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<\/p>\nToday was Sunday, May 21st. Another early morning! I spent my time before walking to over to Honbu reading and stretching. Arriving at the dojo, I changed, paid for class and began talking to Lauren and Roger who showed up soon after I did. As we were chatting, I spied Ted walking in and we exchanged greetings. Peter Crocoll had invited me to train with him for Nagatou sensei’s class and Cathy joined in as well.<\/p>\n
Nagatou began class by saying that Souke had asked him to continue last year’s theme by teaching Gyokko ryuu. He laughed as he explained that there is “some connection” between Gyokko ryuu and Shinden Fudou ryuu, but he wasn’t clear on exactly what the connection is. So, we jumped into training right away with Kettou from Gyokko ryuu. The basic form was followed by variation after variation and the class was over in no time!<\/p>\n
Hatsumi sensei’s class was next. In the break between classes, I met Craig, Duncan and Danny and sat for a bit to talk with Ted about his experiences living in Japan over the past few months. I was shown the spot where Stephen Hayes’s name plaque had hung on the wall until the week before I arrived and spent some time looking for names I recognized. Souke’s class was actually quite simple – first focusing on striking naturally and then on a fairly straightforward movement to avoid the uke’s punch and control.<\/p>\n
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After class, Ted and I made plans to meet on Monday for dinner and Someya sensei’s class. Lauren and Roger and I then walked back to Azusa, cleaned up and hopped on a train to Kashiwa in order to go down to Asakusa for the day. Negotiating the train stations and numerous different lines seemed easier this time around. Maybe I was more sure of myself or maybe I recognized more kanji than on my first visit. I impressed myself with my recall of the language while asking some fairly complicated questions about how late the trains ran and the like.<\/p>\n
There was a lot to see in Asakusa due to today being the last day of the spring festival. In addition to a large number really drunk people, Tokyo’s largest temple, Sensou-ji, resides here. Our first order of business was to find some food. We eventually settled on a [i]kaitenzushi[\/i] (“rotating sushi”) place that looked good. This is the kind of place where the customers sit at a kind of square “bar” wrapped around the guys making the sushi. Small plates of one or two pieces of sushi are placed on a conveyor belt that moved around the bar. As a plate of sushi comes by that looks appetizing comes by, you pull it down and enjoy. The color of each plate corresponds to a price displayed on the wall. At the end of the meal, the waitress counts up your plates and totals your bill. My first plate was some of the best tuna sushi I’d ever had. From there, I chose lower priced items as it would have been an expensive meal if I had eaten more.<\/p>\n
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After having some lunch, Lauren, Roger and I headed down towards Sensou-ji where the majority of the action seemed to be going on. Between the large main gate and the main hall on the temple grounds is a long, narrow street lined with small shops selling every kind of trinket that a tourist (Japanese or non-Japanese) might want. We perused the shops while making our way down the crowded street. It was a great place to pick up small gifts to take home to friends and family.<\/p>\n
Once we got through the tourist traps, we approached the main hall. We were greeted by a huge crowd standing on the steps leading up to the doors. They all stood facing back down from where we had just come like they were expecting some important diety, or more likely, a movie star to follow us onto the grounds. I assumed that these were all folks who had arrived early enough to secure good “seats” for the coming festival-ending parade – but I weren’t sure. With our curiosity piqued, we followed the line of people off to the left side. After climbing under and through the barriers that had been set up to keep people from going this way, we found that this was the “entrance” to the rest of the temple grounds.<\/p>\n
We spent the next couple hours wandering around and taking in the sights, sounds and fragrances of the festival vendors. There were games for kids and adults, plenty of places selling alcohol, and almost every kind of food imaginable. I was a little bummed out that we had just eaten because some of the stalls were selling these HUGE [url=http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Okonomiyaki]okonomiyaki[\/url] that looked really tasty. I promised myself that I would stop somewhere along the way and get one, but that chance never materialized. There was too much to see and it was a very cool experience.<\/p>\n
As the sun went down, more and more people started to head back towards the front of the main hall where the crowd was hanging out on the stairs. Taking their cue, we did the same and we found the main street that we had come in on was now fenced off and police were making sure no one got into that area. It was now obvious that there was going to be some kind of performance or parade or something. As we stood along with the rest of the crowd, waiting for something to happen, we started to talk to the (mostly Japanese…d’uh!) people around us. Some people were curious and said hello while others sort of kept their distance from the three of us. As more and more people showed up, space got tight and we were standing closer and closer to people. Eventually, we started talking with a Japanese guy in his late 20s. He asked us where we were from and where we were staying and we asked him where he lived. Turns out the guy was from Asakusa, but his friend was from Kashiwa. Once the people around us found out we were from the NY\/NJ area, they started saying “Yankees” and “Matsui-san”. It was pretty cool. Our new friend also explained all about what was going on at the temple that day – how the old shrine would be taken out and the new shrine would be marched around and brought into the main hall of the temple. He explained that the people carrying the shrine shout “wash-oi wash-oi!” as they hoist it. He was very helpful and friendly (even if he did say that I looked a bit like Akebono!) and I wish I could remember his name now!<\/p>\n
We caught glimpses of the shrine as it made it’s way around the far side of the temple grounds, but it never seemed to come close to where we were. Eventually, the three of us decided that it was time to start heading back to the train station to avoid the rush once the festivities were over. So, we bid our new friend goodbye and started looking for the train station. We continued to walk around the area until we finally found the station after asking a few people along the way.<\/p>\n
The ride back was uneventful and quiet as we were all tired from walking around and the day’s earlier training. We met up with some Bujinkan guys from Croatia on the train back to Noda, but we didn’t say much as they weren’t speaking English and we were drifting in and out of sleep. Once back in Noda, I called Robyn and then went back to Azusa and hit the sack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today was Sunday, May 21st. Another early morning! I spent my time before walking to over to Honbu reading and stretching. Arriving at the dojo, I changed, paid for class and began talking to Lauren and Roger who showed up … Continue reading