Kyudo! 大会, &c

So, on the Thanksgiving note, I had to leave the party early, at around 5pm, because Friday night my kyudo club, the 若葉会 had their 月例会 monthly practice tournament. It's the third one I'd gotten to go to, and this one was a lot of fun, too. Tho cold cause it's definitely become winter here. See, the way kyudo dojos are constructed, is entirely open-air. There's a covered area where you shoot from, and then opposite is the target mound which is also covered, but in between that is open--cause, if you think about it, there kind of can't be a wall in between you and the target. LoL. Which means that it's brutal in the summertime and brutal in the wintertime. Ah, the sacrifices we make.
To give an idea, I'm inserting a picture of Meishin, the dojo I used to practice at in North Carolina. (Giving credit where credit is due, I stole the photo from their website, www.meishin.kyudo.com)Anyway, I'd been having a few rough weeks in practice lately. Matsuzawa-sensei switched me to a heavier bow (12.5 kilos from 11 before), and there was definitely an adjustment period while I built up the strength to draw it correctly. I'm still not quite there yet, but it's a *lot* better than before. So I managed to do decently at the tournament (hit 1 out of my 10 arrows--so, "decently" for me). And I got a prize! :-D In addition to the 1st place, 2nd place, and all that, they also give out several 特別賞, which basically means "special prize" which, I guess they just give to whoever they think deserves it, for whatever reason--explaining why I got one.

Saturday morning I also had another tournament! And by "morning" I mean I got to the budokan at 9am, and didn't get home til around 5pm. Also a very cold day. It was a tournament I'd signed up for about a month before and totally forgotten, but it turned out to be kind of a big thing. There were about 78 people entered, from 3 different kyudo clubs. We shot 10 arrows again, and this time I hit 2! And several of my others, even though they missed, were pretty decent shots. So I was happy about that.

What I was not so happy about is the fact that I seem to be something of a failure lately. I think my batteries are just running out from the grind of the semester. I remember back during orientation when all the sensei kept going on and on--with great enjoyment, I might add--about how heavy the workload would be, and how utterly wretched we were all going to feel. I think I'm beginning to see what they meant. On the upside, though, I've heard through the past-student grapevine that 2nd term is definitely the hardest. So, there's hope I suppose. Although it's a little early for me to be running out of steam if I'm sposed to make it until Christmas. At any rate, what prompted this tangent was the fact that I slept through my alarm on Saturday morning and so was almost late for the tournament. Well, rather than "slept through," I should say I set my alarm but forgot to turn my cell phone off of manner mode, thus rendering the whole setting-of-the-alarm thing rather moot, since it "went off" in total silence. Fortunately I woke up in time (about 15 minutes before I needed to be out the door), and all my stuff was still together from the tournament the night before, so the only bad thing was that I had to sacrifice my morning shower and coffee.

On the note of making it through the rest of the semester, I tried a new thing today. Brace yourself...
Instead of going straight home after class (where I would promptly begin a vicious cycle of goofing off lasting until around dinner) I went to a coffee shop for a few hours. And--shock of shocks--I was actually productive!! Crazy, I know. By the time I left around 7pm, I'd gotten about 75% of my work done, including the afternoon class homework, which lately I've been leaving until lunch break the day of.
I'm thinking I might need to make this a habit.