I suspect that at this time of year many people who have enjoyed the quietness of the winter months once again become busy. Spring has finally arrived. Here in the Kumamoto area it's hard to tell, however. It's been cold and windy, like winter, and it was overcast and rainy today.
Today is 'Midori no Hi,' a.k.a 'Green Day' here in Japan. I don't know it's significance(please comment if you happen to know), but there was no school today.
I just returned from a full day's outing in Fukuoka, at the 20th Annual Shohei Juku Aikido Public Demonstrations. It was an early morning, taking a bus down to Kumamoto to meet the gang, and all the way back passed Tamana to Fukuoka in the north, to arrive at the sizeable Fukuoka Sun Palace International Center. The demostrations started at 11:30 and continued until 4pm. My group, the Kumamoto dojo went on to perform at 3pm. For the second year in a row, I was also a part of the demonstration. It wasn't much to brag about though--we only got one minute per pair to demonstrate in front of the audience of around 400 people. In that time, my partner and I could do eight techniques. I was nage(throwing). It took some time to choreograph and memorize the pattern, but after it was memorized, it was kind of fun to practice. My partner is Japanese, but he lived in Hawaii for a while, so he spoke English. It helped a lot to be able to communicate to each other how we wanted to present ourselves.
After the demonstration[sorry I didn't say much about the rest of the demo, but it was pretty much the same as last year's(--see blog archives from March '05)] we had a big, goofy party, where most of the 400 people in attendance drank a lot of beer. They had lots of speeches, some silly presentations by graduating students, and a prize give-away. I didn't win anything, but a guy from a visiting dojo in Hawaii won a sketch of Bodhidharma done by Suganuma Shihan(the head of Aikido on Kyushu Island). Some people from the Kumamoto dojo are hosting some of the Hawaiians, so it was nice for all of us that they had something meaningful to take back with them from the demos.
In other news, I also participated in an orchestra concert on Sunday. We had an insane number of rehearsals last week(five??), and I wasn't able to blog recently for lack of time. The concert went well. Lots of excerpts. I did happen to notice that of the chorus of maybe 150 people, the soloists, the university students, and the regular orchestra members, I was the only non-Japanese person, as far as I could tell. There was a moment at the beginning of the concert when I realized this, and I'm sure my face turned bright red to think I would probably attract attention for it, but after that I barely gave it anymore thought. I'm so used to being a minority, it almost doesn't faze me at this point.
My stand partner, from Kumamoto University, was one of the graduating seniors in the group. At graduation time, seniors seem to be granted full pardons for any insane behavior they demonstrate. During one of our rehearsals, seven graduating university seniors hijacked the symphony for a good ten minutes to give their own mock concert, complete with dancing, gestures, and sound effects. It was so out-there, and actually had nothing to do with the non-student members of the group,(i.e., the volunteer symphony which sponsors the concerts) but no one cared.
Anyway, hope to get back to more regular posting now that... strike that. Next week, on the 29th, I'm going to Okinawa for five days. I can't say if I'll be able to blog at that time, but as always, I'll do my best to post regularly!!
Right now, it's been a long week, so I'm hitting the sack early! Tomorrow's my last class to teach before Spring Break!!
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