Gasshuku report, book meme
Feb. 17th, 2005 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirLowell House on the Feast of the Founders of the Order of the Servites
Look at my new icon! (Again!) Courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaebi_lit, who is so, so awesome for making it. (Now, you can have due warning when I start blabbing about science. ^_^)
First Gasshuku practice, and of course, I must talk about it in detail, regardless of whether you are interested in kendo or not. ::evil grin:: The practice was more rigorous than usual, but there was just enough shugo (sp?) to prevent me from exhausting all my stamina. I think stamina is what draws the line between a difficult practice that leaves me feeling oddly exhilarated although in pain and a difficult practice that leaves me feeling sick and embarrassed for feeling sick. Anyway, today's practice was definitely the former, and oh man, Yumi-san, the Keio fourth-year girl I'm hosting, is so awesome! During kirikaeshi (we did it down the entire length of the dojo), she literally hit the same two spots on my head the entire time and with such incredible force too. All the Keio students are amazing of course, but it's particularly inspiring to see the female players because they are often short and don't even look all that sturdily built, but they are such ferociously excellent players. ^_^ We practiced kirikaeshi drills repeatedly, and every single Keio student I played against told me that I wasn't hitting at a 45 degree angle. -_- Clearly I ought to work on that. Also, the sayumen to the left is much worse than the one to the right, which I hadn't actually realized before, and of course, I need to work on ki-ken-tai-ichi. It took a lot of prodding to get them to actually give advice because being Japanese, they are all extremely polite and like to leave it at, "Oh, your kiai was very good"--I suppose it would be hard to criticize your hosts. Later in practice, they stopped hesitating so much though, and I definitely learned a lot, even just by watching, although actually implementing what I learned is a whole different story. >_>
I played against Yumi-san during jigeiko, and unfortunately, I was absolutely terrible. She kept leaving me openings, but I wasn't ever really sure what openings they were, and I attacked sort of blindly, with absolutely terrible form. I also ended up trying to do small men and discovered that I completely forgot how to do it correctly. I've been focusing on trying to get my large men correct (which is still messed up despite all the various epiphanies over the last semester), and theoretically, if you do a nice large men, the small men should come easily. Unfortunately I don't do a nice large men, but I used to be able to fake the appearance of a small men, while now I just can't get it to work at all. ::sighs:: I suppose I should continue working on large strikes and start worrying about the small strikes later, when we start training for the Shoryuhai. Anyway, I am feeling very, very happy because I felt that I really had a chance to focus today and try to perfect one particular drill (i.e. kirikaeshi). Izzy's done a wonderful job of putting together a practice menu. (No, I'm not sucking up.) It's bizarre how much pleasure I get from kendo these days--I still walk into practice with a slight feeling of fear but I come out of it feeling much more relaxed and content. Perhaps it's because my body, after the accumulation of about a year's worth of practice, is slowly learning what it feels like to be fit and healthy. The other day, I sprinted at top speed across the Lowell courtyard, and I expected to feel at least a slight rush of blood to the head, a faint dizzyness, some sense of disorientation, but I didn't feel winded at all. Heh, two of my senpai have told me that I don't seem so "breakable" this year, which is nice because I have secret ambitions of being tough and indomitable (don't laugh). Now if only my mother was convinced--the first thing she said to me when I came home for intersession was that I'd grown thinner than ever. Argh. It makes an ironic sort of sense that my mother would make me feel insecure about my lack of weight and condition me into being constantly worried about how to gain weight. (Which reminds me, I should eat more.) -_- Our family has to do everything backwards.
Tin tagged me for the book meme, so here I go:
1) Total number of books in your house:
Not being home, I have no idea. However, I can treat this as a Fermi problem and make an educated guess. About thirty books on average fit on a shelf, and we have six shelves per bookcase. My books take up two and a half bookcases, but I'm rounding up to three because currently we have a shelf of paperback children's books in several vertical stacks since we don't have enough room and also because I think two shelves hold thinner books and may fit more than thirty. 30 books/shelf * 6 shelves/case * 3 cases = 540 books. That number of course only estimates the number of books I own and that are at home. If I add in my parents' books, which means the fourth bookcase, I would estimate that we have about 720 books in the house.
In my dorm room...well, then we run into the question of whether textbooks and course catalogs really count as "books".
2) The last book you bought was:
If you include textbooks, I just bought Integrated Korean: Advanced Intermediate 2 an hour ago. But the last book I bought for fun was The Book of Jhereg, by Steven Brust, and the last book I borrowed from the library was Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers, which I still want to finish.
3) What was the last book you read before reading this message?
Last book finished was probably Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L. Sayers, at least if my All Consuming list is up to date. Oh wait, that was before intersession; during intersession I reread The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, and The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. Last book I read but have not yet finished is, naturally, Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. (Not counting textbooks, of course.)
4) Write down 5 books you often read or that mean a lot to you.
There are so many ways I can draw up this list...so I'm going to cheat. Pick your favorite list of five from the choices available below.
