Your Japanese word of the week is...

"isogashii", otherwise known as "busy" to the English world. And that's sort of what this past week has been.

The busy part of the week didn't really start til Thursday, if I'm honest. It was then that the Shiramizu dojo tournament was held at a nearby community centre. Shiramizu (and all its branch locations) has upwards of 450 students and nearly everyone competed in this dojo-only tournament. The morning was all competition while the afternoon was used for demos, of which every person was involved in one way or another. There were acrobatic skits, board breaking demos, individual and group kata demos, and other things.

The adults, however, weren't competing because we were asked to help ref the matches, which was a good chance for me to try it out. I also took part in a hilarious demo with Richard Sensei, which had me get more and more frustrated at my failed oppotunities in attacking him.

I suppose it's easier to explain it with pictures so this is how it goes.

It starts like this...

... and ends like this...

... more than once =P. It was particularly good fun because we were able to mix a serious take on karate movements and a good laugh for the kids.

At night, there was a celebratory dinner both for the adults who passed their dan tests last month as well as everyone helping out with the successful Shiramizu tournament. If you want to see more pictures, feel free to check out the Shiramizu Internship Blog (which is kept by Richard Sensei and myself, so yes, some of the pictures or writing might be the same heh....).

After that, Sunday was the Kanto area Wadokai tournament, which is rather more serious seeing as the Kanto area encompasses quite a few different prefectures, meaning there's quite a bit of glory to be had.

I competed in both kata and kumite and though I'm still far from winning, I did at least feel the difference in abilities is narrowing between me and my competitors. I do feel sort of bad because I gave my kumite opponent a bloody nose but........ I suppose it comes with the territory. At least it wasn't my nose I guess haha........

The business (busy-ness??) doesn't stop there though....... this week will be a bit of a rest but next Sunday is the Kita-Katsushika-Gun tournament. Much smaller in scale, the Kita-Katsushika-Gun is an area that includes some of the smaller towns in Saitama. It's like having a Tri-Cities tournament and I live in Coquitlam.

Lastly, I just wanted to bring up something completely irrelevant...........

In Japanese, there isn't really an "L" sound and, if I'm honest, there isn't really an "R" sound either. The closest they can get is something in between, hence the difficulty with various English words.

One particular word I discovered tonight to be a serious problem is "clap". My student was describing how her and the other school teachers were clapping for all the graduating elementary students at the ceremony and........ well....... let's just say I arched an eyebrow for a second when I heard it........ I might switch to using "applaud" from now on heh =P.........