An awesome two days

Ok so I have to post about the last two days, because they were pretty darn amazing. Let’s start with Thursday (yesterday) – after class let out, I went to my first KENDO LESSON! AHHH! Kendo is so freaking cool! Plus, I’ve missed having some kind of martial art in my life. Anyway, the lesson was at a nearby high school, so as the 40-something group of strange looking “外人” (foreigners) walked in, most of the kids stopped to stare. I mean, it was kinda cool, feeling like a celebrity. Plus, they were all super friendly once they got over the shyness (for instance, a group of girls hung around us for a few minutes before actually working up the courage to say “Hi” – they were pretty surprised/amused when they realized that we could speak Japanese). But yeah, the kids were really cool. It’s kind of a cool experience to see high school life in another country, especially one as different as Japan. I mean, (and this is at least how I feel), it was tough to envision other people’s high school lives as being radically different from my own, I guess. It was cool to see how similar/different their high school life was from mine. Anyway, we got to the fourth floor gym, where we met this really old lady, who introduced herself as our instructor for the day. This woman is probably all of 5 feet tall, looks to be about.. 100 pounds? Really short (like, maybe about my length) white hair, and wearing sweatpants and a white polo shirt. She talked for a little bit about the tradition of kendo before having us do some stretches (pretty much a lot like track stretching?) and then arming us with the wooden swords. She taught us the three basic strokes: First is Mein (transliteration?), which is a powerful blow to the top of the head. You advance quickly, leading with the same foot the whole time (i.e. if I start the motion with my right foot, my left foot’s steps should only bring it to meet the right – the right should be ahead at all times) before bringing the sword above your head (so it’s almost parallel to the ground behind you) and attacking the top of the opponent’s head. Second, comes Ku-Toh (again, transliteration?), which is a sharp hit to the opponent’s wrists, the point of which is to disarm them. You advance in the same fashion, but the blow itself is much quicker. Instead of having the same sort of power as you get with Men, you go for a really quick attack. Finally, came Do – a sort of surprise blow to the midriff. Same advance, and you lift the sword as if ready to strike with Men, but you quickly bring the sword down in an arc that attacks the opponent’s torso. Then came the really fun part – she grouped us into four lines, two of which struck mannequins, which the other two attacked actual people (one was the instructor, the other was one of her students – they were wearing gear, don’t worry). I was in the line attacking the instructor, so I was feeling a little bad. I mean, come on, could I really hit an old lady in her 80s? But then I saw her demonstrate the attack formation on one of her students – damn, can that old lady MOVE! I was actually pretty blown away by how much of a beast she was. Plus, she’s incredibly loud when she attacks – it’s pretty frightening. Anyway, we did the attacks in sequence, starting with Men. The instructor was so intimidating! She yelled even as we hit her. It psyched me out the first time because I totally wasn’t expecting it. I advanced, and just as I lifted my sword to strike, she yelled insanely loudly – it threw me off, and I ended up missing. But after that, I got in the zone and did ok. She soon switched it up, though – she chose two students (Koh Kazama and Brian Ho) to be the strike dummies. Not going to lie, this was insanely fun. I can’t exactly tell you why, but hitting Brian was significantly more fun than attacking either the old lady or the mannequin. Oh well. But yeah, Kendo was AWESOME. And I fully intend to go back next week. It’s every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Tomorrow I can’t make it because of the Onuma park trip (which I’m also pretty excited for, but I’ll get to that later), but I think I’m going to do it next week. But I’m also wary of committing to too many things – I figure I’d rather just devote a lot of time to one martial art than doing all three (the program offers Judo and Kyudo, Japanese archery, as well as Kendo). So I’m signed up for Kyudo trials this coming week, and probably want to stop by Judo too, so I can make a good decision about which to do. Anyway, on to today (Friday) – after classes, I intended to go to Judo trial sessions, but then found out I was signed up for a culture class today: Kimono Culture and Etiquette. This and Kendo might be tied for my favorite experience of the trip so far. It started out with the instructor, Kosaka san, explaining the different levels of formality that can be conveyed by a kimono. For men, the most formal kimono would be black with a grey bottom. For women, it depended on marital state – married women could wear black, but with a little bit of color at the bottom, while unmarried women wore multicolored kimono. Any sort of formal kimono has to have the family crest on it – the most formal ones have 5, while semiformal ones have between 1 and 3. She also talked about the importance of kimono coloring and design – a fully black kimono can only be worn for a funeral, but black must be the dominant color in any formal kimono. You also should make sure that the flowers/animals on the kimono you wear are appropriate for the season.

Jan/Feb - Your kimono can have pine, bamboo, Japanese plum, etc

March/April - Japanese cherry, butterfly, Japanese wisteria, Seven Herbs of Spring, etc

May/June – Iris, willow, birds

July/Aug – Birds, rocky beach, fish, shells, water

Sept/Oct – Japanese silver grass, autumn leaves, geese, chrysanthemum, the seven autumnal flowers

Nov/Dec – Dry garden, snow

Afterwards, she demonstrated the different ways men and women put on yukata (very casual cotton summer kimono) and let us try some on!!! My yukata was pretty darn cool – it was a dark blue with lighter blue patterning and a large yellow emblem (not a crest – yukata are rarely printed with family crests). Anyway, we all got on the struggle bus as we tried to put the kimono on (I felt kind of bad for the girls – their method was so much more complicated than ours). I’m pretty sure we offended all the older people there by violating every rule of kimono etiquette. Luckily, afterwards, we had a crash course in kimono etiquette – namely, sitting, standing, entering a room, and bowing properly. A lot of these things are pretty important to Japanese culture, especially during tea ceremonies. I’ll confess something kind of sad – don’t judge me. I knew how to open the door to a tea ceremony because I remembered it was on an episode of America’s Next Top Model. I was a little sad for my life in that moment. But anyway, it was a very cool tutorial. I’m definitely looking forward to buying a yukata before heading back to America, but I need to find some cheap ones. =(. Yeah. But anyway, I loved the class – the whole atmosphere just made me feel like I was traveling back in time to Meiji Japan, when this stuff was like... the rule of social survival. But yeah. I’ll put up pictures later. I forgot to bring my camera to the actual event, so I’m probably just going to steal a bunch of other people’s. Yayyy.

So finally, tomorrow (Saturday) is our trip to Onuma Park. I went last week with Ryuko-san, and it’s breathtaking. There was a little bit of fog that made it look incredible. I’m really excited to go again – I’ll remember to take my camera this time, I swear! But I’ve got to get to practicing – our class is singing in the talent show tomorrow. We’re performing a song called “Banzai” by Ulfuls, a Japanese pop rock band. For those of you in Intro Japanese, it’s the same group that did “Ashita ga aru.” It’s pretty catchy, so it’s been stuck in my head. On the plus side, this does mean that I am no longer listening to Rock Star. Yeah. So I’m going to go prepare now. Yeah. Bye!