A Japanese kind of Saturday
Woke up to my alarms (yes, alarms, I set several!) this morning and convinced myself to get up and go to Tea Ceremony for the first time.
There's a guy in South Yarra who studied it in Hiroshima for three years and now offers tea ceremony classes once a week, so I decided to check it out. Problem is, the timing sort of used to clash with Naginata, but now that we start Naginata training later (because it's winter), I realised that if I got my act together, I could go to tea and then onto training.
Which is what I did today. And it was great! The guy's name is Adam, and he was really great. I was the only one there in the morning (although some other people might have been there after I left), but that was really good because it gave me a chance to go over the whole ceremony with him. It's a different school to the one my teacher in Japan must have taught me - there were a few differences in particular movements, but nothing too major. I had two cups of macha tea (gosh it was strong! I think I've forgotten how strong macha is!) and homemade dango, which was delicious. I had to leave about 11.30 to get to Naginata... I hope I will be able to go back more, it was a really enjoyable morning.
Then I went to training. It was pretty cool, although there were a few moves that I felt I just couldn't get right. I also wore full naginata bogu today - I wore sune (shin guards) and kote last week, but this week I wore everything. The naginata gloves make me laugh, they're not mitten-like, like kendo gloves; they have three sections - the thumb, another one for the index finger, and the third section holds the last three fingers. [ETA: here's a picture that shows what they look like better than I cand escribe them! http://www.bogubag.com/Bogu/Naginata/kote_03205_L.jpg ] I feel like "Goro" from Mortal Kombat when I'm wearing them. ^_^
Came home from training, and totally flaked out - sat down to watch a DVD and fell asleep for two hours!
I had some dinner and was debating what I was going to do tonight when I checked the TV guide and saw that the ABC was going to replay "The Second Coming", which I've wanted to see ever since I read the article on Russell T Davies in Metro. Basic premise is, a normal guy from Manchester realises that he is the son of god and declares that the world has five days to write the third testament, or judgement day will be upon them. SPOILERS FOLLOW... if you can have spoilers for a three-year-old TV movie.
I don't know what I was expecting, and I'm not sure what I got. It was interesting, for sure, and Judith's solution was thought-provoking. I don't know if it's a result of the postmodern times we live in... I don't know what it is, but I think the conflict between faith and non-faith, religion and aethism... it's something were curious about, partly because we don't want to be wrong. What I liked about The Second Coming was that even the people who had been faithful, some of those who were church-goers or whatever panicked, and seemed the have a crisis of faith in their faith. The demons were a creepy idea, the things that came out of the people they possessed! And I thought it was interesting to see a few familiar faces from Dr Who, which Davies also wrote. Who said that writers don't get a say in the casting!!? And speaking of casting, Christopher Eccleston looks surprisingly different with only slightly longer hair. He looked less angular than I thought he did in Doctor Who, but not particularly like his face looked fatter or thinner, just kind of softer. (When I first started watching Who I thought he looked so harsh! But now that I've watched them all twice I've seen more of the facial mobility and the vulnerability he projects in that character and I guess that's just what he looks like when he's doing his "As the Doctor, I know best" face. And let's face it, he uses that face a lot at the start).
Well, time for me to go to bed now I think - yet again, when big sister is away, bedtime goes bye-bye.
On a final random note, I finally looked up Sukiyaki the song after a conversation I had with caruialiel which, by the way, is actually called Ue o muite arukoo (which as far as I can tell, means "I look up when I walk") and DLed both the Japanese and English version. And then I saw that there was a link to an Utada Hikaru version, so I DLed it too, only to hear that she actually sings the English version! That's pretty funny ;)
There's a guy in South Yarra who studied it in Hiroshima for three years and now offers tea ceremony classes once a week, so I decided to check it out. Problem is, the timing sort of used to clash with Naginata, but now that we start Naginata training later (because it's winter), I realised that if I got my act together, I could go to tea and then onto training.
Which is what I did today. And it was great! The guy's name is Adam, and he was really great. I was the only one there in the morning (although some other people might have been there after I left), but that was really good because it gave me a chance to go over the whole ceremony with him. It's a different school to the one my teacher in Japan must have taught me - there were a few differences in particular movements, but nothing too major. I had two cups of macha tea (gosh it was strong! I think I've forgotten how strong macha is!) and homemade dango, which was delicious. I had to leave about 11.30 to get to Naginata... I hope I will be able to go back more, it was a really enjoyable morning.
Then I went to training. It was pretty cool, although there were a few moves that I felt I just couldn't get right. I also wore full naginata bogu today - I wore sune (shin guards) and kote last week, but this week I wore everything. The naginata gloves make me laugh, they're not mitten-like, like kendo gloves; they have three sections - the thumb, another one for the index finger, and the third section holds the last three fingers. [ETA: here's a picture that shows what they look like better than I cand escribe them! http://www.bogubag.com/Bogu/Naginata/kote_03205_L.jpg ] I feel like "Goro" from Mortal Kombat when I'm wearing them. ^_^
Came home from training, and totally flaked out - sat down to watch a DVD and fell asleep for two hours!
I had some dinner and was debating what I was going to do tonight when I checked the TV guide and saw that the ABC was going to replay "The Second Coming", which I've wanted to see ever since I read the article on Russell T Davies in Metro. Basic premise is, a normal guy from Manchester realises that he is the son of god and declares that the world has five days to write the third testament, or judgement day will be upon them. SPOILERS FOLLOW... if you can have spoilers for a three-year-old TV movie.
I don't know what I was expecting, and I'm not sure what I got. It was interesting, for sure, and Judith's solution was thought-provoking. I don't know if it's a result of the postmodern times we live in... I don't know what it is, but I think the conflict between faith and non-faith, religion and aethism... it's something were curious about, partly because we don't want to be wrong. What I liked about The Second Coming was that even the people who had been faithful, some of those who were church-goers or whatever panicked, and seemed the have a crisis of faith in their faith. The demons were a creepy idea, the things that came out of the people they possessed! And I thought it was interesting to see a few familiar faces from Dr Who, which Davies also wrote. Who said that writers don't get a say in the casting!!? And speaking of casting, Christopher Eccleston looks surprisingly different with only slightly longer hair. He looked less angular than I thought he did in Doctor Who, but not particularly like his face looked fatter or thinner, just kind of softer. (When I first started watching Who I thought he looked so harsh! But now that I've watched them all twice I've seen more of the facial mobility and the vulnerability he projects in that character and I guess that's just what he looks like when he's doing his "As the Doctor, I know best" face. And let's face it, he uses that face a lot at the start).
Well, time for me to go to bed now I think - yet again, when big sister is away, bedtime goes bye-bye.
On a final random note, I finally looked up Sukiyaki the song after a conversation I had with caruialiel which, by the way, is actually called Ue o muite arukoo (which as far as I can tell, means "I look up when I walk") and DLed both the Japanese and English version. And then I saw that there was a link to an Utada Hikaru version, so I DLed it too, only to hear that she actually sings the English version! That's pretty funny ;)