Your Japanese word of the week is...

"bikkuri". It means "surprised". I should point out that it's the verb form of surprise so it's more the state of a person being surprised. And so if you ever find yourself behind a tree unbeknownst to your approaching friends, jumping out and shouting "BIKKURI!!" doesn't work. Don't ask how I know =).........

Having said that, this weekend was filled with new things, some more surprising than others.

On saturday, I went to the Kita-ku (North Tokyo area) Taikai which is one of the oldest tournaments in Tokyo and thus hold quite a reputation even if it was run in a bit of an old-schooled fashion. I was registered to compete under Richard sensei's school's kumite team but my role was more support than competitor. If, for instance, the individual kumite division and team kumite division ran parallel and one of the boys had to go fight in the other division, I would have filled in for the team. But everything ran just fine so I didn't even have to get changed. Even better was that Richard's team won gold in all 3 divisions they entered in (adult men's kata, adult men's individual kumite, and the much coveted adult men's team kumite). I even got to meet a multi-time Japan National paralympic karate champion!

On sunday, I went with Okano (who I met at the dojo) for lunch and to watch this new karate movie, Kuro-Obi ("Black belt"). We had lunch at this all you can eat yakitori (bbq) place in Ginza and I managed to find out from him that "viking style" restaurants are indeed an umbrella term for any buffet. After we stuffed ourselves way beyond our limits, we went to movie.

Although I only understood about 10% of the script, it wasn't hard to follow since it was mostly action. Sort of predictable action movie plot and although some of the acting wasn't superb, the action was fun.

After that, he took me to the Tsukiji fish market. Known for being the largest fish market in the world, it's just a massive dock/warehouse where shipments of fish come in and wholesalers sell them off to restaurants or stores. "Regular" people aren't allowed to buy there and, at 7pm on a sunday, it's closed. But we just wandered through the gates and no one really seemed to care.

It was a pretty awesome place to be in at night. With a huge amount of space, boxes and boxes of fish (one area was for fruit as well), and alternating areas of light and dark, it's the kind of place that's perfectly for climatic action sequences. The smell of the fish (and diesel from trucks) mix with the lapping waves of the river and you just want to hunch over and run zig zags between rows of parked trucks and pillars, ready to exact your devastating special barrage of smelt on unsuspecting forklift drivers (how's THAT for bikkuri haha.......).

An interesting thing about the place is that they actually auction off a lot of the wares (the auction starts at 1am so let chefs get started on prepping the fish), which is a great idea to boost income since good quality fish commands such high prices with customers. And it really is huge and the sporadic lighting makes for fun pictures. The one above is a view from the edge of the market looking down the river towards the southern part of Tokyo although, without a tripod, it's hard to take a steady low light picture. But it'd be a great place for car photography hehe........

But the absolute most surprising thing of all was a small trailer that happened before the start of the movie. It had a clip of somebody walking through a busy part of Tokyo asking young people questions. It was shocking to hear two 20-some Japanese girls wondering aloud what happened in early August some 62 years ago. Bikkuri doesn't really describe it..............