Budoukan (?) at Kudanshita Eki (九段下駅) near the Yasukuni Shrine, where many martial arts tournaments are held. The banner says (roughly) the 45th Shorinji Kempo Kantou College Student Tournament/Convention. We (Jeannette and I) came to watch our team members!
First impression coming in. It was huge!
Closer look. Each box was separate and groups would come in and sit down on the side lines. These are choreographed performances/movements (rather than straight out sparring) therefore they are graded on form and accuracy and such. It went from pairs to groups of three and four and six, either all girls or all boys or mixed pairs.
Some cool flipping going on.
More groups.
After everyone in the group performs, they line up and do a rei or a gesture of respect/thank you facing the judges first and then once again facing the opposite side. Then they leave the floor in their lines. They did this after coming in as well.
Rei.
These are our actual team members!! Jeannette and I didn't realize that two groups from our school were going at the same time but luckily the other pair was right next to the one we focused on so you can see both a guy pair and a girl pair going at it!
After everyone went, they all gathered on the floor to hear who won.
The Judges.
There was actual sparring too but I think only the main representatives from each college fought. Our captain won against his opponents and went to the final match! I'm still not sure if he won or not but it was cool anyhow.
So for the rest of Golden Week (which is a series of 4 national holidays that fall consecutively) (and it was just our luck that the year we're here, two of them fell on Saturday and Sunday so we really only got Monday and Tuesday off from school...) (the Taikai (大会) / Tournament was on Sunday) the Shorinji Kempo club went "camping!"
Taking the subway to the western outskirts of Tokyo ... prefecture? city? some other term that is a subset of prefecture yet larger than a city? Some new friends from the club!
The other side. Poor guy was just trying to catch some Z's in the midst of our game of cards and got woken up several times just because I wanted a picture...
It was cloudy and a bit cold that day. The view from the train on the way there.
Camp! River! Very cold water!
Lovely bridge from afar on the other side
Very.. scary.. wobbly.. string for rails.. bridge close by....
The sign to the side is a warning saying that more than two people on the bridge at once is dangerous... -_- it was quite scary.
Slowly getting in... getting wet... persuading others to come in...
Got everyone in and then having a right of passage to the brotherhood by dunking all the 1st year boys... poor them... the water was freezing!
Me and Jeannette! (Happily not wet :)
Making rice the real way! Food was yummmmy- we divided into groups who were in charge of different aspects of dinner. Jeannette and I were in the curry group so it wasn't much work other than watching someone cut meat, cook the meat in water, add vegetables, add curry blocks and... done. There was also yakiniku (grilled slices of beef with like a teriyaki like sauce), yakisoba (grilled noodles with vegetables and such... I guess the closest I can think of is lo mein), salad, dessert... it was quite a feast.
The weather the next day was so much nicer, it was sad going home and not being able to enjoy it. (The night was filled with drinking-but not as much as I feared/was warned of what all night drinking usually entails-, stressful ichigei -the showcasing of a special talent or skill which the 1st years and new exchange students were forced to do in front of everyone- and Mafia? I think I finally understood the game only after having played it for 2 or so hours (and it wasn't even my first time playing.... -_-) Lately Jeannette seems to have made it her personal goal to see just how slow Mia really is. It's quite sad.
Beautiful sunlight. There's something about trees and greenery here. It's just ... sooo green... and peaceful and soothing and beautiful and.. yea.
Me and Karin (?)
Waiting for the train to go back home. I thought it was interesting that after the platform it turns into one track! So then how do trains go both ways? O.O ..... Though I guess it makes sense since you always only see one track in all those documentaries and movies of the American West or Europe or what not...
-_- = Mia = slow.
And with that, I end here for today!
Friday, May 9, 2008
Golden Week and Shorinji Kempo
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Parks Galore and Sunny Days :)
I have a paper due already for Friday but I'm not in the mood to work on it right now so I thought an update would be a better.. use of time.... Perhaps not wise but, oh well.
Ueno Park:
Lots of green.
It was a pretty chilly day though..
Outside the museum
What I went to see. The figures came from Yakushi-ji in Nara. Apparently quite the famous temple. Yaku = kusuri = medicine. According to my host mom, people would frequently come to this temple to ask to be healed. (If you're interested: http://www.google.com/search?q=yakushiji&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7TSHA - wikipedia for more info and the third one has lots of pictures of the actual site)
Looks like good memories are being made here.
Water fountain. It's a really big park that had various other museums like art and a zoo and other amusements. (And here I will advertise for Jen's blog for more interesting pictures of Ueno park!)
Musical group which I had at first mistaken the soprano saxophone for a clarinet from far away. I was a little disappointed but they were quite fun to watch.
Entrance to a shrine.
Rainy night on my way home and my ~$1 umbrella!
