Blog from Travis JohnsonJoL: The Karate Dojo
So I've never in my life done Karate. I did Tai Quan Do for about two weeks when I was in Kindergarten but that's it. Regardless of how bad my track record is, I seem to have befriended a local Karate instructor who speaks a terrific amount of English and has allowed me to join his class free of charge, for whatever reason. He's a good friend of my host parents so I can only guess that's the reason why.
Anyways, yesterday I went to his Dojo for the first time to take part in his Karate lesson, which felt rather strange, being the tallest one there and wearing the lowest level belt, accompanied by about five 4 year olds who were the same level. I guess you either start really young or really old in Japan, as the beginners in the class were very young, and a few of the middle-area students were older than 50. That's not to say everyone in the class was only either beginner or moderate. A friendly tip. Never surround yourself with 10 year old black belts. It's awful scary.
Yeah, I stuck out big time. But I thought I did alright, and it was certainly a work out. My host parents apparently asked the instructor to take pictures of me with my camera while I worked with the group, as he did, in the middle of the practice. I couldn't help but feel like I was.. intruding. I wouldn't have asked him to take pictures. Him doing so just made me feel like a tourist, a feeling I really hate, especially when it comes at the cost of the other students' time which they've worked hard to get to and pay a lot for.
In the end it was fun. A bit tiring, but fun. And apparently I'm going every friday from now on, at least until the end of my first month.
JoL: Odaiba and the Onsen
This weekend was certainly an interesting one, what with the Karate lesson and all. But it was only made more interesting by my trip with my host family to Odaiba. For those of you who don't know, Odaiba is a man made island in Tokyo that was originally built to defend Japan again foreign influences. Ironically it's now a center of internationalism and technology. It's main attraction would probably the Decks Mall, but it's also famous for the Fuji TV Building.
We went to the Decks Mall, which is actually a place I've been before, and had a good time looking around the section of the mall decorated to look like Japan during the 1960's, when it first started to absorb pop culture influences from the West in full force.
We later went to a Sony Science museum, which was pretty much just a place for Sony to show off it's supposedly superior technological abilities. It was allright, but I certainly got a kick out of the experiment stations with the label "Exploratorium, San Francisco" (a science museum in SF I've been to a number of times). We went to some stage show thing in the museum where generic-character cosplayers "battled" with science. When I say "battled" I mean pulled out backyard science experiments and showed them to the audience. Kinda weird, but pretty funny, nonetheless.
Part of the mall called something like "little Hong Kong"
After the fun in the mall, we went over to a touristy Onsen in Odaiba. For those of you who, again, don't already know, an Onsen is a hot spring/public bath. I'd never been to a public bath before (I've been to hotels that had them, just never tried them out), and found that it was a lot less awkward and uncomfortable than I thought it would be. I got to thinking why it is that I would find it so, and couldn't really come up with an answer. So I enjoyed myself and actually had a good time. I more clearly understand the appeal of public bathing now that I've tried it out. The water felt very good and refreshing. But the bathing wasn't the only part of the building, as the main attraction was actually a large room decorated like a festival. Everyone inside was required to where a Yukata. There were festival-style games to play and lots of souvenirs to buy. I would say, that despite there being a large amount of foreigners (although mostly Chinese and Korean) present, the Onsen felt like one of the most Japanese things I've ever done. Maybe it's just because of how big the culture shock was.