in which i spend some time at work

oh, hello blog
i just helped teach three classes today. this is the start of a very long weekend for me. 7 days long in fact. see it's "golden week" here in japan, which is basically spring break as i see it. thursday is showa day, which commemorates the last emperor's reign and is a time for people to think about the span of time and the turbulent changes that took place during that era. monday is constitution memorial day, which is the anniversary of when the 45 constitution was written, or adopted, or something. tuesday is greenery day, or green day, which i guess could be thought of as earth day. then thursday is childrens day, which is a good idea i guess and i always wanted that day when i was a kid. friday im getting off because a school is moving their lessons around and so i have a 7 day weekend. with this in mind i made a reservation at a hotel called hotel active! in hiroshima city from sunday to wednesday. i will take the train there and check in and then spend a few days wandering around, seeing nuclear bomb monuments and going to museums and stuff. there is a peace park and a shrine in the middle of the water by an island i want to go to. also they have okonomiyaki in layers, and not all mixed up, like the rest of japan has, so i want to try that and everything else they want. im not really excited because im going alone but i do get to get out of here for once, and the hotel is like $60 a night and has western style breakfasts included, so its not a bad deal. i will take lots of pictures so don't worry about that.
so i guess you want to know like what i have been up to. well my cousin sam leiter came to kotohira to see a kabuki play, because he's a kabuki scholar. kotohira is a 45 minute ride through the mountains for me, so i went up there to meet him and look at some shrines. it was really neat, and i didn't know about this little town, so i have to go back now. the photos are uploading right now.
okay let's do this.

here you can see japanese kids sorting the little tabs of aluminum cans. in japan, since they are incredibly "eco" about everything but paper and plastic bags, they recycle these little guys separately. also, the plastic colored caps of plastic bottles go in their own bin. just a little less work they need to do at the plant. keep burning your garbage though! but really who am i to judge!?

here are sam and i in kotohira. the sun just came out so im squinting. that is my new favorite hoodie. sam is my grandfather's cousin's husband. he's really smart. please buy his book if you want to know about kabuki.

cool devil masks were on display.

and they even had the tengu ask, or scary long nose guy. hes the mascot for the conveyor belt sushi place i like in the mall. i love him.

do you need cool swords? this guy has them for you. i think you need a special swords permit to buy one though. i didn't see how much they were, but you can assume they are EXPENSIVE!

a view up the steps that lead to the temple. supposedly there were like 800 steps. those two columns on sides of the steps are actually a big gate that tells you about the temple.

nice view looking down the steps.

then we got to the top of some steps and this long path just kept going. really want to go back here soon, when liz comes over in less than a month!

me and the big temple. i think this might have been the second to biggest one. not sure if we went all the way to the top. but it was a nice building. i did money throwing and hand claps and we went back down the steps.

statue of a horse. there was a real horse and a wooden horse too, at different points. sam told me people would bring horse paintings to this temple. i really thought i got that guy out of the picture, but now he is going to be in it, forever, ruining my life.

another shot from near the top, on the way down.

statue of a priest guy! composition. amateur photography. framing. ansel adams can suck an egg.

now at the playhouse, we have kabuki mascot character. how does the person inside see out? is s/he normal height or a child? what is going on?

and lastly the playhouse itself. it's the oldest kabuki house in japan, and it's awesome. just ask sam!

brian said he wanted to see a picture of my house in japan so here it is. red car, and lots of grassy weeds growing all around.
and that is about it for now. i will let you know about hiroshima, and soon my gilfriend and sister are going to come visit.
great!

shikoku karate tournament

oh blog,
i am sitting in the office, as usual. two days ago i went with my karate teacher and a few of my fellow students to the all-shikoku karate open tournament. all 4 prefectures of shikoku island met in kochi and had fights. some people lost, and a few won. there were a lot of nosebleeds and a lot of crying kids. one older delivery guy who i practice with, and one 3rd grade girl entered the tournament, so we went to cheer them on. i had to get up really early, 5:55 am, in order to get dressed, eat breakfast, and be at sensei's house to catch a ride at 6:30. i took a lot of pictures too. there are videos too, and eventually i will post them all on youtube. but until then all you have is my photo by photo commentary, which has t be good enough. let's start. my comment about each picture is going to be underneath it.

