As it turns out, November and December is crunch time for teachers in Japan. In fact, the old name for December in Japanese (shiwasu) can be translated to mean "Teachers Run". Our lives were no exception, and we're desperately wanting winter vacation to finally arrive.
In addition to our heavier than normal workload, we also had the extra stress of an impending Naginata competition back in November.
"What is Naginata?" you might ask.
About a year ago, to the day, we wrote about our experience with Kendo. Naginata (officially called "Atarashii Naginata" or "New Naginata") is essentially the same as Kendo but using a Japanese styled halberd instead of a sword. The same rules apply: you must call out your target as you hit it with proper technique to score. Besides the difference in weapon, Naginata adds an additional target than can be hit with the inclusion of shin strikes. Needless to say, this leads to many a bruised foot and knee.
It is traditionally seen as a woman's martial art. Indeed, in Japan the women outnumber the men by a large percentage (outside of Japan, men dominate the art for social reasons). It was believed that because of the longer reach it provided, the weapon was a better choice for the naturally frailer woman who could not hope to match a man with a sword (likewise the bow was also paramount to Samurai women). But training in the weapon has always been an important endeavor for both sexes of the warrior class.
As for our own history, I've been training since August and Jane started back in April.
This is actually Jane's second time taking part in a Naginata competition. Her first time around she only participated in the Kata section however. Though, she did manage to win one of her three rounds there. Surprisingly, we were able to do fairly well for our first fighting competition.
I took 15th and Jane took 20th out of 32 competitors.
There were only two clubs representing all of the participants (there are at most four total in all of Sapporo I believe). Ours is the sole adult recreational club. The club is mainly comprised of elderly women, so we only had six members participating; 4 men including me and 2 women including Jane. The rest of the competitors came from a single High School and were all women save for one European exchange student.
The format was a little strange and probably too difficult to type up here. But it was basically a kind of a marathon round-robin with three matches going at all times. You cycled through as many matches as you could in the time limit (about 2 1/2 hours). To keep track of your results, you would have stickers placed on your bogu (armor) for each match, points scored, and victory. At the end you added up all your stickers and the person with the highest score won. I ended up with around 50 points and actually somehow won the majority of my matches. The top three spots were taken by the other three guys in my club and their bogu looked like light-brights. I think the highest score was around 140. The girls from the High School actually weren't too far off from that. Here's what mine looked like:
Jane and I both got pretty banged up (my hands and feet were all kinds of purple and her shoulder had a pretty ugly bruise on it) but we had a great time and are eagerly looking forward to our next competition.
Here's some videos for reference (not of us):
Women's Championship
Men's Championship
Naginata vs. Kendo
-Ryan
