Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. After flying however many thousands of miles across a major ocean, it'd be just plain embarassing if you were to get thrown out of this competition because of a technicality you weren't aware of. Odds are it'd be a rule mentioned on the first page, or something like that.
Hanging your tacky plastic badge on your shirt, you open the rulebook, glance briefly at the pages of Japanese characters - which might as well be Ancient Egyptian, for all that you're able to understand of them - then flip through the book until you spot an entire page of English. You spend the next few minutes reading carefully. Fortunately, the rules for the Under Tens Division were written with the ages of the competitors in mind, so you don't have any trouble following them.
As Lu-sensei told you a few days ago, there will be a series of preliminary bouts over the course of the day, to help reduce the field. Your competition number determines which bracket you start in, with the lowest numbers going to the lowest brackets; the fights begin as soon as a bracket is full and one of the sixteen rings is free. You'll have to listen closely for when your number and ring are announced, since you only have five minutes thereafter to show up, or face disqualification. In order to give the contestants time to recover between bouts, there is a minimum one-hour delay imposed between the first match of the first preliminary round and the first match of the second round; you note that, depending on how long each round lasts, that break may not help some of the higher-numbered participants, such as yourself. You will not be expected to fight more than four opponents over the course of the morning, by which time it is expected that the pool of fighters will have been reduced to 32 or less, the maximum allowed for the main tournament. There will then be a break for lunch, with the afternoon being given over to the Under Fourteens Division Preliminaries. Your finals will be held in the main ring tomorrow morning, while the Under Eighteens prelims get underway.
The rules of the Under Tens Division are fairly simple. Formal uniforms are expected, while weapons of any sort are explicitly forbidden, on pain of immediate disqualification. The bouts are full-contact, with no time limit or scoring. You win by holding a ten-second pin, by ring-out, by knockout, or when your opponent forfeits, and naturally, you lose if your opponent manages to do one or more of the same to you. You will also be disqualified if you interfere in someone else's match, if you are caught fighting outside the ring, if you fail to stop fighting when the referee tells you to, or if you use excessive force against your opponent.
Nothing is said about ki or magic beyond a passing mention of "special techniques," which are permitted as long as they do not violate any of the other rules.
Not long after you finish reading, you notice a disturbance in the crowd. Looking up, you find that the doors at the back of the hall are now open, and people are being ushered through by the officials after a brief inspection of their numbers. You move along beside Cordelia, Lu-sensei at your backs and Briar on your shoulder, and follow the flow of the crowd.
"Number 302," another of the bland-faced officials says, glancing from Cordy to some sort of electronic pad, which he taps with what looks like a pen. "Bracket sixty-four. Number 303," he continues, looking to you, "bracket sixty-five. Proceed."
Sixty-four and sixty-five, huh? So there are at least a hundred and thirty kids your age here, and they need to knock that down by at three-quarters. Huh. Well, assuming that there isn't a huge flood of late arrivals or people who pre-registered and just got higher numbers than you, you shouldn't have to fight more than twice today - three times at the outside, depending on how they decide to account for the slightly uneven numbers. As a plus, you don't have to fight Cordelia in the first round. That would just suck.
Lu-sensei sees you to the locker rooms, wishes you both good luck, and then heads off to do... something. Join the audience, become a guest commentator, hunt down an old buddy, pick a fight with a mortal enemy - who knows? You watch him go, feeling just a touch nervous at the departure of the only familiar adult on this continent; from the look of her, Cordelia feels about the same way.