this is sensei's 5 year old son. he has an older daughter too, but i spent most of the day playing with and entertaining this kid. try playing with a 5 year old once ina while. he's wearing my glasses.

on the left is the delivery man doing some shadowboxing with the girl who comes to pratice. he is trying to get ready for his fight.

here is the little girl who entered the tournament on the left, doing shadowboxing with sensei. this was at the beginning of the day, before any of the real action.

more warming up. maybe sometimes you have to kick a mat. everyone was warming up at this point. dozens of little kids moving around.

also punches are acceptable when you are using those little black mats.

here she is practicing with the big blue mat with her dad, while sensei watches. you can punch and kick on this one, it is mostly for going nuts. i like this picutre.

okay, now some little kids started to actually fight. judges would say who won, and if you got kicked in the head twice, it was an automatic loss. this picture shows how big the gym was. the judge is on the left. they wore bowties and no shoes.

now these kids are just pushing on eachother. the guy in the corner has a whistle and he holds up a flag at the end of a round to indicate who won.

here are all thr trophies you were fighting for, and the big scoreboard. parents were always watching and yelling at their kids, giving them specific commands. knees! kicks! front! turn!

also there were kata competitions. kata are these fight dances that have special steps and orders that you have to memorize. one kid would step in and do his or hers, and then another would come in and maybe do the same one or another. then the judges would be like "the first kid was better". some of these are really hard to memorize. i can only do one after i see it once or twice.

but yeah, back to little girls kicking eachother as hard as they could. it was cute for a while until i realized it was parents just yelling at their kids to beat up other kids.

if time runs out, the guy sitting on the floor throws a little red beanbag into the ring. that means cut it out.

knee is effective in this picture. the girl looking in the video camera had some good moves earlier, i remember.

i just like the composition of this one.

and you can see that kid's face in this one. he's like "i better win so my parents love me".

finally it was time for our girl to fight!

as you can see, she won. she actually won her first two matches, which was crazy, but then got kicked in the head twice pretty fast, and lost the third. the did get a big trophy though, so that was cool.

when i got this picture, i screamed out loud, it is that good. did you know it is really hard to photograph karate with a digital camera? i still dont know how i got this shot. all photographs are downhill from here.

adults did fighting too. here is the guy from our dojo getting ready. he saw his opponent before the fight and got all nervous.

his opponent had much more experience and did a spin kick. judges really liked the spin kicks. he has a higher belt and was a bigger guy. didnt help that our guy got kicked in the groin early on. bad move. he did not win his first fight, which was disappointing.

the guy on the right, the black belt, had good style.

someone in this photo is thinking "i want to go home"

more judges for the later, higher ranked bouts. when the judges changed off, they had to salute eachother and each direction of the ring. it was wild.

again, spin kick. looks like that block is pretty much ineffective.

then the finals got started on the main mat. there were 5 mats in all, one in the middle and one in each corner. these guys did not mess around, but they looked like the got tired as the rounds progressed.

you basically had to be a black or brown belt to get this far. pain is a big part of this, i think. you are trying to hurt your opponent so he backs off an lets you hit him more. if you lose your momentum and dont connect enough attacks, you will lose for sure. we started to call the bouts before they ended, being like "this one is a tie" or "red" or "white wins". sometimes it was difficult to tell but mostly it was obvious who won.

then a bunch of kids got together and did a little demonstration. all color belts, all heights represented. as you can see, we went up to the seats to watch the finals.

