In school they offered an "open class" which is a subject different from strictly Japanese that will be offered. We had many options but class space was limited so on the paper we had to pick our top 3 and and one of the three would be your class. If i remember correctly i chose JLPT practice class, Kendo(which is what i thought it to be at the time) and i think history of auto racing. The JLPT class is self explanatory, practice for the real test, format and what ever. Kendo option I had assumed we would watch some professionals or some practice. Movie on technique or whatever , and the auto race thing also was movies.
All in all i had not taken much interest in it as I assumed since i put JLPT as my first option. Well when the classes got posted I essentially just looked for my name and saw a nihon(japan) in the class name and just assumed it was the test. Well Wednesday came and the first class arrived. The paper had said the class was in the gym and once again I was none the aware of what awaited me. When i entered, I saw A black belt martial artist fooling around with padding and a helmet..."oh shit this is kendo..." i thought to myself, o well I'll sit in the corner and watch and take a nap. Much to my sadness I learned I was actually going to participate in practice, not only was it not kendo, it was kempo and requires a bunch of punching and kicking and risk of my death to be quite honest.
We lined up and was taught basic stance, how to punch, and kick in roughly an hour. I suspect if i had paid for that lesson would be any where around 30 -100 dollars. We practice each for about 5 minutes each... so around 5 minutes of throwing nothing but punches in continuum Kicks, step forward, step back etc. However the kicker was the initial set up.. we had to learn to bow, and prostrate. I don't mind but to prostrate we had to sit in a manner called seiza. Seiza essentially is the worst way to sit... and your body tells you this by the amount of pain in pumps through you as you attempt to do this. So as i want to be a good Gaijin i attempted and followed along and struggled and dealt with the pain as the teacher went through his explanation. You prostrate 3 times, once for the teacher(Sensei), once for the students, and lastly for the Dojo. Takes about a minute but if the Sensei is speaking it can become much longer.
Rest of the time was stretching and activity broken up in the middle by an interesting sparring match of the School's Principal who is a black belt I believe and two of the sensei's. Both sensei ha don white belts so I assume they was learning along with us. The principal took delight in going a bit rough on both teachers and at one point got the first teacher on the ground and in an arm lock(arm bar?). He tried the same with the second teacher but this teacher fought out of the hold before it was locked in. It was quite entertaining and worth the show.
Pictures are of Principal and final teachers spare...
No comments:
Post a Comment