Kendo Club!!

Japanese students work hard.  And as the phrase goes, you work hard so that you can play hard!!

As I may have already mentioned in another post, all the students must participate in an Early Morning, After School, and Weekend Club activity.  They participate in the same activity all year long.  I have stayed after school and even gone to school on the weekend to observe and support the students during this time.

Just this past week, as I was peddling my bike by the school to go home, I heard this shouting in a small gym-like building beside the school.  I heard the sounds of sticks whacking against something and like I said, I heard shrieking coming from the building.  "What kind of club activity is this?" I thought.  Or are there students getting into trouble?  (I'm a teacher, I tend to worry sometimes...)

And as I peered through the door, I see the students dressed like this:

This club activity is called "Kendo."  It is a traditional Japanese sport and I walked in on them as they were practicing some kind of hitting attack.  Each student would take a turn running at the other and hitting them on the top of the head HARD and then scream as loud as they could!  WHOA!  And I thought I was nervous teaching wrestling last year!  HA!

The students' have special uniforms/outfits (as you can clearly see).  However, only certain sections had armour...these are the parts where the students are "supposed" to get hit.  That means that they could be hit on a spot that's not protected.  But I watched for a while, and all of the students aimed their stick-like swords at the proper spots.  They were trained well!  (I apologize in advance because I haven't learnt the proper terminology for Kendo and I have clearly done no research about it yet...but I just really wanted to post these awesome pictures!!  These kids are so brave!)

I actually saw them practice "fighting/sparring" with each other.  It was pretty intense!  There was a lot of screaming and shouting and banging!  It was all controlled by a drum by the "ref/coach."  (I'm sorry, I'll look into the proper terms!  I promise!)

Here are some more pics:

As you can see from the above photograph, this is a girl sparing with a boy.  There are about 8 girls in the club and 10 boys and they all spar with each other...and the girls didn't hold back, either!

I couldn't get a clear shot because they all practice fighting at the same time, but there is a team "captain" figure (I think).  He looks different because the back of his helmet has a red cloth on the back of his head while the others have a navy cloth.

At the end of their practice, they bowed to each other, some kind of writing on the wall to the right, and later to the teacher.  Cool!  If I wasn't such a chicken, I would love to try it!  We'll see.....

They actually did invite me to "play" and tried to give me a "stick."  I just laughed and waved my hand in the air and said, "Kedo desu!"  (I think (and hope) that means "No thank you" in Japanese.  Whatever I said, they seemed to understand what I was saying...which was "I am too much of a chicken to try!")

Here are a few other interesting photos I took:

First, this guy was in a bucket on a teacher's desk.  It's a cute little mini lobster...I named him Ernie.  (I don't know if Ernie survived Science class...)

And later that day, I started biking North towards the mountain uphill and I saw this beautiful temple.  I just wanted to share it with you.