i think this is the last last fight. it was crazy. basically, there is a three minute round. if a majority of the judges cant decide who won, there is another three minute round. then another, if its still a tie. if at the end of three, and they are still tied, they have to measure their weight. if there is a 10 KG weight difference, the lighter guy wins automatically, because he must have had more energy to stay in the fight and tie if he's smaller, or something. i did not really understand that part. if there is not a 10 KG difference, they have to keep fighting.

and that is what happened in the last bout. but it was so close. after the first round, out of 5 judges, two said white won, the rest said it was a tie. after the second, only one said white won. i think white should have won. then all judges agreed it was a tie. and then, after the weight and the last fight, three judges said red won! so it was like a comback, or an upset.
and those are all the pictures i felt like posting. hope you enjoyed it.
great!

bored

alright blog,
this being the first week of the new school year, of course i don't have to go to class to teach anything, cause it is all handing out of books and orientation. i have to go to the mountain school in the afternoon, and the amount of work i have to do there varies depending on whether or not the teaching assistant, who comes every other week, will be there. if she is there, she is gonna write the lesson plan and i just have to speak when it is indicated that i should speak, and if she is not, i have to think up some games or lessons or something to entertain two groups of little kids with for 45 minutes each. i have a pretty wide range of ideas to choose from. some of my more reliable games are duck duck goose, which of course has to be called cat cat dog here, as well as simon says, known as Russell says, exquisite corpse, which has to be called "interesting body", telephone, etc. we will see.
this past weekend i took a rainy, lonely drive to the south of the island to see a city called kochi. it looked like a pretty big city. the ride was an hour and a half, and both ways consumed a quarter tank of gas. very windy mountain roads for the most part. i think i will go back with liz when she gets here. i took some pictures. nothing too interesting, i hope.

this picture i took when i was driving. this is what the road looks like. you are right on the edge of a mountain and people live way up high. most of the drive was alongside a nice river. abandoned gas stations and little ramen shops all along the way. a few tunnels.

here is where i had lunch. the mountains are big and up close. that parking lot was very difficult to navigate, as it was full of the slowest cars, and probably 20% smaller, more narrow, than your average american parking lot. there was a UNIQLO behind me where i bought 2 pairs of work pants and a green blue plaid shirt. funny that this is where i stopped because this mcdonalds UNIQLO combination is also an hour in the eastward direction, towards tokushima city. oh well.

but i kept driving past that shopping center just to see what was up in kochi. i thought this bush was nice because it was flowering. that guy on the banners is ryoma sakamoto who helped overthrow the feudal shogunate in japan in the late 1800s and was born in kochi and was an alltogether great guy. now his image has been relegated to banners for pachinko parlors and boxes of snacks.

kochi has trolleys, which i thought was neat.

then i found this statue of an angel lady on top of a building near a shopping arcade. it was really quite large and cool. gotta find it again when i go back.

this is the outside of a bar that i stopped next to at a red light. it is covered in weird flyers and stuff. i guess it looks pretty cool. gotta go inside next time.

oof, there was a big boy too. i have never even seen a big boy in america, so seeing one in japan was a little surprising.
okay this next photo is not from my trip to kochi. it is of the pizza i ordered two nights ago.

so this is the best that pizza gets in japan. i could not decide on which flavor to get so i got the 4 combo. this whole thing cost 1580 yen. from bottom left, clockwise, we have a standard salami pizza that has to have corn on it. little onions too, with parsley. the next section is big pieces of cured bacon and cold potato salad, whcih was quite good and i would consider getting again. then is margarita, i think, which just had big tomatos and some pesto with a different cheese. it was just ok. the last one is the necessary japanese pizza inclusion: yakisoba pizza. basically it was just some yakisoba on bread, with maybe beef pieces, fried noodles, cabbage, yakisoba sauce and lots of mayo on top. also pretty good. it's hard for me to talk about or think about food right now, because even though curry rice is for lunch today, i feel a little food deprived. maybe i will get a big udon set meal for dinner, instead of trying to follow along with cooking with dog who just had me make ketchup spaghetti last night. i think that is about it. i have badminton tonight. what should i do this weekend?
great!