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On Mondays and Tuesdays we (I and Ukai-san) prepare breakfast for ourselves. The rule is simple: it can not cost more than 500 yen per person, and it must be delicious! During the breakfast we can have some personal talk. The only problem is, that it is too far away for Ildi, she can not come here in time.
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Wednesday. We have a breakfast between the morning and mid-morning practices at Hiroaki sensei's place. They took our vegetarian madness into consideration, the food is very manifold and very much. Everything must be eaten, as the slogan says: "takusan keiko - takusan tabemono" (lots of practice - lots of food).
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Thursday. We are the guests of Kobayashi sensei between the two practices. Many vegetables, eggs and fruits. There is some meat here, but we were excused. It is a luck, because one has to eat everything, if the sensei says to do so (seriously!).
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Friday - the day of penitence. This time we have to cook something Hungarian, and there is always one ingredient which is impossible to get here, and we are anxious about that all week. Previous week Gulash-soup was requested, now we have made Somloi-galuska and Jokai-bean-soup. We were hunting sponge-cake, whipped cream and sour cream, not to say about bean. But it was a great success, they even mentioned it in the afternoon! Next week fruit-soup and pancake are requested, which seems an easy go, but we have not seen sour cherry here so far...
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Sensei is leaving, everybody has to go out of the dojo and has to say sayonara. This seemed quite strange to us in the first time, but now we find it a very nice habit.
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Saturday. There is no common breakfast, but there is calligraphy. This was our first try with that, all I can say is: this is a really Japanese thing. As you can see on the picture, we had to draw simple symbols. We both are left-handed which seemed very funny to Japanese, but they helped as very kindly. The girl in front of Ildi can look familiar to many people from training camps in Hungary, and next to her is Barbara sensei sitting - an official teacher with 6. dan (and also left-handed:-).
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Just to show you something new again. There is no central heating in the dojo, but the toilet-seat is heatable, even more, the heating is adjustable (see the button in the left side). This is a weird feeling but you can easily get used to it;-)))
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Sunday afternoon Kobayashi sensei held a special course to people preparing for promotion tests. The dojo was 2 train stations away from Tokorozawa and we also had to go. There was a nice big dojo, and which is not visible at the picture, all of the mats were moving together. I don't know what mechanism it had, but it moved for every step or fall. This is a nice idea - letting people practice even during earthquakes:-)))
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There was a party after the practice, and we could take part of it for free - a benefit of uchideshi life. We ate a lot of sushi, of course. And the center of the party was Kobayashi sensei, as usual.
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Monday means free day. We visited Kamakura which was kind of capital city of Japan in the 12th century. There are 19 shinto shrines and 65 buddhist temples here recently. This picture was taken in one of the biggest temples (called Engaku-ji). It is dedicated to Gyöngyi.
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Another shot from the same place - just for the feeling.
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We really started putting ourselves together: we were brave enough to take a small walk. An interesting countryside, I don't know one single tree, and small bamboos grow around adventitiously...
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As I mentioned before, Friday has arrived. His name is actullay Björn, and he is a young Swedish guy, who also came for 3 months. He came with us to Kamakura, although he was quite tired because of the jetlag. Now he feels just as lost as we did in the first days - compared to him, we are expert guys, with serious, universally usable Japanese vocabulary and wide experiences:-)
By the way, there is the Daibutsu in the background, a 13.5 m tall statue made of bronze. One also can enter it, as its inside is fully empty (as you can expect from a Buddha).
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And the last adventure of the day: the Pacific Ocean. I have never thougt that I would once walk it - but yes, I did!
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