Lukas and Martina in Japan//japan.lukas-prokop.at/blog/2017-02-03T01:49:00+09:00A strange time we live in2017-02-03T01:49:00+09:002017-02-03T01:49:00+09:00Lukastag:japan.lukas-prokop.at,2017-02-03:blog/a-strange-time-we-live-in.html<div id="preamble">
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<div class="paragraph"><p>※ This article is related to my next Kanji exam in one week, the 10th of February 2017.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>For <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji">Kanji</a> class I got a book. The book contains the first 250 Kanji we are supposed to study. Shape, stroke order, reading, 4 vocabularies per Kanji…. I already told you, that this class is the most difficult one for me.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Anyways, I made a funny experience. I want to have these Kanji as <a href="http://ankisrs.net/">Anki flashcards</a> on my phone. That way I can study them while commuting.</p></div>
<div class="olist arabic"><ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>
I open the book’s Kanji index, I take a photo and Google Translate scans all the characters. I get <a href="http://pastebin.com/eEJL3mtw">all the Kanji</a> as text content. I store them in a text file.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
I write a program which asks the <a href="http://jisho.org/api/v1/search/words?keyword=%E5%9C%9F">jisho beta API</a> for meanings of the Kanji. I show all meanings and choose the meaning, I want to have, from the list; for each Kanji.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
I store all Kanji and their meanings in a text file (AsciiDoc format).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
A program, I wrote recently, takes the text file and generates Anki flashcards.
</p>
</li>
</ol></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Isn’t it a strange time we live in? I am amazed again by technology.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>(I am still in study mode. I am not sure I will have time for sightseeing or anything else until next Friday)</p></div>
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Aikido Buikukai Performance2016-12-26T11:30:00+09:002016-12-26T11:30:00+09:00Lukastag:japan.lukas-prokop.at,2016-12-26:blog/buikukai-aikido.html<div id="preamble">
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<div class="paragraph"><p>※ This article discusses the morning of 23rd of December 2016.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>With Jo, we wanted to visit the Osaka Aquarium. If you remember, we <a href="osaka-chikko.html">missed to be there in time</a> last time with Martina and when chatting, Jo pointed out, he wants to go there too.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>We initially scheduled the visit for Sunday. On Thursday, my Aikido colleagues pointed out that their performance will be tomorrow and instead of a typical practice session, they practiced their <a href="http://jisho.org/word/%E6%BC%94%E6%AD%A6">Enbu</a>. They told me, they will have their performance in <a href="http://www.osaka-info.jp/en/facilities/cat24/post_187.html">Osakajo Shudokan</a>. So we spontaneously planned to go to Osaka with Jo. Martina has Volleyball in the morning and will come to Osaka in the afternoon. So the first event of the day was watching an Aikido performance in Osaka with Jo without Martina.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Certainly it would be more interesting to have some videos here, but I will try to make a text summary:</p></div>
<div class="olist arabic"><ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>
Students from various dojos gathered together. I think they all belong to Osaka Buikukai Dojo. Hence their style is defined by Egami Kenzo, whose sensei was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirokazu_Kobayashi_(aikidoka)">Hirokazu Kobayashi</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
They warmed up together.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
From every dojo, pairs of students showed their skills in a 1 minute 30 seconds Enbu which roughly corresponds to 15 applied techniques.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
First, the young students started. Students of the age of <sub>3 up to the age of </sub>25 performed. Finally, a sensei showed his skills (hopefully I don’t get this wrong, but I think it was Egami Kenzo himself).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
I also saw my Aikido friends. They were performing on three <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami">tatami</a> simultaneously. So I could not watch all of them.
</p>
</li>
</ol></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>I don’t really like the choreographed aspect of such performances, but you can clearly see how the style develops over years (between the students of different age).
In the end, it was nice to see some good-quality Aikido and this event gave me a perfect opportunity to film Aikidokas during their techniques. This allows me to analyze their movements and also discuss their style with my Austrian club.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>I enjoyed it. Jo (without any martial arts experience) seemed bored 😉</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Next stop: Shudokan is located at the Site of the Osaka Castle. So I visited Osaka Castle with Jo.</p></div>
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Rokko meets Art 20162016-11-21T11:50:00+09:002016-11-21T11:50:00+09:00Lukastag:japan.lukas-prokop.at,2016-11-21:blog/rokko-meets-art.html<div id="preamble">
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<div class="paragraph"><p>※ This article discusses Sunday, 20th of November 2016.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>So we shifted <a href="this-mid-nov-week.html">event day from Saturday to Sunday</a>. This week on Sunday we visited <a href="https://www.rokkosan.com/art2016/la/">Rokko meets Art 2016</a>. For one reason, we got free tickets from our Faculty and for the other reason November is <a href="https://www.insidejapantours.com/blog/2015/09/08/our-top-10-places-to-see-autumn-leaves-in-japan/">momiji season</a> (autumn colors watching season). So visiting Nara, Kyoto or Mount Rokko is generally recommended. The exhibition takes place between 14th of September and 23rd of November. So we picked the last weekend of this exhibition.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>As described on the homepage, "Rokko Meets Art 2016" is an exhibition of modern art held on the summit of Mount Rokko located in the port city of Kobe. It is held annualy. The first event seems to go back to <a href="https://www.rokkosan.com/art2010/">2010</a>. We started at 10:00. We first went to Rokko Station and asked about the Rokkosan Tourist Pass. It costs 1000 Yen for foreigners with a short-stay visa and 1770 Yen for others (adults). However, the homepage only listed sale places in Osaka. We went to the train station staff and asked for the ticket. They told us we cannot buy it here, but they can offer another ticket. 1950 Yen with the same public transport included. As far as we don’t have a short-stay visa, the proposed price was 180 Yen higher. We decided to take the ticket.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>First we took the Kobe City Bus to go Rokko Cable Shita station (the lower Cable Car station). Actually this bus is used frequently by Kobe university students because it passes their campus. However, we never took the bus and always went by foot. I have to admit we are lucky to be mostly assigned to campusses which are not too far up the hill. Afterwards we took the Cable Car. It is very comparable to a Cable Car, for example, at the Uhrturm in Graz (Austria). At the top I recognized the first art exhibition station. It consisted of two stands with a square ground connected at the top and flags were sticking on the object’s surface. Rokko Sanjo Bus was responsible to bring us to all sites of the exhibition.</p></div>
