Culture Day

So, last Friday, the 9th, I had a little business trip. I use the term lightly though, since it was really too much fun to be considered work. Every year, the JET program hosts a 'Culture Day', where all the JETs in each prefecture get to gather and learn about their host country. Each JET gets to choose 1 seminar and 3 activities from a rather large list that they would like to participate in. In my case, I chose Sumo for my seminar, and Taiko, Aikido, and Shodo for my activities. Sumo is the big fat wrestling, in case you didn't know, taiko is traditional Japanese drum playing, Aikido is a martial art, and Shodo is Japanese calligraphy. The Sumo lecture was interesting, but I was a little disappointed it wasn't more interactive... We just listened to an expert talk for about an hour on the topic. It was okay though, since now I know what's going on when I see sumo matches on TV. The taiko was.... absolutely awesome. I'm in love with it, and it's actually a pretty tough thing to do. Everyone was sweating and huffing after playing for a little bit. I really want to find a taiko group that I can join near where I live, but we'll have to see how that goes. The Aikido was also awesome, and I have an interest in doing that too. All the teachers for Aikido were literally 55 years old and above, with the oldest probably being almost 70. And they kicked our butt. The oldest one grabbed my wrist, flipped me onto my back on the ground and didn't break a sweat.... and it hurt a little, but was amazingly fun at the same time. The JET I was partnered with was making jokes about how I was too strong for him, so the 55 year old teacher came over and asked me to throw him... so I did. And he went flying across the room. Everyone just stopped and stared at me, and I completely thought I just killed the guy... and then he got up and started chuckling. I honestly think he threw himself that far on purpose, but it was funny. Once my heart started beating again, that is. I can only hope that I'm still that active when I'm their age, it was amazing. Shodo, the calligraphy, was.... boring. But I should have expected that, I took one semester of it in college, and I enjoyed the class but I was really bad at it. I don't know why I expected to suddenly get better this time around, but oh well. :) All in all, a really fun day, and I'm looking forward to going to the one next year. Below is a video of the other JETs in my activity group playing taiko (there were too many of us in the class to all play taiko at once, so we split into two groups, hence why I can record the video), and unfortunately it's on its side, since my cell phone and I can't seem to agree on how to record videos. Hopefully you will get the idea, and my group played the same song. This class was so much fun, it's probably been one of my favorite things since coming to Japan.... I really need to find a group to join...