Friday, June 26, 2009

Beatin' up mofos

Deep thoughts to come at a later point. For now, pretty pictures!

Host sister Hikari tries on my jacket. She later tried the shoes, which were boats to her itty bitty feet.

Engrish: "There is no guy who does not believe in Victory here!"
I am inspired.


水あめ, (Mizu-ame or water candy). Looks like honey but is more like caramel.

HIF offers us the chance to take classes in Kendo (stick whacking), Judo (mofo throwing) and Kyudo (archery). Here, Ashok gallops into battle, ready to scream "MENNNN" and whack a mofo in the head. There's particular battle cries for different targets- we learned "men" for the head, "kote" for the wrists, and "dou" for the side.

I also beat up mofos aggressively. We used some training dummies and some real people as targets. Sorry Koh.

Phil likes violence!

Julia unleashes her beastliness.

Also started judou, which is unreasonably badass. They started us off with a series of increasingly challenging warm-up exercises (somersaulting, somersaulting out of a handstand, somersaulting into splits, backward somersaulting into a handstand). With the little bit of age 6 gymnastics training I have, I actually did all right with these. (Although Kelvin, we still need to take that tumbling class at the gym). Then we learned how to throw our sparring partners! I felt a little guilty, since it wasn't a reciprocal back and forth thing (if you don't know how to be thrown properly you can get injured pretty badly) so I just threw my buddy Kento a lot.

Today is the weekend excursion to Oonuma, quasi-National park. I've seen that "quasi-National" title attached to Oonuma all the time and have no idea what it actually designates, but it should be a fun trip. Updates to come later.

5 comments:

Kelly McLaughlin said...

I wish we could combine Kendo with some of our staff meetings...

Unknown said...

Dear Elliot:

Your blog is always awesome and I laugh myself silly reading your entries. Therefore, unless this is not okay, I want to add you to my blogroll on my own blog.

Your friend,
Elizabeth Carbone!

Elliot said...

Totally! Glad to hear you enjoy it, and you're welcome to link to it.

(Incidentally, I was having a conversation with a friend also named Elizabeth here today, and we realized that both of our names could be shortened to the same エリちゃん. )

Unknown said...

Yay!

Haha, that is very true... I guess that's what I'll have to call you for now on.. for great justice, or something.

Unknown said...

Adriaan is part of the Spokane Kendo club and can whack with the best of them. He even has a costume outfit to wear and 2 swords. He's still not loud enough when he yells Meeeennnnnn. You'll have to go with him when you come back to Spokane now that you've had a taste of what it feels like to whack someone with a bamboo sword. BTW your blog is most entertaining - it is something to look forward to during the daily drudgery.