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<h3 id="_site_1_rokko_international_musical_box_museum">Site 1: Rokko International Musical Box Museum</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_box">Musical boxes</a> are small instruments with a metal comb which produce sounds automatically. The Museum opened in 1992 and collected lots of musical boxes in this time. Besides historical remarks, it sells many pocket-sized musical boxes as gifts and offers a musical box performance every 30 minutes. One performance takes a quarter of an hour is accompanied visually by sand drawing as done by <a href="https://vimeo.com/13230122">Kseniya Simonova</a>. To the best of our knowledge, they told a story which is roughly based on Lewis Carroll’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland">Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>We also got a map for the sites we can visit together with a stamp rally pass. So we started to have fun collecting stamps.</p></div>
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<h3 id="_site_2_rokko_alpine_botanical_garden">Site 2: Rokko Alpine Botanical Garden</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Because the Botanical Garden is so close to the Museum, we didn’t use the bus. The Botanical Garden features 1500 varieties of polar and northern plants. In autumn, they don’t flourish and are difficult to spot. But we switched to discussing the art objects and collecting stamps. This Garden might be more interesting in spring.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>We skipped "Rokkosan Country House" as a site due to time constraints.</p></div>
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<h3 id="_site_3_rokko_garden_terrace">Site 3: Rokko Garden Terrace</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This site is used to enjoy the beautiful view at (almost) the summit of Mount Rokko and eat something. At late lunch time, we sat down and got some ramen and potatoes with butter in plastic dish. This cheap meal warmed us up and compared to the other food, it was very cheap. We finished the meal with French Fries and ice cream (with Green Tea topping).</p></div>
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<h3 id="_site_4_rokko_shidare_obversatory">Site 4: Rokko Shidare Obversatory</h3>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The Shidare Obversatory is an obversatory famous for its shape. We checked it out and looked down the hill as far as possible. Due to the fog, you could not see far. After this station at ~17:00, it started to get dark.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>We took the Kobe City bus to go to university. We wanted to attend the theather performance "Potato salad" at university, but we were half an hour too late. We decided to head back home instead. From Rokko Station we took the train as usual back home. Conclusion: Nice autumn, arts exhibition was rather boring especially due to the bad weather and the view over Kobe and Osaka was interesting even though it was foggy.</p></div>
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Calligraphy workshop2016-11-10T14:50:00+09:002016-11-10T14:50:00+09:00Lukastag:japan.lukas-prokop.at,2016-11-10:blog/calligraphy-with-kokoronet.html<div id="preamble">
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<div class="paragraph"><p>※ This article discusses the 5th of November 2016.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><a href="http://home.kobe-u.com/kokoronet/kokoro_ayumi/07kokoro_ayumi_eg.html">KOKORO-NET</a> is a support group engaging in introducing Japanese culture to international students. On Saturday, we had the opportunity to join a session on Japanese Calligraphy (shodō, 書道 ) at our dormitory between 14:00 and 15:40.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>I watched out for the actual place of the workshop at 13:55 and our janitor <span class="footnote"><br>[I am not sure what to call him. You can also refer to him as dormitory manager.]<br/></br></span> hurried us to join the workshop. It already started, I sat down and immediately got a paper. There were about 10 students and about 10 advisors. They watched us doing Calligraphy, gave us advise and helped us with the tools.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>In Calligraphy, you are equipped with 4 basic tools:</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
a brush (fude, 筆 )
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkstick">inkstick</a> (sumi, 墨 )
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
paper (kami, 紙 ) or specifically <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washi">washi</a> ( 和紙 )
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
and an ink stone (suzuri, 硯 )
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A weight can help you to lock the position of the paper on the underground.
Before you start, you should be aware of the following elements:</p></div>
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Position
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Sit upright, your left hand should additionally lock the paper if you are writing right-handed. Characters should be written in the middle of the paper. Save some vertical space at the left bottom for your name and stamp.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Stroke order
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Every individual stroke is well-defined and you can easily look up stroke orders in <a href="http://kanji.sljfaq.org/kanjivg.html">web application</a>.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Stops
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Furthermore there are stops defined for the characters meaning that intermediate stops are taken when drawing the character rendering larger dots at this position.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Stroke design
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
How much pressure do you apply for a specific stroke? This defines its stroke width. Ask a calligraphist for guidance.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Balance
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Maintain symmetry of the character and maintain the balance of stroke width.
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>In this session I tried some basic strokes first. Then I focused on the Kanji <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%81%93#Kanji">michi</a>, pronounced as "dou" in "Aikidou". Though Japanese has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana">Hiragana</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana">Katakana</a> as individual scripts, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji">Kanji</a> originating from Chinese script are more popular. Kanji literally means "Han character" where Han stands for the name of the Chinese script.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This is my result:</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img alt="Photo of the final kanji I made" src="images/calligraphy-michi.jpg" width="400">
</img></span></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Thanks to Kokoro-net and the wonderful advisors. I would also love to have some theoretical
And as a concluding remark: There are also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pp7_yTOnBk">Calligraphy performances</a>.</p></div>
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