At the hop: odds and sods bits and bobs.

This Friday saw all the schools in the Shiga area compete in a huge variety of sports contests. I've always been a little amazed Japan doesn't excell in more sports as rain or shine, weekday night or weekend you can usually find my students practicing some sport or another. Actually thinking about it its probably something to do with either; Japan playing sports that no one else plays (see Handball for that one, another sport incorporated from America who I blame completely for me having to call football "soccer") or giving themselves a disadvantage (see softball tennis for that one if students played with an actual tennis ball then I'm pretty sure the outcome in Wimbledon would be very different).
Anyway in the afternoon I went off to see the Kendo tournament in one of the local towns whose name, like most of those of my students escapes me. There's nothing quite like walking into a room and seeing 200 kids hitting each other on the head with a big stick while screaming and frankly that's one of the reason why I like watching kendo, another is that apparently size and age doesn't actually matter that much so you'll see tiny tiny students tackle even the tallest (well tall now thanks to all that beef and milk hmmm hormones) student.

Here's a photo from the event taken on my trusty but slightly blurry camera phone. I did find my students developed the "KENDO STARE" which is when a normal happy babbling student dons a kendo mask and promptly looses all abilities to think apart from "HIT HIT HIT HIT YELL HIT YELL HIT"

Here's some you tube footage of championship kendo, the aim is to hit the oppositions head or arm while shouting a certain word (Which I don't think is sorry) and you need 2 or more judges to award you a point to actually score, 2 points and your declared the winner.

Of course being in Japan you know that sooner or later a robot will appear, although I think this ones got a few years of development yet

Oh and I've updated my sunset gallery, the other day I rode over to our local lake and watched the sun slowly fall int eh sky. Click the pictures below to go to the album