, 12 of whom are gathered at random whenever an English jury trial takes place. This gives the law a democratic safety net parliament doesn't have. Bring in all the laws you like, but if the spirit of the prosecution does not sit with the jury, then you cannot get a conviction; thus the jury system ultimately reflects what the British public feels is right and wrong.
Are laws brought in that criminalise acts the public feel should not be criminal? Of course. Do the police ever pursue court action too harshly, for the wrong reasons, against someone who should have been let off with a warning at a much earlier stage? I don't know. I have trusted every police officer I ever met, am grateful for their service and feel safer for their presence, but I have lived this life in the incarnation of a reasonably articulate and informed middle-class white woman. I'll come back in the next life as something else and you can ask me then. In the meantime… it's possible. The jury system has the potential, if the official rules are ignored, to set the balance straight.
If 12 random jurors were to incorrectly acquit someone because they brought their own personalities, life experience and emotions to bear – if they allowed themselves to ask questions such as "Is he really a bad person?"; "Do we want to tarnish her with that conviction?"; "Might I have done the same myself?" – then this would make the law answerable to the people in a way that politics, without daily referendums, can never be.
Of course, you wouldn't want jurors speculating their way towards a guilty verdict. I'm not suggesting we should sit there saying: "But what about his slightly creepy face?", or "Portuguese? That tells me all I need to know!"
But I believe that it is, sometimes, OK to think that someone is guilty but return a not guilty verdict. I am not allowed to say anything about the cases I witnessed as a juror – and this didn't happen anyway, because we followed instructions in the stern shadow of the court – but we can all imagine theoretical examples. An old man prosecuted after thumping a thug with his walking stick. A father prosecuted for taking "indecent photographs of a child" after snapping his own kids playing naked in the sprinkler. There are a million situations where the evidence could point to technical guilt but it would just feel wrong to bang them up.

You can read a book, but I don't read for six hours straight even in my own home, which is warm and comfy and has a kettle. So you end up people-watching. You stare at passers-by, idly thinking: "I wonder if that one's a juror? Jeez, I wouldn't want my fate in his hands… He looks like the kind of guy who'll appoint himself foreman… She should perhaps have considered wearing a bra…"
Eventually, you are allocated a case, file into court and are instructed sternly by the judge not to "speculate" on anybody. How odd, to have such a human legal system and issue such an inhuman direction. If one must only consider the facts, coldly and with no emotional reaction to the defendant or the case, why not use professional jurors with a legal background? Why not use computers? We all know what the "British public" are like: weirdos and freaks, the lot of us.
Have a look at your friends, colleagues, neighbours. What kind of jurors would they make? Some of them would probably swell with the sudden power, like bouncers, getting all over-excited and telling everyone else what to do. Some would transform overnight into legal experts – they would take reams of unhelpful notes in court, refer to them earnestly while adjusting their imaginary pince-nez, constantly using the phrase "beyond reasonable doubt" because they've heard it on television.
Some, sadly (and I say this with love for my friends, colleagues and neighbours), would turn out to be morons. They would misunderstand everything they heard and make random ex cathedra statements such as: "Well, you've got to factor in that they're just like that, shopkeepers."
Some would sweep everything into their own personal anecdote. Don't tell me you haven't got a friend like that. Whatever is happening to you, exactly the same once happened to them. Or their cousin. This tendency wouldn't stop at the pub door: they'd still do it as they sat listening to the tale of a professional clown who raided Madame Tussauds by helicopter. ("Ah yes… This reminds me of the time I…")

Twelve angry, calm, sympathetic, hostile, but above all human … men
Your fellow jurors may be weirdos and freaks, but the jury system is a democratic safety net
The day I began jury service, a friend of mine went to prison. Nothing to do with me, obviously. If you are sitting on a jury and recognise anyone in the court (witness, lawyer, viewer in the public gallery) you must excuse yourself – as happened in one of the cases I was allocated, where a likeable young man was sworn in, took one look at the defendant, waved, got up and left the room.
No, my friend's regrettable fate was just a coincidence, a strange thing that happened on the day I began a strange adventure. Perhaps you read about his case? Michael Arnold was the agent for Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen's Music. Half a million pounds went missing from the composer's bank account and Michael was charged, initially, with theft. When that charge was dropped, he pleaded guilty to false accounting and, two weeks ago (surprisingly, since Michael is 76, overweight, in poor health and leans heavily on a walking stick), he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
The strange thing is I never had any sense of Michael as a bad man. He has always been very kind to me. I have played poker with him for years. (The newspapers described him as an "addicted gambler". We should be so lucky. He played cautiously, for relatively small stakes, and, until the stress of the trial hit, he was not a loser. God knows why he needed the money, but it was not for the reasons the prosecution put forward.)
In the aloof and prickly card room, Michael went out of his way to look after me. He gave me advice. When my father was ill, he phoned regularly to ask if he could help. When my father died, Michael came to the wake, to pay tribute to a man he had never met.
So, I began jury service with a shocking lesson that good men can do bad things, for reasons I may never understand. This sent me to court in an extremely nervous frame of mind. I was relieved when it turned out that I was to spend the first day sitting in the waiting room for six hours with no trial. The lights were yellow, the food was grim, we weren't allowed out for cigarettes and internet access was £6 per person per hour (a charge so astonishing, when the building has wireless anyway and none of us had chosen to be there, that I reckoned its evil greed deserved rewarding and was rather sorry I hadn't brought my laptop).

