Magic Tape and a 12 Year Old who can beat me up!

I picked up kendo a few weeks ago. It's finally starting to feel a little more normal, the shinai (bamboo sword) doesn't feel quite so unwieldy anymore. I'm getting lots of hand-me-downs. One teacher gave me her old shinai, and another even found an extra set of kendo robes. The pants were too long, but one mom took them, measured me, and in an hour brought them back hemmed! Another teacher showed me how to fold the carefully pleated pants. And yet another mom is learning kendo herself right along with me!

This week marks the return of the star of the elementary school team, Takashi. He's an athletic 6th grade boy who was out for a few weeks due to an injury. Since he's still recovering, he doesn't participate in practice with the other students, but comes to help out, either by hitting the drum that signals time intervals, or coaching the newest students - Masami and me. And this kid is tough! He had us doing sets of 30 strokes with the shinai, until we had done well over 100. My muscles were aching the day after that! But this kid can do 400, no sweat. He also apparently does 100 sit-ups every day, too. Sheesh!

But Takashi makes a great teacher. He was really quiet the first few weeks I knew him - I barely ever saw him smile, he looked so serious. But he smiles all the time now that he's teaching us. My constant reprimand is "Nobasu!", which means "Arms straight!". He's very strict, doesn't let anything slide, and his approval is something I work hard to earn.

My new favorite Japanese word is "Magic Tape". Literally, "majiku tepu" is what they call velcro. It's rather an apt description, if you ask me. I mean, if I had to explain to someone who had never seen it what velcro was, "magic tape" is as close an approximation as I could come to the concept. But I still laughed so hard when I heard that. It's just such a beautiful translation. Makes more sense in Japanese than in English.

Also, I'm not sure if it's a joke or not, but I was told that a pigeon pooping on your head is good luck. This is because "un" means good luck, while "unko" means poop. So if you happen to get some poop, it comes with good luck. Or something. But I think someone overlooked the whole getting-pooped-on part of this scenario. Oh, Japan!