Day 32 - 合気道 101~

April 28, 2011

Today was the last day before our 7-day holiday~~ yay!!! =) It's Golden week!! Golden week is a consecutive days of public holidays in Japan. They are "Showa day", "Constitution Memorial day", "Greenery day", "Children's day". Well, next Monday is actually not a stat holiday, but since my school had our PTA observation day last Saturday, we have Monday off. (Yay!!!) Before my Aomori trip on Tuesday - Thursday, I'll have a 4-day long weekend. I love long weekends~

Since there was no club activity today, Mr. Sakai gave a few other teachers and myself an intro to aikido lesson. Aikido is a very traditional Japanese martial art. People usually use a sword too. We had our lesson in the kendo/judo room. It's one of those traditional tatami room. According to my supervisor, not many people are so good and so pro in Aikido. I am very lucky to have a free lesson in it. =)

Soooooo we started our first Aikido lesson. Since it's the first lesson, we learnt mostly the basics. We learnt how to sit, where to put out hands, what our mind should be like, how to bow. We are supposed to bow to a certain degree that you can still see the person in front of u, but not very obvious. When you're standing up, you're supposed to lift your right leg first; and when u're sitting down, you're supposed to put down your left leg first. That's the way to do it because in the old days, the sword would be on a person's left side. The person standing up would hit the sword if the left leg was lifted up first. Ohhhhh...なるほど。。。 Interesting. We then had a bit of "warm up", which was half rolling our bodies. It was very interesting. We also learnt how to stand.

Next, we learnt how to roll. Yes, roll. Wow, Mr. Saki was very very good at rolling!!!! He looked pretty cool rolling too! Hmm, I don't think I rolled properly. U're supposed to use your arms to support you. We spent some time rolling. It was interesting. Afterwards, we learnt how to get away if someone grabbed you on one of your arms, or 2 arms. How we place our fingers was also important. When we put our fingers a certain way, it will affect how we walk. Wow, that is so detailed.

It was very interesting. I hope I can learn more. I heard in the near future, we will have more lessons. Yay! I like free Japanese culture lessons. Although I didn't understand everything, I sort of knew what was going on....ish..!?

Tomorrow...time to go to Natori. Hopefully I can be somewhat helpful...