Homeowner’s Insurance Basics

Homeowners insurance exists because a home is a huge investment, often one of the largest purchases many people make in their lifetimes. Naturally, people want to protect the value of their precious property. Homeowners insurance is a contract between a homeowner and an insurance company. As long as the owner pays the required premiums and meets the other policy requirements, the insurance company guarantees to reimburse the owner for any losses incurred due to natural disasters or human-caused damage.

What Does It Cover?
A basic homeowner’s insurance policy protects the owner against any property damage that results from things like fire, lightning, wind or hail storms. It will also provide for motel and food costs if you are forced to leave your home while such damages are repaired.

A typical policy, however, does not cover flood or earthquake damage. Because these issues are usually specific to certain regions of the country and can cause extreme damage, these can be purchased as separate policies. If you live in a flood zone or near an earthquake fault line you may be required by your mortgage company to carry these protections.

A basic policy will also cover homeowners against loss from theft or vandalism as well as reimbursement for personal property destroyed in natural disasters. It will also provide for something that many people may not normally associate with home protection – liability coverage for lawsuits brought against the owner by people who were injured on the property. This includes the cost of legal defense up to the allowed policy limit. Additionally, most policies will have a provision that will cover the basic medical expenses for the parties.

Is It Required?
Homeowners insurance is almost universally required by mortgage companies with the purchase of a home. This is because the investment is almost as big for them as it is for you. They want to make sure the property is protected from major damages so that if you are ever unable to keep up with your payments, the lender can then reclaim ownership and be able to sell it fairly easily. And even if you own your home outright, a good insurance policy is still the best way to protect the value of your home in the face of the unexpected.

1. One has to sharpen one's wits.
2. We are already out of the wood.
3. I can't see the wood for the trees.
4. Be careful the wool doesn't tangle.
5. She tried to pull the wool over his eyes.
6. Before you come in, you have to give the password.
7. Actions speak louder than words.
8. A word to the wise is enough.
9. I can't get a word in edgeways.
10. He was as good as his word.
11. They have twisted my words.
12. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
13. You do your own dirty work.
14. My husband has been out of work since June.
15. This remedy works miracles.
16. We are working our fingers to the bone.
17. That works both ways.
18. He is dead to the world.
19. When I am with you, I feel on top of the world.
20. You can't have the best of both worlds.
21. I was none the worse for it.
22. This boy goes from bad to worse.
23. Worse was still to come.
24. I think none the worse of him.
25. The weather is changing for the worse.
26. If the worst comes to the worst.
27. I'll give you his description, for what it's worth.
28. That man is worth millions.
29. It's an expensive place, but you get your money's worth.
30. He's too wrapped up in his work to notice.
31. I am a nervous wreck.
32. They were wrecked on a desert island.
33. That girl is nothing to write home about.
34. Despair was written on all their faces.
35. I got out of bed on the wrong side.
36. What is wrong with drinking?
37. You'll have to right the wrong.
38. That happened in the year dot.
39. It's years since I saw them.
40. The shares yielded ten per cent in a year.

1. John paved the way for Jesus.
2. My son is working his way through college.
3. You can't have it both ways.
4. This cloth wears well.
5. The leg of the table is wearing a hole in the carpet.
6. This paint has weathered well.
7. You have to weigh up the pros and the cons.
8. You've just lifted a weight off my mind.
9. That woman is worth her weight in gold.
10. You are putting on weight.
11. He's not a well man.
12. I wish you well.
13. The sea gulls were wheeling round us.
14. There are wheels within wheels in this affair.
15. The wheel has come full circle.
16. You will have to put your shoulder to the wheel, too.
17. The leaves whirled round the garden.
18. My head was whirling.
19. On the whole, I agree with you.
20. On holiday it rained the whole week.
21. Keep your eyes wide open.
22. He flung the door open wide.
23. He was wild with anger.
24. It's the call of the wild.
25. He did it of his own free will.
26. They say that where there is a will there is a way.
27. Slow and steady wins the race.
28. I won him over to our cause.
29. The stream wound its way through the country.
30. The path winds round the lake.
31. He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
32. There's something in the wind.
33. He went like the wind towards the winning post.
34. The Germans got wind of the escape plan.
35. He stopped to get his wind back.
36. I am going to send off a wire.
37. Give him my best wishes.
38. Wish me luck.
39. I am at my wit's end.
40. That boy was scared out of his wits.