I only wrote maybe 2 or 3 of the days I was actually there, so it's not a complete view on the rest of the days. The next entry though will include a summery of the experience.
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8/30/08:
Today is the day before training camp at Nagano. It seriously is one [a training camp], judging from the schedule as each day we spend nearly 11 hours practicing. I can only improve and this is for the better. I thought I could have moved on [to the bow] today, but in reality I needed more practice before I could actually be able to move onto the bow. I hope we get time to do a little sightseeing, but it appears that we might do other training (like outdoors) as only the afternoon practice is in the main hall. I am excited, but I wish I could express more than what I can now in words to my Japanese friends/club members than just "This food is tasty" or "I'm cold". I feel that I need to work on my speaking. My listening of course has come a long way and is better than my speaking. I can understand a lot more words than I can use. Anyway, hopefully there's something I can learn from this and hopefully don't cause the Nagano Kyudo dojo members any problems because I doubt they have had foreigners come and train at the dojo. But, I want to continue [learning kyudo] despite being behind everyone else in ability because it's something that teaches a lot about many different things besides just Kyudo. A lot of things I have never really put thought into before. And that's important.
(Here's us meeting on that Sunday at 8AM)
8/31/08 - Day one of 合宿。
(Mitsue's fingers as we were being bored waiting at the rest stop for the bus to return for 5 hours)
(The place we were staying at "Alpha")
(Brutal Batsu Game Jinga. We had 8 one-block tiers in this shot, but we had 12 in another game, and that was crazy.)
Today I woke up at 5AM. I haven't had to do that since I left for Japan. I had all my clothes mostly ready to go, but I decided I packed a lot, so it was very hard to ride my bike with my bag, so I had to walk to school which nearly took an hour, but I did it. In the end, it robbed me of my strength I could have had for the day. I slept for a good portion of the trip until tunnels and mountains woke me up. We were in Nagano [prefecture, not the city], but had bus trouble that delayed us getting to our distination for 5 hours. We finally arrived just before dinner was going to be served. This place we're staying at (あるふあ or Alpha) is pretty nice. It caters to people whom want to do Kyudo because it has its own dojo included in the building. I am sore from a few moments of practice and from having to carry my bags all the way to school, so I couldn't practice more today/tonight. Tomorrow hopefully be better, the view is amazing and I couldn't ask for a better place to train. Just like one westerner could imagine, this would be an ideal spot to train for a traditional Japanese art.
9/2/08-9/03/08: Day 2 and 3.
The reason [of why] I didn't write yesterday was because I spent most of the night playing Batsu game jinga with many of the other members downstairs last night. Yesterday was horrible until I had a talk with Suzuki, Yuki, and Takahashi sempai. Sometimes I want to master things at a faster pace than my body will allow (or others will allow). I focused mainly on my mindset that day because Kyudo is a martial art and in that self, it is the mind and body working in perfect unison. Having on without the other will spell disaster. However, once I warmed up to people here (I am more better with speaking Japanese with way smaller groups than with large ones) it has become more fun. That's not to say I wasn't warmed up before, but yesterday I was pretty discouraged. Like Japanese however, you really got to move on [at] your own pace. You can't sit there and say "Oh well, so and so is better than me, so I want to be like them." In some cases, it's natural to do so, but don't forget that with anything, it takes time. Anyway, on another note, I moved on somewhere between a practice bow and the real bow. I actually got to use it [the real bow], but I couldn't draw it completely most of the time under my own strength and at times I had 6 people helping/correcting me at once; it was pretty interesting. The more and more this camp goes on, the more I relax, have fun, get better, and become exhausted. Here's to more practice and good times~!
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After this, I didn't write any more entries. I am not sure why, but I think it involved me sleeping before writing anything or I was playing more batsu games late into the night (I finally lost the last night we were there and I had to drink a pretty massive concoction of cocktail/wine/wine coolers).
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