Tuesday

And the rain rain rain came down down down.....
Today has been very rainy, so the perfect day for doing a bit of shopping, eating, studying, sleeping and, of course, training. Here are some snap shots of the day!

First a little retro: Chris Langello (the head of a Jundokan dojo in Washington DC) took this picture during training this past week and I just got a hold of it! Made me laugh and laugh:

So today we got hungry after training and with to Hotto-Motto - which is like a take-out only fast-food place with meals for under 500 yen (that is 5 bucks). Thought this sign was cool, and to the point:
Here is dad and Clarke looking hungry:
Now to training- Beth had to dry her gi before we went and trained. The laundromat is right outside the dojo, so I took a moment to try to capture the "back-ally" feel of the dojo location.

First, the amazingly simply instructions that are on the washer and drier:

The laudromat itself (with Beth posing inside):
And then it was onto training - which we did for about four hours all together today. Unfortunately I cannot take pictures while training (only two hands, which are both occupied during the training time), however we did snap some pictures after wards!

This is the Jundokan from the above balcony, which encircles the dojo. you can see everyone training before Taira Sensei's Class! (by the way, Taira Sensei is roughly considered the technical head of the dojo, thus one of the best karate masters alive. And we got to take a class taught by him! Crazy, ne?)
Front of the dojo. The pictures on the front side are of the four main karate masters of the style. I wish I knew what the kanji meant!:
Along all the walls is the training equipment. Here are jars and weights for strength training:

Here are the taishishi's (again spelling completely off):

This is Taira Sensei doing some demonstrations. He is blurry a) because i'm a novice picture-taker and b) because he is going so fast. It appears blurry in real life too!


Here is a view from down below in the dojo to give a feel of what it is like within it:

And here is a shot of everyone's shoes, which you leave at the door coming in!
And that is that! Let us hope and pray it doesn't rain tomorrow - so much of Naha to see, so much training to do, and so little time! Every day is pretty exciting, every class challenging, and every encounter a great learning moment! Oh, and if you have a moment leave a comment, because it would be great to know who is reading this :o) Mata ne!