Arrow Shooting, School "Problems", & The New Year
From January 14, 2018
Happy New Year! It’s a few weeks into 2018 and I feel like I’ve been quite productive :D
Picked up a few more hobbies and as a result I think I’ve used muscles that I never knew I had ^-^’ It gives me a whole new appreciation for tensile strength haha.
Anyhow, today I’m writing to you from a quiet little cafe in Kyoto after stopping by the sanjusangendo shrine to catch some Kyudo. Well, I tried anyway. It was way too packed with people to get anywhere near an up close look at the action, though I did get to catch a little of what was going on through looking at taller people’s camera screens and get smushed against other people as a stream of attendees pushed their way through the path behind.
Every year on the 2nd Sunday of January, Kyudo practitioners that will be turning 20 that year (the official age of an adult in Japan,) flock to this shrine to participate in the Ohmato Taikai. It’s a tradition that stems from far back when they used to have competitions that would start at 6pm at night and the shooting would go on for 24 hours. Can you picture it? Bonfires lit to light the shrine’s compound and the targets. The past seem so romantic, yet if you take the weather into account as well as the amount of arrow shooting that goes on, it seems like it was quite the mighty and grueling event. There are stories of a few archers that were said to have shot thousands and thousands of arrows during the span of the event and having near perfect accuracy. Something like 9 arrows a minute, which makes me wonder what the shooting procedure was. (It doesn’t really sound like the usual Kyudo style of shooting that takes a few minutes to get into the proper stance.) I wonder what those events must have been like and what those archers did outside of their archery training. They must have been some pretty BA people to be able to shoot that many arrows consecutively, not to mention hit the target. 0.0
Ooooo matcha latte art!!! It’s the first time that I’ve ever gotten latte art in a drink I’ve ordered! At a normal cafe anyway (since I don’t drink coffee). X> It looks like a heart stacked on another with wings. *heart* I wonder how latte art works. I need to learn about it. :D Matcha itself too is such an interesting thing. I still don’t really feel like I have a good grasp of what it is exactly or how it’s made, but when in Kyoto, get the matcha!
In recent smiley news, I got some really yummy mochi from a coworker who made it with kuromame (black bean) and was super delish! I’ve been loading up on mochi as of late, so I feel like I’m fulfilling the tradition of eating lots of mochi during the New Year season. X>
In relation, here’s a recent school story!: I often talk about how I love my students and that they’re really cute and are angels as far as students go, but I think my most favorite thing about them is the things that they do that never cease to amaze or amuse. Some of the first year students at my smaller school have gotten into the habit of writing English sentences on the board during the ten minute break they have between classes, and one day I was watching them and helping them correct their mistakes. I found it funny when what one of my kids jokingly wrote, “This school has many problems.” XD haha “like what?” my JTE and I asked him. He didn’t really give a clear answer to that, but on another day he wrote, “We can’t use the air conditioner in our classroom.” Hahaha ^^’ yeah... If you’re unfamiliar with buildings in Japan, you’d think he’d written that because the air conditioner was broken or something, but actually buildings generally don’t have central heating here. Instead, rooms are heated or cooled one at a time, so instead of being comfortable all year round inside, students and teachers have to pray (not literally) that the wind blows during the summer to cool the classroom. Right now in the life of winter, you’ll often find a number of us huddled around the gas stoves that get pulled out at the start of every winter, trying to warm our hands. I think the magic number is 10 degrees Celsius. That’s when the students are allowed to turn on the gas heaters (here they call them stoves) in their classroom. At my bigger school there’s a cute sign that has a drawing if a stove on one side that says stove OK and a pear on the other side for stove nashi XD nashi is also the word for pear in Japanese and means something along the lines of no or none. Hehe I love Japanese humor/play on words. *heart*
So yeah, it appears that one of our students thinks that our school has “many problems” though I’m not sure if any of them are actually serious. ^^’ The things they write sometimes though are really fun haha.
In actual seriousness though, my little inaka (country-side) town is pretty tame most of the time and is far from the horror stories I’ve heard about what can sometimes happen in the city, like students throwing desks out the window, knifing tires, stealing bikes, and whole host of other shocking things at the really rough schools. Though I guess it just really depends on the school and the students. I’m sure there are not so tame inaka towns out there, too. Thank you my students for being angels *heart* Sorry I didn’t really mean to go off on that tangent.
Back to the beginning! So this year I was actually in Japan for New Years (last year I visited my parents new house in CA and reunited with some friends in Portland. Can’t believe it’s been a year already!!!) and managed to have a relatively quiet start to the year of the dog. I went with my would be host family to the Kitchen Shrine before the start of the year and then went to hatsumode (the first shrine visit of the year) at my nearby shrine. It was interesting to walk the streets when all the shops are closed during the new year. It’s sooo quiet and it almost feels like a ghost town. Like today, the shrines put up special stalls for the festivities and there was a bonfire and you could really feel the atmosphere of the new year in the air. It’s another thing that I really love about Japanese Culture. There are always festivals throughout the year to celebrate or pay tribute to the special events of that season and it’s accompanied by food stalls and noise and families and friends milling about and livening up the streets. As the new year festivities draw to a close, I’ve got a feeling, it’s going to be a good year.
