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!

i took a walk yesterday

dear blog,
i took a walk yesterday by myself up this mountain near my house. i had never been up there. you can see lots of graves. nobody is buried in japan, because it is the size of california but has half a population of the USA and 90% of the land here is mountains. so when you die you get a little stone monument set up, and it's ok. i saw a few of those. saw some cheery blossoms too, which only bloom for a short time. i think i am just going to post these pictures in order one after another because i don't have much to say. tomorrow i gotta wear a suit for opening of school ceremony and office worker's picture. here we go.






wash your hands in this thing before praying.





hey i can see my house from here! it is in the center of this photograph.



empty grave spot. guess s/he isn't dead yet.

next one says to take enough care when its pouring rain, because this is where the water comes down the mountain.


this next one has a lonely politician speaking through car-mounted loudspeakers about how he is going to fix japan when you elect him, and thank you for the support, and thank you.



oh, this last one is of the posters for the election. should you smile? what colors do you want to use? what design elements? name going horizontally or vertically? many choices.

the guy who is set up next to my house, who i posted a photo of yesterday is on the bottom row, second from the right. compare that shot to the one i got of him. and then be like, good move.
great!

sorry the order of events is all messed up but hey what are you gonna do

so blog,
there are more pictures here i wanted to show you.
i guess it should be structured like the last post. let's see how it goes.

so you want a smaller ornamental samurai helmet? its still going to set you back tens of thousands of yen. and these are really dinky compared to the 2 serious ones from before. but hey, it's your traditional samurai helmet display, so do what you're gonna do.

now, here is the actual scene from my door. notice that everyone is wearing the headbands, not just our friend mr. tatsugawa. i hope he wins. he probably will.

and we have here a wider shot of the entire scene. i had a little get together the night before and some friends slept over. people at the political rally were leaning on my friend's car in the morning, and he had to ask them to move, which was great. you see that little white pickup truck? every japanese person has one. i think you get one when you are born or turn 20, or 40, as a rite of passage. i think this photo is from another day. you can see the candidate on the right, with the unfortunate worst contraption ever created, the speaker-car. wow i hate that thing.

okay, back to the end of the school year party. this is where the first dinner/party was. nice long table, almost enough food, beer and sake. sit on the floor. this is past the point in the party when everyone gets up from their randomly assigned seats and starts talking to and pouring drinks for the people they like. you never pour for yourself, its mad rude.
okay, time to go to the second party. take a bus, hope you can find a ride home with someone. want to sing karaoke?

try to sing along. there is some stock footage that always has to do with the song and matches up perfectly.

i do not understand what is being sung here.

do you like his shot of some of the old ladies in the office? the one on the left is done working here. she was nice and little. maybe those flowers are real.

and here is the last one i am going to post today. you can tell who is wasted in this picture. from right to left: principal? wasted. badminton player/math teacher? wasted. school nurse? not wasted. homeroom teacher who left? wasted, i think. she was singing like she was, anyway. you see those big empty bottles. let loose twice a year and make it count.
so i will keep sitting here. that killed about 45 minutes, another hour until i get to go home and sit around more. maybe if it's nice out i will walk to the top of this mountain near my house i found yesterday.
great!

bored

hi blog,
i am at work. for the last weeks, there has been no class, but i have to come to work anyway, for "compliance". this means i sit here all day and either read, write, or surf the web. i can't take off because i have to save my remaining 10 paid vacation days for when my girlfriend and sister visit in a few months. so i am bored. hence, this post.
i am uploading some pictures, so i should type about what's up. it is a new school year here. 6 teachers left, including both of the english teachers i taught with. there are two new english teachers now, one nice woman who i recognized from another school and one cool guy who sounds like borat when he tries to speak english. im only going to have to teach 2 or 3 classes a day when i am here, so it is not going to be a big deal. i just have to get used to their new teaching styles.
there were a few parties. end of school year party, new school year party. pretty good time overall. so you want to see some photos or what?

maybe you want some big ornamental samurai helmets. i don't know, they are probably for a ceremony or a festival. it's gonna cost you one hundred thousand yen. i will let you do that math on your own. the yen is down recently, since the japanese government doubled this big reserve of emergency money for banks. hopefully it will calm back down by the time i get home.
alright. here is the next one. this is a photo of the trailer next to my house. mr. tatsugawa, a politician up for reelection, is hanging out there for the time being. i guess you have to run your reelection campaign out of a separate building.

local elections are coming up. every sunday for the past 3 weeks a bunch of fools show up at 9 am and cheer and make speeches and yell and scream, directly next to my house, until 11 am. it is the worst thing possible. nevermind that the way you promote your campaign is by driving a little car around town with a set of megaphones on it, through which you THANK everyone and THANK them so much as loud as you possibly can. it is awful. but hey, whatever.
this was the scene outside my front door last sunday. the guy with the headband, sash and suit is the guy himself. he shook my hand after i got in my car that morning. good luck, guy.

the next is just a cool shot from an after party we went to a bar called "secret". the tv on the right is for karaoke.

the next one has the old vice principal on the left, who got wasted. he played badminton a few times, and i think he lives at a buddhist temple.

how about this?

that picture is of the table from the second party. these are all from the teachers leaving party. i don't have any from the new teachers party. what you can see here is a little snack set up. pocky, shrimp chips, little packets of peanuts and other snacks, an ash tray, and the wireless karaoke song selector. this was a good selection because they had 2 lil' wayne songs, 1 of which i sang, alone.
alright, let's seal this post up because i have more pictures uploading.
great!