Here We Come A-Caroling

Aikido in the morning in which Flick and I were relegated to the white-belt class. This consisted of us along with two boys of about 6 years old and two teachers. It basically ended up as Flick and I with one teacher to ourselves trying to learn the moves.

From what I can tell there are two basic moves: blocking an attack and taking your opponent to the ground. This can be done either on the front side, or the back side. I was "lucky" enough to have one of these moves executed on me, and I have to say that they really work! I was spun round and put on the ground in no time, all because I tried to slice open his head with my hand.

The Cream Tease (choir mode) performed three carol concerts today: one in Cambridge House, one at a house party we were invited to by Ciarán's adopted family, and the final one at a bar in Tenjin for Brendan and James' boss.

We sang by the big Christmas tree at the entrance of Cambridge House; it had lovely acoustics. Most of the people who came were my friends, though Hachi-san announced it over the dormitory address system which brought a few more people out of the woodworks. We sang for about 15 minutes before heading off to our next gig.

We met Ciarán's "mother" and "little brother" Suiichi at Takamiya station and then caught the bus to the house. When we got there we were immediately taken to a little table where the man of the house did some calligraphy for us. He wrote Ciarán's name, and then made us choose a word which he wrote. I now have "harmony" addressed to "Edo". We were made to sing last because we were "too good". So beforehand we had the man playing his flute for us, Ciarán's mother played a "A Whole New World" from Aladdin on the piano, some kid whistled a tune from an opera (scarily well), and another woman playing the piano whilst a man failed to play along on an harmonica. So, was quite interesting. I think they enjoyed our singing, though; I can never tell if they're just being polite, but they did all listen intently, even the children! We were then given a lift back to the station.

We then went to the MochaJava cafe in Tenjin. Was quite a strange and small little place packed full of people who were all learning English. Once I was settled down I found myself talking to a man from Ghana who was doing a PhD. in Molecular Biochemistry focussing on cancer research. Had a nice interesting conversation with him about the Ghanian education system: they condensed a seven year senior school course into a three year one in 1986, though to make up for this they extended university course by a year! There was a strange Japanese picture quiz (including prizes) before we sang, including one such clue:

けけけけ
ごごごごご

the answer to which is obviously "keshi gomu", which means rubber. That was about the only one I understood the answer to. I won't go into details unless somebody asks. We sang after this though, by which time Lauma, Flick, and Hirata and Ohnishi-sensei had turned up from having watched Yoshimatsu-sensei do Jazz dancing. I think again we were enjoyed, and a slightly higher number of English people meant that a few people new some of the tunes. The Japanese only seem to know "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".