Judo

As I said, I'm learning Judo at the police station as my Community Involvement Project, and I went to my first lesson on Friday night. The kids' class was still finishing up when I arrived, and as the only white person in the room, I was a bit of a distraction. But anything distracts little kids, so no big deal.

I exchanged business cards (which I now have) with the head instructor, and went into the back to change. I was much more of a distraction when I emerged with the Judo gi and white belt. Once the kids' class dismissed, I went to talk to the sensei, and a group of about fifteen little gi-clad kids crowded around to see what I had to say. I apparently hadn't tied my belt satisfactorily, as the sensei tightened it up for me, much to the amusement of the children. A couple of them asked, in English, "What is your name?" I gave them the English pronunciation of my name, rather than the Japanified "Kebin," so that I could laugh at their inability to pronounce the letter "v" and thus get revenge for the belt thing.

Then practice started. Much to my not-at-all-surprise, I was physically incapable of some of the warm-up excercizes, which included things rolling backwards and, rather than just completing the roll-through and standing up, pushing oneself up into a handstand midway through the roll.

After that, rather than practicing throws and groundwork like everyone else, I spent the entire class being taught ukemi by one of the instructors. Ukemi is the technique Judo practicioners use to minimize the chance of injury when being thrown or otherwise falling. Here's a video of someone demonstrating it. Except I didn't get to do the thing where you roll forward and land. Watch carefully the part where he lands and slaps the mat. That's really all I did. I'd slap one side, stick my arms and legs straight up into the air, and slap the other side. They do this in the children's class every day, but the sight of a 200 lb. American man flopping around ineptly may have been a new one for the sensei, who actually laughed at me on several occasions.

Any you know what? I'm sore. I'm sore from flopping around on the mat. I can't wait until they start actually throwing me onto it.

The DL on School-Related Matters

Okay, I'm back for post number two. I'm sure you've all been eagerly anticipating it, and it won't disappoint. That is, unless you wanted me to talk about something other than school. Don't worry; as it turns out, one of my academic obligations is doing Judo.

First off, the classes themselves. After the language placement test and interview, I was placed in C-class, with A-class being the lowest and E the highest. BUT, D and E classes are actually intended for fourth and fifth-year Japanese students, so I'm actually in the highest of the three third-year classes. Not bad for someone who didn't study all summer.

Japanese class is tough; in addition to two hours a day of in-class instruction and daily quizzes, each of us has two separate (mostly) out-of-class projects to do. First is a group project on "world problems," where we do research on, explain, and propose solutions to, our chosen problem. In Japanese. I have no illusion of being able to understand and solve major world problems in English, let alone Japanese. Anyway, my group's chosen problem is gender discrimination in Japan.

The second project is one in which we work personally with the teacher to try to achieve our own individual language goals. I have chosen to translate Japanese poetry. I've done some work on my first poem, and I'll probably post my translation attempt here once I've finished it. It's quite enjoyable, actually.

In addition to Japanese, each KCJS student takes two Japan-related classes in English. I chose "Japanese Civilization" and "Japanese Theater," both taught by the same professor on the same day. I'm learning a lot from those, especially the civilization one. Everyone in the theater class gets free tickets to a bunch of plays around town -- we attended a Noh (a style of traditional theater) performance just last weekend.

In addition to the bona fide classes, each student also has to decide on something to do as a Community Involvement Project. I chose Judo. As it turns out, the most convenient place for me to learn Judo is at a nearby police station. So I'll be biking to the police station every Monday and Friday night to get tossed around by Japanese people. I went to my first class this Friday, but that's a story in itself, so I'll start a new post for it.

P.S. I've added captions to most of the pictures I posted on Facebook the other day, so if you've already seen them, but would like to see the director commentary, take a second look.

Hajimemashite!

Welcome to the new Japan blog! I was going to start with some explanation as to why this took me so long to make, but that really would've just taken the form of a list of complaints, and I've already complained about my logistical problems in Japan enough. On to the cool stories! They'll be super abridged for now, since there's so much to catch up on.

The trip to Japan was a harrowing experience. I traveled with my Brandeis buddies: Tanya, Emily and Zach. The flight from Dallas to Tokyo was excruciatingly long, and really bizarre in that it was day outside for the entire thirteen hours. We swelled with excitement upon landing in Tokyo. The flight from Tokyo to Osaka was easy. I wanted to sleep, but couldn't take my eyes of the gorgeous mountains long enough to do so. I've really never seen anything like them. The mountains are jagged, but the thick tree cover sort of smooths out the edges. The result is sort of like giant, forested sand dunes. Also, the country is carpeted with them; I've never been anywhere where there weren't lovely mountains in view. Anyway, our excitement dissipated upon arrival in Osaka, where we each had to drag about 100 lbs. of luggage through the Osaka airport. We then loaded said 100 lbs. of stuff onto the express train to Kyoto, which took us to Kyoto station. From there, we had to take the subway to the station near our hotel, and it took us a while to find the hotel itself. By the time we got there, we had been awake about 24 hours, and had pretty much traveled around the world.

The next day, we met a bunch of the other KCJS students, and the J-Team (that's us Brandeis folks) adopted one Adam Boles and went on a long walking journey to the spectacular Kyoto Station. On the way, we happened across an exceptionally large temple complex, which we explored a little bit. Inside, some school girls took notice of us, and gave us an excited "herro!" followed by an admission that they didn't really speak English very well. "Daijobu" ("it's okay") we responded. They erupted with surprise and excitement. We went on to explain that we understood some Japanese because we were foreign students studying Japanese. The tour guide had to tell them to settle down, they were so thrilled. They continued muttering about us for the rest of the tour.

Kyoto tour itself is architecturally marvellous. Very modern-looking, but I have no problem with that. It's also full of lovely stores and attractions. The team enjoyed some ice cream there, and visited the "happy terrace," among other things.

Okay, so Kyoto Station really isn't much of a story without pictures. So I'll just end this post with information on pictures. I figured I'd be able to upload photo albums to my blog so you could look at them right here, but apparently that's impossible. Since no better alternatives seem to exist, I've decided to just throw them all onto Facebook, since that allows me to put them all on there, to caption them, and for others to comment. Unfortunately, that means that people with no Facebook account can't view them. For this, I apologize. If you want to view them, you'll either have to create a Facebook account and add me as a friend, or just get someone who is my Facebook friend to show them to you or something. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Post #2 coming right up.