合気道 (Aikido)

 Our cultural activity for Tuesday was the Japanese martial art Aikido. Unfortunately I can't really tell you much about my experience, since I mostly stood at the side and watched and when I attempted the moves, I failed utterly.
I can however, attempt to explain about Aikido. I feel like it's one of the lesser known martial arts in the US. I had never heard of it until college. There are lots of different kinds of martial arts out there, and the traditional Japanese ones are all called Budou (武道), which is the Japanese word for martial arts. This includes all sorts of "dou" martial arts, like judo, kendo, taekwando (which is actually Korean, but it uses the Chinese reading of characters, so it still works in Japanese), along with non...dou kinds, like karate. Aikido is relatively new in terms of martial arts- I believe it was created early in the 20th century. Aikido is a self defense type of martial arts, the most "self-defense" type, I believe. Most of Aikido involves evading your attacker or flipping his attack around using his momentum and forcing him to the ground, giving you a chance to get away. It looks very graceful, but it's hard to demonstrate, because it's like "grab my wrist and half heartedly attack me". You usually then twist around and push the other person to the ground. And that's it, in a nut shell. Even their competitions consist of just doing this "grab my wrist and half heartedly attack me" thing, and whoever subdues their opponent in the prettiest way wins.

Obviously I'm explaining this in a very concise manner. Aikido is a type of martial arts, and there is a great deal of skill to it and much practice needed to get good at it. It's one of the more popular martial arts for women to learn, since it's such a good self defense method. I took only maybe 2 pictures that day, so you'll have to wait to see that. I did just find a 50 second video if you want to see some Aikido. It's a lot more intense than what we saw, but mind you our demonstration was done by college kids who had all been doing this sport for 2 years or less. This is done by a...6th Dan, I believe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aicHsMC6rxM
Since this was so short, I will upload a few pictures and things I never had a chance to upload. Tomorrow we have another field trip, so I'll be going to bed now! :) Oh, one more thing: today Alex and I found a family of cats living at the bike parking lot! I KNEW I heard meowing there the other day... it was adorable! One little kitten was climbing someone's bike ^_^ I want to keep theeeeem!


Mary

A short clip of the not-so-severe typhoon

We had a curry party with Japanese people. We made curry.

300 level Japanese T__T

learnin' stuff

Itadakimasu! Ramen, coffe, and peaches.

Gyoza party

Eatin' right at the dorms. Potato soup, Cafe au Lait, and dango!

Dango, dango, dango, dango...

Swimming in Lake Biwa

I asked some girls in the archery club if I could take a picture from across the train station XD

Location: The kitchen table (**le gasp**)

Mood: Secret giggliness is secret (#^.^#) 

Listening to: A concert on tv that Okaasan is listening to

Japanese for the day: ホテル・駅・ＡＴＭはどこですか。hoteru/eki/ATM wa doko desu ka? - Where is the hotel/station/ATM? (obviously you can insert other words. Are there any you want to know?)