Saturday, February 19, 2011

Feb. 19th

I'm afraid I don't have a picture for you all today, but I've been having a fun weekend, so I thought I'd write about it. Yesterday Braden and I visited another Kyokushin Dojo here in Matsue. They are part of a Kyokushin organization called KyokushinKaiKan. They aren't a member of any of the IKO's as far as I could tell, but they still do the same Kyokushin. It was a lot of fun to do some Kyokushin again. We only went to check it out and see if it was any cheaper than the other dojo we went to ( it was the same price, alas, so it won't fit in our current budget), but we still got to participate, even though we were just visiting. They did things a lot like the other Matsue dojo we went to. The warm up was slightly different, but the rules of courtesy were about the same and they, too, did a lot of energetic, basic drills. One thing that they did that was different from our other Japanese dojo, and what made them more like our Dojo back home in the US, was that everyone participated in kumite (sparring) not just the higher belts and those who were going to participate in tournaments. Unfortunately, since Braden and I weren't official members of the dojo, it also meant we weren't currently signed up with their injury insurance program, which meant we couldn't participate in the kumite portion of the class. But it was still fun to watch.

This morning was super fun. The elders told us about a free Japanese class that they had found, and I wanted to go so they took us there this morning. The people there were really nice and for my first lesson they taught me how to write my address in kanji. Usually when I send letters I just write my address in English letters, but sometimes I have to write my Japanese address on things and I usually need to ask Braden for help, or a write it myself but I write it wrong. Today I got to practice writing it a lot and now I'm getting kind of good at it, hehe.

Tonight we're having some friends over for dinner and I'm gonna make Chilean Cazuela :D. Cazuela is a chilean stew thats really yummy and great for cold winter days. It was one of my favorite foods to eat in Chile, and although I can't cook it exactly like a Chilean, its still edible, lol.

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