Wally Nes’ Blog

So, I woke up this morning and I looked this in the face.

Now, this sort of thing happens to me more often, early morning, not quite awake. So I move to the window outside my door.

This.

OK, this is new.

I got to work late today. 3 guesses why.

1.

2.

3.

OK, so I got to work late because I overslept. But the weather didn’t help either.

Anyway, I didn’t type all of this up to bore you with such mondane things. That was what the last post was for.

Tuesday I had my kyuudou training. (That’s Japanese Archery for those of us who haven’t taken a fancy to the language). And at the end of the training I did some actual shooting. Weird as it may seem, archery practice does not actually consist of non-stop shooting. (I was surprised). Now, you shoot per 4 arrows, and as it happened my last 4 arrows had 3 hit the mark. This prompted my sensei to invite me to the tournament the next day.

Well Gee, lemme think. I had plans for . . .

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELL YEAH

OK, so let me explain how this works.
1st, you set up your target, that’s that thing over there. This is it at full zoom (10X optical, 380 mm equivalent).
Then you put on a pretty dress, and stand all bad-ass. Like only a man in a skirt can do. The motions on the following pictures ensui.

This should see the arrow to your itsy pitsy target. Some people can’t hit the target straight away, so they cheat. Or . . . well, I don’t know what the heating of the arrow head does for your game if it does not need to pass through armor. But it is something you can do apperantly.

Now, Japan wouldn’t be Japan if they didn’t make a big ceremony out of it. In this case a lady who turned 70 (and is still shooting) did the honours.

After that came the time that us mere mortals were allowed to line up. Besides having to go through motions to shoot the damn arrow already, you also have to go through specific motions to get to and from the spot in the first place. So they put me in the first batch to watch me stumble into people. (OK, that was probably not their intention, but it felt awkward anyway) Once I got to my spot (without stumbling into people) I made a fine show of myself.

I didn’t hit a single thing. Oh, and I forgot to put on the dress too. Of course, in the first round 2 of the contestants hit something, so it wasn’t so bad. I managed to remove myself from the active area without bumping into anyone again. Which was good considering I’d hooked my bow into someone elses during a reload and I’d made enough of an ass of myself already.

Anyway, 4 arrows per session, 5 sessions total, and I wasn’t doing as well as I had hoped. Especially not because I started my kyuudou career with this. But at least I looked good doing it. Not quite as good as this guy of course. And he looked quite skilled (he won). I am pretty sure all of them managed to get through the competition without having to address things like this. Ouch.

So, I had a fun time shooting at things. Small little things, far away. (that didn’t shoot back!) and at the end this happened. Because I had actually come in 5th? Really? My name is ワリー in Japanese btw. That’s my tag above that red 5. Holy crap.

An unexpected competition, and an unexpected result.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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退職のためにこのカードを書くことついて聞いて、何かを書くことを考えました

その結果、「じゃあまた月曜日に会いましょう」と決めました

– Written on a retirement card by Wally

 

After being asked to write on this card I had to think for a moment what I would write. I settled for “See you on monday”

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Fun and Games, Japanese (Culture). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.