Fat-fingered sumo wrestlers get iPads

 Japanese sumo wrestlers have been given iPads because their fingers are too fat to use mobile phones.

The Japan Sumo Association is distributing about 60 iPads among training stables and top officials to help improve communication.

"It seems rather easy to use," said association chief Hanaregoma. "Sending emails was very easy."

The 62-year-old former wrestler admitted that while he can read incoming text messages on his mobile phone, he does not know how to write replies and does not usually use a computer.

The iPad was chosen because the sumo association believed the device was big enough to cater for wrestler's fat fingers, unlike the smaller keys on mobile phones, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Sumo officials decided to go digital and buy iPads as the ancient sport attempts to mend its ways after scandals over wrestlers' ties with gangsters and illegal gambling, match-fixing and brutal hazing of apprentices.

The sport's authorities faced loud public criticism for their clumsy efforts to investigate the scandals, in part due to insufficient sharing of information among sumo leaders.

"If we place this (iPad) in all the stables, we should be able to contact them anytime," the association's spokesman Nishonoseki has said.