Footwork's the worst

I apologise in advance if this post seems a bit repetitive. I say that because the biggest news of this past week was… you guessed it: another Autumn cultural festival. While far from boring to me (actually some of the most exciting moments so far), you can only tolerate my doting of class songs and English speeches for so long.

This latest event was Kawa Chuu’s, and as such, an elaborate affair lasting the majority of both Saturday and Sunday. In fact, the entire school worked a good portion of Friday setting it up and on Monday returning things to normal. It was a pretty big deal. Relatives, former students, and many people from community attended the festival whose scope now made sense of the brain-numbing number of practices for each exhibition.

My favourite part—with the exception of the Sunday afternoon carnival-style food spread—



was, again, the Soran. Since their late-September performance (the inspiration for my previous post on the subject), the two separate classes of second year students have been practicing independently in anticipation of this festival. To spice things up, each class tweaked the original dance, adding their own flashy enhancements, and planned to compete against each other for the title of best Soran.

I have been eating lunch with 2-2 for the past few weeks and so joined them for their Soran practices. This was the first time that I saw 2-1’s version of the dance and having been so involved in the process, really enjoyed the spectacle. Below is 2-1’s version of the Fire Dance (the same dance as previously posted) followed by 2-2’s second Soran (not the same song). If you look to the left of the stage, you can see the mosaic that the kids and I made. It is a shot of the school entrance titled “Colors” (in English, the theme of the festival).





In other news, I was invited to go to Kendo practice. My interest was peaked when I saw the athletes at the pep rally, so when one of the instructors asked me to attend, I decided to oblige. I imagined—as you probably are— my visit to practice to be like it had been when I went to see other sports: me watching practice from the sidelines, encouraging my students and letting them know that I care about what they’re interested in. To my surprise, when I arrived at the dojo, I was handed a packet of instructions (in Japanese and thus unfortunately useless) and a training sword.



In my first practice, I learned how to properly hold a sword, improved my bowing finesse, and began basic footwork techniques. The funniest and most frustrating aspect of the experience was some unfortunate carryover from my short experience with Fencing. In fencing (at least foil) you stand with your feet perpendicular to each other, with your chest and hips largely if not exclusively favouring one side (think Warrior Pose). Well, this is the opposite in kendo, where your feet both point at your opponent and your chest and hips are square facing forward. I have been teased that I even play tennis and ping pong with fencing-like motions, so these habits were annoyingly frustrating to shake.




Oh and by the way, the instructor who invited me to attend is the grandfather of one of my first year students at Tomioka. It turns out that she is interested in Kendo and was there along side me as her grandfather taught me the basics. She and Mr. Saito dressed in the protective outfits and went through a couple of routines. Afterwards, Mr. Saito told me to practice a certain lunge with my student as my opponent. I cannot explain to you how strange it was smacking 13 year old Moppi on the head with a sword.