Venerable Visit and Dancing

Original Posting Date: Friday, February 1st 2008

Once again nothing on Wednesday, but I think server troubles are more a thing of Murphy's law than accusing me of it.
On Thursday and Friday respectively I wasn't home the whole day, that's why the update was rescheduled for Friday evening.

So, back to our show.
On the weekend I had the honour to receive Lord Takaki Meiyuu (高貴 明勇) for his part Daimyo of the Eastern provinces. On his travels through the Kansai region, His Grace deemed to give me, as Daimyo of the Mid-Western provinces, the honour of a visit at my administrative seat (he also visited my actual seat, Castle Himeji, but the castle is too impractical for my daily duties).
However, for most people his Europeanised name would be easier to understand: Helmut Hödl.

I took him for dinner to the Ryûkyû/ Okinawa restaurant and this time I also took my camera. He brought news from Tôkyô, but sadly already had to leave to Nara the very next day. By the way, Helmut will return home on the 7th of February, after 1 1/2 years of foreign study in Japan.
Only 2 students from Graz left in Japan ...

Some time ago, there was a real week-long temperature drop, such as that even with snow covering the hills.

Since the University is half way up the hills, on some days it suddenly starting snowing while I was at university (I wouldn't believe it at first), which made me very happy. Not to speak of the reactions of other people, for example of an US girl, who never encountered snowfall before. Real cold in Kobê was really nice, since at home it seems like January has again unusually warm weather, but it also got warm again in Kobê.


Last week a girl I'm acquainted with invited me to a training session with the dance club of the University, since in a talk we also came along the topic of dances and the club practises ball-room dances (Rumba, Waltz, Chachacha, Latin American etc.). It is interesting to note, that although their focus is on ball-room dances, which are considered old-fashioned in our regions, the club has over a hundred members. Whereas actually about half of them are men, in contrast to us, where often there is a big majority of women in dance courses.
Like all university clubs, things are taken extremely seriously in this one as well, including minute long practise of basic stances, exercises for muscle growth etc. One can see the strain and concentration in the faces and although the advanced members could dance very well and their technique was impressive I personally had the feeling that somehow passion and emotions were missing, or since they are Japanese, they could not express them that well. Especially when it comes to Latin American dances (Tango!).

A few impressions:

Here they are only counting "1,2,3" in the background, but as it is common in Japan, all do it and very loudly.

And that's it for today, after the extremely long recent entries, which had that length because of the backlog, I will be going back to shorter entries.



Interesting (and funny) facts/opinions about Japan:

Recreational clubs at Japanese universities, whether concerning sports, arts or culture, are a serious matter and their members can, without exaggeration, be called semi-professionals. The clubs have training sessions 2-4 times a week lasting several hours and, as a general rule, only accept people who already have some years of experience (thanks to clubs in schools) in the respective field, which means there is virtually no chance of joining for beginners. Naturally, the clubs compete against other universities in contests, whereas it is considered a great honour to be part of the first team (varsity team).
The "light" variant of the clubs are the so-called circles, which are also open for beginners, nevertheless the have trainings several times a week as well, and what is even more, they by far do not cover the manifold spectrum of disciplines the clubs do. Many a time to students (especially to external) the clubs seem to replace family and for many they are equally as important to them as their studies are, for some they are even more important.
Here it seems to once again prove true that when Japanese start something they will practise it to the extreme and with almost dogged ambition. Thus one should be careful in telling Japanese people one's hobbies since it could be easily understood in the sense of the Japanese form and they could assume that one is a semi-professional. Then one should make it clear that those hobbies are done only for fun and by far not that often.