Meet the Staff –  Howard Gilbert I remember seeing sumo briefly on TV during my first visit to Japan way back in 1987. After that I had a passing interest, mainly because it was part of a country that I was growing to love. I really began following sumo during a year in Japan in 1993 amidst the Waka-Taka boom and the scowling game face of Akebono. In those days, however, it was hard to follow sumo when I was all the way back across the ocean in New Zealand! During another stint in Japan from late 1998 I began to follow ozumo closely, watching the hon-basho daily on NHK and attending at least one day of each Tokyo basho. Since then I've kept in touch with the sport from afar via satellite TV and the internet. However, I've managed to take this interest a little further by channeling it into a research project on the spread of amateur sumo to regions like Oceania and Europe. I am currently completing my PhD thesis at the University of Auckland on the globalization of amateur sumo. This has allowed me to travel back to Japan a couple of times in the last three years and to follow amateur sumo for 3 months in Europe in 2005.