Book Menu:
＊Chainbreakers by Tara Sim
＊The Self-Discipline Handbook by
Natalie Wise
＊Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Song on Replay:
“Go the Distance” cover from Hercules - Shawn Hook & Kurt Hugo Schneider
Happy New Year! It’s a few weeks into 2018 and I feel like I’ve been quite productive :D
Picked up a few more hobbies and as a result I think I’ve used muscles that I never knew I had ^-^’ It gives me a whole new appreciation for tensile strength haha.
Anyhow, today I’m writing to you from a quiet little cafe in Kyoto after stopping by the sanjusangendo shrine to catch some Kyudo. Well, I tried anyway. It was way too packed with people to get anywhere near an up close look at the action, though I did get to catch a little of what was going on through looking at taller people’s camera screens and get smushed against other people as a stream of attendees pushed their way through the path behind.
Every year on the 2nd Sunday of January, Kyudo practitioners that will be turning 20 that year (the official age of an adult in Japan,) flock to this shrine to participate in the Ohmato Taikai. It’s a tradition that stems from far back when they used to have competitions that would start at 6pm at night and the shooting would go on for 24 hours. Can you picture it? Bonfires lit to light the shrine’s compound and the targets. The past seem so romantic, yet if you take the weather into account as well as the amount of arrow shooting that goes on, it seems like it was quite the mighty and grueling event. There are stories of a few archers that were said to have shot thousands and thousands of arrows during the span of the event and having near perfect accuracy. Something like 9 arrows a minute, which makes me wonder what the shooting procedure was. (It doesn’t really sound like the usual Kyudo style of shooting that takes a few minutes to get into the proper stance.) I wonder what those events must have been like and what those archers did outside of their archery training. They must have been some pretty BA people to be able to shoot that many arrows consecutively, not to mention hit the target. 0.0
Ooooo matcha latte art!!! It’s the first time that I’ve ever gotten latte art in a drink I’ve ordered! At a normal cafe anyway (since I don’t drink coffee). X> It looks like a heart stacked on another with wings. *heart* I wonder how latte art works. I need to learn about it. :D Matcha itself too is such an interesting thing. I still don’t really feel like I have a good grasp of what it is exactly or how it’s made, but when in Kyoto, get the matcha!In recent smiley news, I got some really yummy mochi from a coworker who made it with kuromame (black bean) and was super delish! I’ve been loading up on mochi as of late, so I feel like I’m fulfilling the tradition of eating lots of mochi during the New Year season. X>
In relation, here’s a recent school story!: I often talk about how I love my students and that they’re really cute and are angels as far as students go, but I think my most favorite thing about them is the things that they do that never cease to amaze or amuse. Some of the first year students at my smaller school have gotten into the habit of writing English sentences on the board during the ten minute break they have between classes, and one day I was watching them and helping them correct their mistakes. I found it funny when what one of my kids jokingly wrote, “This school has many problems.” XD haha “like what?” my JTE and I asked him. He didn’t really give a clear answer to that, but on another day he wrote, “We can’t use the air conditioner in our classroom.” Hahaha ^^’ yeah... If you’re unfamiliar with buildings in Japan, you’d think he’d written that because the air conditioner was broken or something, but actually buildings generally don’t have central heating here. Instead, rooms are heated or cooled one at a time, so instead of being comfortable all year round inside, students and teachers have to pray (not literally) that the wind blows during the summer to cool the classroom. Right now in the life of winter, you’ll often find a number of us huddled around the gas stoves that get pulled out at the start of every winter, trying to warm our hands. I think the magic number is 10 degrees Celsius. That’s when the students are allowed to turn on the gas heaters (here they call them stoves) in their classroom. At my bigger school there’s a cute sign that has a drawing if a stove on one side that says stove OK and a pear on the other side for stove nashi XD nashi is also the word for pear in Japanese and means something along the lines of no or none. Hehe I love Japanese humor/play on words. *heart*
So yeah, it appears that one of our students thinks that our school has “many problems” though I’m not sure if any of them are actually serious. ^^’ The things they write sometimes though are really fun haha.
In actual seriousness though, my little inaka (country-side) town is pretty tame most of the time and is far from the horror stories I’ve heard about what can sometimes happen in the city, like students throwing desks out the window, knifing tires, stealing bikes, and whole host of other shocking things at the really rough schools. Though I guess it just really depends on the school and the students. I’m sure there are not so tame inaka towns out there, too. Thank you my students for being angels *heart* Sorry I didn’t really mean to go off on that tangent.
Back to the beginning! So this year I was actually in Japan for New Years (last year I visited my parents new house in CA and reunited with some friends in Portland. Can’t believe it’s been a year already!!!) and managed to have a relatively quiet start to the year of the dog. I went with my would be host family to the Kitchen Shrine before the start of the year and then went to hatsumode (the first shrine visit of the year) at my nearby shrine. It was interesting to walk the streets when all the shops are closed during the new year. It’s sooo quiet and it almost feels like a ghost town. Like today, the shrines put up special stalls for the festivities and there was a bonfire and you could really feel the atmosphere of the new year in the air. It’s another thing that I really love about Japanese Culture. There are always festivals throughout the year to celebrate or pay tribute to the special events of that season and it’s accompanied by food stalls and noise and families and friends milling about and livening up the streets. As the new year festivities draw to a close, I’ve got a feeling, it’s going to be a good year.
Book Menu:
＊Chainbreakers by Tara Sim
＊The Self-Discipline Handbook by
＊Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Song on Replay:
“Go the Distance” cover from Hercules - Shawn Hook & Kurt Hugo Schneider
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