Kendo Pictures & Video!

ok so blogger ate my first version of this post. awesome.

Me on the right battling it out with Nakamura-San.

Hello!


I finally put up the pictures and video of the kendo tournament :)

The tournament was the 23rd Annual event held in the big community Gym of haboro. Kendo clubs came from all over the prefecture to compete, some as far as 8 hours away. Our team met at the Budokan (martial arts hall) for practice and warm-up at 6:00am on Sunday morning. We left for the Community Gym at around 8, just in time for the grand bow in and opening ceremonies.

In attendance, and de facto guest of honor, was Hayashi Sensei, the 8th degree black belt who lives in Haboro. Wikipedia confirms what he told me when I met him -- the pass rate for an 8th degree test is less than 1%.

So, After the bow-in, the presentation of trophies to the judges, we filed back and opened up the front half of the Gym. Two men came out, in traditional samurai-esque wear, and preformed all 7 of the Kendo Kata (sword forms) AND the 3 short-sword forms, which I have never seen before. I was riveted. They used real blades (I dont if they were live or not. "live" swords are illegal here under most cases) and preformed with the utmost precision. It was beautiful. I'm sorry I dont have any pictures of that part. I didn't bring my camera to the bow-in session.

After that the floor was cleared and before you knew it, the matches had begun. My section was the "General Men's Competition." It was a single-elimination bracket-style affair.

There is one round of 4 minutes, followed by a sudden death. To win, you have to win by 2 or be the first person to 3 points OR have the most points when the time runs out. As far as how to win, well, people write books about how to score points in Kendo, so I wont go into that here.

After the men's general competition There was a break for lunch and then the team rounds began, which are probably the most exciting part. It's like a 5 on 5, but one at a time. It goes really quickly (usually) and you win by your team winning the most rounds. Haboro elementary school team did totally awesome -- first place I think. The middle school did quite well too and took third.

Events ended around 4. I helped clean up a little bit said my goodbyes and left around 6. It was a good day.

Pictures:

Kendo Tournament

Jessoogle!

Hi guys!


sorry I havent been around much. I *promise* you will have more posts than you can shake a stick at next week. I'm off to the islands now for the last time this year. Should be good times. I used googles new create your own search engine feature and tried to add the code to my blog. try it out and lemme know how it works. It's supposed to search this site and my photo site.

ok, thats all for now. I gotta go get ready.


bye bye!
Jesse


PS
when you use the search you will be re-directed to google for the results. just clik-thru to get back to the blog's domain. :)

Kendo Tournament & Japanlish

I'm at the BOE today and one of my co-workers was like:

"you're gonna participate in the Kendo tournament this weekend, right?"
"yeah, I'm gonna try"
"good luck!"
"thanks!"
"Do you know who you will be sparing?"
"no not yet"
"well lets see..." he then looks at some mysterious paper in front of him. "Oh, your first opponent will be a first degree black belt, like you, from Sapporo"
(some laughter)
"Oh, well, thats good. At least I have some kind of a chance"
"Hmmmm, yes, well, if you win that round, your next opponent will be...ah, yes, a 5th Degree Black belt from (somewhere)"

Silence.

"...oh. thats just great."
"why is that great? you will probably lose."
"yes, yes I will."


Sarcasm is not really understood in Japan, and if its raining really hard and you make a comment like "wow the weather is so nice today" people will give you weird looks and wonder why you are being so rude.

Anyways, yeah. I am excited about my tourny this weekend. Wish me luck!


In other news, I got my book to study the grammar for the Japanese test in December.
It's a good book but instead of giving me easy sentences to learn from, they instead include ridiculous sentences that you would never say, even if you were a native speaker. Case and point:

"Compulsory education is also a right while being a national duty."

I'm studying "while/as", and thats the example they like to give.

Jerkfaces.

ok bye!

Google and Youtube

So you already know that Google bought YouTube.

I am looking foward to the new "GooTube".

I was reading about it on /. and someone pointed out something interesting regarding the seemily huge figure of 1,650,000,000 dollars that google paid:

"Keep in mind that Google is not paying dollars -- they are trading Google stock for YouTube stock. So even though $1.65b is a scary number, what you should be asking yourself is not whether YT is worth $1.65b, but whether it is worth 1.25% of Google."

thats right, 1.65b = 1.25% of Google.


Thats nuts.

Recontracting, Eikaiwa Class!

Re-contracting forms came today.

The due date isn't until February 2nd 2007, but it's like:


"oh, yeah. What will I be doing for the next two years? Hmmmm....."


In other news, I was on Speed Demos Archive a lot yesterday and i watched someone beat Castlevania in like 13 minutes.

I'm sorry, but thats too crazy.



英会話
Ekaiwa Class!

I am going to start teaching an English Conversation class in my town. I am really excited about it because it will be my own class. I can do whatever I want to and have full control over content, methods, everything.

The class will be every Tuesday for 23 weeks starting in November. There will be two classes, one for beginners and for people who can speak English. I am not sure what to expect for turnout. Apparently when Ping taught them, she had a very small amount of students. That would be great, but you never know. I might have 50 people show up on the first night.

My plan is to case the operation a bit before I go. Walk around town and see just how many fliers have been put up and such.

Anyways, i've been starting to think of things to do and get the syllabus planned out. If you think of anything fun and exciting, let me know!