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Sunday, October 12, 2008

Day 1 - more details

- We saw Imran Khan at the airport, looking very suave. Apparently he is some sort of famous cricketer / politician? Cliff knew him, I am clueless.

- heh, a funny one: Cliff got stopped on the way through the scanners at the Gold Coast departure check-in! He had a tube of toothpaste that was over 100ml i think, and the guard insisted on the following the letter of the law, which is that anything labelled over 100ml (or whatever it is) must be disallowed on carryon luggage. Nevermind that the tube of tootpaste was over half empty! Furthermore, after the guard inspected Cliff's aftershave, shook it and said 'its half empty anyway, you can have it', he didn't want to extend that logic to the toothpaste! Crazy eh. Lost his shampoo the same way

- I've got a slight chest infection i think, coughing up a little bit of phlegm

- saw a neat ad while reading the inflight mag for 'Blue-V' sunglasses which looked quite interesting. They claim to filter out blue-spectrum lightrays, which supposedly cause 'chromatic abberations', a dilution fo the other colours and a slight haze to our vision which we all accept as normal. This plus polarization makes for very nifty gadget sunnies. Here's a link to read more: sunnies

- on the Haruka train to kyoto (where I ate the sushi-parcel) the ticketman came in to our carriage, doffed his hat, bowed, smiled and said a short greeting to us all, before taking the tickets. Repeated to process at the end, as he backed out the doorway. Very polite!

- So we finally got off the train in Kyoto, and starting walking to our hostel. Unfortunately we walked about 6 blocks too far! Found lots of strange little temples and shrines in the shadows. The bags started getting very heavy indeed ... finally we arrived. I had a plum wine on the rocks, and Cliff had a beer, phew!

Day 1 - Plane and arriving in Kyoto



Airplane - check out the huge jet under the wing!

And it was a very nice sunset outside our window:









On the train from the airport to Kyoto, I made my first Japanese purchase, a little sushi snack of rice in a triangular nori parcel, with some sort of pickles in the middle

Saturday, October 11, 2008

some anaerbic conditioning in the last days

Throwing a 5kg medicine ball around, sprint after it. Did i last 10 minutes or only 5?
By the way, everyone should see this promo video from the Kyoto University Judo Club, it is incredible. It was filmed at the old Butokuden dojo, hopefully we will find it.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Countdown: Day -5 - first blog ever

Well this is my first blog entry in my first blog. UM. What to write? Ok, perhaps:

My Goals for the trip

1. Train Judo in famous places

a) The Kodokan in Tokyo
b) Newaza-Kenyukai dojo in Tokyo
c) Kyodai Judo Club at Kyoto University
d) Ochiai's dojo in Tokyo ... an introduction to Go-no-kata?

2. Visit our friends in Japan

a) Takashi in Saitama
b) Tomohiro in Toyama

3. Train other martial arts when possible.

a) get a first-hand experience of internal strength at the Aunkai dojo with Akuzawa-Sensei & Gernot
b) some daytime training Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu, hopefully with Yuki Nakai at Paraestra, or at Axis-BJJ

4. Normal tourist stuff

a) Visit the Tokyo fish market
b) visit Butokuden (old Busen dojo in that kick as Kyodai Judo team video)
c) visit a famous bamboo grove forest
d) attend the Budokan to watch a Police Judo Shiai1