We Live Where We Are

The Weekend

On Saturday I (Casey) went to a high school kyudo tournament at the budokan in Nagamachi. Kyudo literally means "way of the bow," and in Japan, archery is considered not only as a sport, but also as an art and form of meditation. The venue was extremely crowded and there was no seating, so everyone simply bunched up against a guard rail. I managed to take some pictures after sneaking into the "matoba," the shed-like structure in which all the targets are nestled into a dirt hillock. This way I could see arrows up-close as they struck the targets.

Students collecting the arrows after they've been shot and scored:

This budding photographer had the best view of the day:


Then on Sunday Juli and I went hiking with a few friends through a gorge just outside of Sendai proper. We walked upstream for a few hours until we came to an overpass that spanned the gorge. This particular bridge is apparently one of Sendai's prime spots for suicides, and the area below is considered by the locals to be haunted. It was a bit creepy, standing there in the brisk water and looking up at the bridge about 100 feet above us. I found a junked tri-pod in the bushes and we all imagined the photographer trying to get one last shot in before he hit the shallow creek bed. Aside from the general spookiness, it was a beautiful hike and it was hard to imagine that the downtown part of Sendai was literally only a few minutes away. There were definitely a few parts where I imagined myself as a character on LOST, traipsing through the unexplored jungle.




On Monday we had a substitute holiday for having to "work" on Saturday (two hours at a kyudo tournament is hardly work), so we spent the whole day cleaning the apartment and getting suitcases packed to send home with Juli's brother, who is coming out to visit us later this week.

We're definitely in for a busy next few weeks. We'll go to Tokyo with Joe, show him around Miyagi, and after he leaves we'll only have five more weeks left in Japan!