Category: Uncategorized

The past week+half has been like getting dropped in an automatic happy generator.

1. Visitors and more visitors!
2. Spring weather. Sun.
3. Rivers and streets and gardens and parks of cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms floating down and forming drifts in street gutters, cherry blossoms making a public park into a wonder of fluffy pink-white, cherry blossom flavored mochi, ice cream, cherry blossom trees gently waving on the way to work…

I’m too tired to even post pictures right now. Been too busy looking up and around. I really suspect my right eyeball was hurting yesterday not due to dehydration or sleepiness, but from sakura overdose.

It’s so nice when stuff isn’t overrated.

And then they ban smoking on all yamanote line platforms. I used to use the smoking station as a reference train for boarding the line to work, so I was a mite disoriented when it wasn’t there today. Sadly for the smokers, not just an April Fools prank.

This past Sunday, I had the dubious pleasure of whiling what promised to be a lovely spring day. ..away indoors waiting to shoot two arrows and scratch out one page of words.

It happens that I passed my test by hitting the second of my two shots, but the test itself made me realize that one key aspect of archery, for me, is that there is absolutely no room for faking, cheating, schmoozing, or similar unpleasant (yet potentially convenient) nonsense.　This thought arrived on the heels of two demonstrations by high ranked folks. These demonstrations didn’t go quite smoothly, and it was simultaneously humbling, reassuring, and disappointing to see teachers missing the target . On one hand, it proves kyudo is a lifetime of improvement sort of thing, because even though they missed more than half or their shots, they looked stable, focused, and intentional as they did. On the other hand, even if I do this forty more years, each arrow is still independent, and if those teachers weren’t hitting, then its doubtful I will either.