National Holiday celebrating the birthday of emperor Showa (Hirohito), April 29, 2008:
Korakuen--
Baseball- little league style. They were so cute. We managed to catch the very end of their game where the two teams lined up, thanked each other, ran through the other team and faced one side of the audience, thanked them, ran through each other back to their respective sides, thanked the other side of the audience, and then ended.
Koishikawa korakuen (小石川後楽園) of the early Edo Period (~1629), built by Yorifusa, the founder of the Mito Tokugawa family, who maintained a separate Edo residence here. "The name of the garden, "Korakuen," came from a CHinese text in Hanchuen's "Gakuyoro-ki" ... which said that there is "a need for those in power to worry about maitaining power first and then enjoy power later." Thus, the name Korakuen, meaning " the garden for enjoying power later on," was chosen." (-pamphlet from the garden)
Looks like the sign is pointing in the direction to get to some fairy tale land (though in real it's showing the way to the restrooms beyond the stairs...).
Wisteria season (the purple flowers in the background). In June the plots of land closer to me will bloom irises.
Can you spot the Koi?
Momiji grove (Japanese maple).
Friday, April 18, 2008
School Has Begun...
So school has started and now that registration has ended my classes are set. I'm taking Intensive Japanese, two 1.5 hour classes everyday M-F (so that makes a total of 15 hours of Japanese class a week), History of the Japanese Language- a linguistics course of which the first lecture totally went over my head, and Nationalism, Citizenship and Democracy in Japan. I end at 4:45p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays and 6:30p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays so I'm a little bummed out but I guess it'll keep me on my toes to do homework and such in my free time between classes. I'm very lucky that my host family lives so close to the school- I only have a total of 4 stops and one transfer on the subway! I've found that I can get by with leaving home at around 8:40am to make it to school for Japanese at 9:15a.m. I'm also lucky that the transfer from one line to the other line entails a downward course through 5 or so escalators on my way to school rather than the other way around. (My commute home amounts to my daily exercise. I force myself to walk up them but I'm quite out of breath already only after the first huge monstrous one. Soon enough I'll master them and be like those Tokyo-ers who walk up all the escalators without being affected at all!)
I don't have many great pictures now that school has started so I'm sorry to disappoint!
Taken from the first section of the train- there's a subway driver to the side and he wears white gloves, which is about all you can see of him from inside the train.
Akihabara- electronic district in Tokyo. Interesting escalators/stairs..
More of Akihabara.. advertising for maid cafes..?
For the Kimura Takuya fans.
I went to the Koreatown-ish place here and was really happy to look at this menu. That day I had four whole meals because I ended up eating dinner before going out but it was all worth it.
~$30 worth of food. Expensive but worth it. I only made it a week and a half in Japan without having Korean food... But my host mom was so sweet though- she bought kimchi just for me! It was a little un- fermented? but still good.
Korean words on signs! No debilitating Chinese characters to worry about! There were Korean pharmacies, super markets, video stores, stores dedicated to all things korean actors/actresses, restaurants, etc. here! (G- remember that Doc.Donald we saw in shindang ddukbokki town? haha probably not a franchise but there was one here!)
Entrance to the main shopping street in Harajuku. I'm told and seen pictures where no inch of ground can be seen because of all the people here. Rainy early afternoon on a wednesday would probably explain why it wasn't like that on that day.
The center whilte building with red letters is where I got my electronic dictionary in Ikebukuro. 8 or 9 floors of just electronics! The buildings around are department stores.
Me and Teresa :)
I pointed at a picture and ordered. I was very happy with my dish. Don't ask me what it was because it was all in Kanji and I didn't know how to read it. -_-
Teresa's dinner and very fun to eat. Tonkatsu with udon noodles.
My dessert. We definitely splurged since this dessert and the other one pictured below cost more than dinner did, but it was definitely worth it. That center mound thing is ice cream filled mochi! Lots of fruit, mochi, sugar cookies, star and moon shaped jellies = happy Mia but empty wallet D:
kiwiii
Teresa's ice cream. You can't see it but it's in a long tall class so not seen are the scoops of vanilla ice cream, a slice of cake, cereal, and hot fudge at the bottom. The place was called Milky Way in Ikebukuro- just two stops away from my station.
Star shaped jelliesss!
I had said I was full after dinner. Apparently not...
This is what I'm afraid of in the mornings on my commute to school...
Battle wound from a tennis racket after four hours.
What's real and what's not?
I momentarily felt like I was in a different season when I saw this...
That's all for today!
(Oh and yup- it was that white figure in the window. It's a stuffed animal- dog but it's kind of leaning and it's tongue is sticking out so it always scared me because with a quick glance it looked like a dying dog squashed underneath a desk...)