Books I've reread the most often (in order of the number of times reread):
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery - I reread the series again before starting college
The Ordinary Princess, by M.M. Kaye - this book is falling apart
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card - I think this book is the only one I can reliably quote from
Demian, by Hermann Hesse - I wrote my college application essay on this book
The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien - well, of course
Books that marked turning points (in order that they were read):
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo - marks my "populist" stage and the true source of my political liberalism
Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder - marks my "epistemological" stage and intense interest in metaphysics (largely dissipated now)
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - marks my "existentialist" stage and bizarre interpretations of personal morality
The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse - marks my "reactionary" stage and firm belief in the necessity for re-negotiations between individual and society
The Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong (trans. Moss Roberts) - marks my "oriental" stage and renewed interest in my own Confucian background
The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt - marks my "contemporary" stage and beginning of my excursions into mainstream contemporary literature (also fascination with linguistics)
Books that currently influence me (although I haven't finished reading yet, lazy person that I am):
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann
Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstatder
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, by Stephen Jay Gould
The Golden Bough, by James Frazer
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, by Albert Camus
5) Who are you going to pass the stick to (to three people) and why?
ladydaera, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
worldserpent (if she hasn't been tagged yet), solidark, all out of sheer curiosity since I think our reading tastes overlap and don't overlap in interesting patterns
Yours &c.
Look at my new icon! (Again!) Courtesy of
jaebi_lit, who is so, so awesome for making it. (Now, you can have due warning when I start blabbing about science. ^_^)First Gasshuku practice, and of course, I must talk about it in detail, regardless of whether you are interested in kendo or not. ::evil grin:: The practice was more rigorous than usual, but there was just enough shugo (sp?) to prevent me from exhausting all my stamina. I think stamina is what draws the line between a difficult practice that leaves me feeling oddly exhilarated although in pain and a difficult practice that leaves me feeling sick and embarrassed for feeling sick. Anyway, today's practice was definitely the former, and oh man, Yumi-san, the Keio fourth-year girl I'm hosting, is so awesome! During kirikaeshi (we did it down the entire length of the dojo), she literally hit the same two spots on my head the entire time and with such incredible force too. All the Keio students are amazing of course, but it's particularly inspiring to see the female players because they are often short and don't even look all that sturdily built, but they are such ferociously excellent players. ^_^ We practiced kirikaeshi drills repeatedly, and every single Keio student I played against told me that I wasn't hitting at a 45 degree angle. -_- Clearly I ought to work on that. Also, the sayumen to the left is much worse than the one to the right, which I hadn't actually realized before, and of course, I need to work on ki-ken-tai-ichi. It took a lot of prodding to get them to actually give advice because being Japanese, they are all extremely polite and like to leave it at, "Oh, your kiai was very good"--I suppose it would be hard to criticize your hosts. Later in practice, they stopped hesitating so much though, and I definitely learned a lot, even just by watching, although actually implementing what I learned is a whole different story. >_>
I played against Yumi-san during jigeiko, and unfortunately, I was absolutely terrible. She kept leaving me openings, but I wasn't ever really sure what openings they were, and I attacked sort of blindly, with absolutely terrible form. I also ended up trying to do small men and discovered that I completely forgot how to do it correctly. I've been focusing on trying to get my large men correct (which is still messed up despite all the various epiphanies over the last semester), and theoretically, if you do a nice large men, the small men should come easily. Unfortunately I don't do a nice large men, but I used to be able to fake the appearance of a small men, while now I just can't get it to work at all. ::sighs:: I suppose I should continue working on large strikes and start worrying about the small strikes later, when we start training for the Shoryuhai. Anyway, I am feeling very, very happy because I felt that I really had a chance to focus today and try to perfect one particular drill (i.e. kirikaeshi). Izzy's done a wonderful job of putting together a practice menu. (No, I'm not sucking up.) It's bizarre how much pleasure I get from kendo these days--I still walk into practice with a slight feeling of fear but I come out of it feeling much more relaxed and content. Perhaps it's because my body, after the accumulation of about a year's worth of practice, is slowly learning what it feels like to be fit and healthy. The other day, I sprinted at top speed across the Lowell courtyard, and I expected to feel at least a slight rush of blood to the head, a faint dizzyness, some sense of disorientation, but I didn't feel winded at all. Heh, two of my senpai have told me that I don't seem so "breakable" this year, which is nice because I have secret ambitions of being tough and indomitable (don't laugh). Now if only my mother was convinced--the first thing she said to me when I came home for intersession was that I'd grown thinner than ever. Argh. It makes an ironic sort of sense that my mother would make me feel insecure about my lack of weight and condition me into being constantly worried about how to gain weight. (Which reminds me, I should eat more.) -_- Our family has to do everything backwards.
Tin tagged me for the book meme, so here I go:
1) Total number of books in your house:
Not being home, I have no idea. However, I can treat this as a Fermi problem and make an educated guess. About thirty books on average fit on a shelf, and we have six shelves per bookcase. My books take up two and a half bookcases, but I'm rounding up to three because currently we have a shelf of paperback children's books in several vertical stacks since we don't have enough room and also because I think two shelves hold thinner books and may fit more than thirty. 30 books/shelf * 6 shelves/case * 3 cases = 540 books. That number of course only estimates the number of books I own and that are at home. If I add in my parents' books, which means the fourth bookcase, I would estimate that we have about 720 books in the house.
In my dorm room...well, then we run into the question of whether textbooks and course catalogs really count as "books".
2) The last book you bought was:
If you include textbooks, I just bought Integrated Korean: Advanced Intermediate 2 an hour ago. But the last book I bought for fun was The Book of Jhereg, by Steven Brust, and the last book I borrowed from the library was Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers, which I still want to finish.
3) What was the last book you read before reading this message?
Last book finished was probably Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L. Sayers, at least if my All Consuming list is up to date. Oh wait, that was before intersession; during intersession I reread The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, and The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. Last book I read but have not yet finished is, naturally, Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. (Not counting textbooks, of course.)
4) Write down 5 books you often read or that mean a lot to you.
There are so many ways I can draw up this list...so I'm going to cheat. Pick your favorite list of five from the choices available below.
Books I've reread the most often (in order of the number of times reread):
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery - I reread the series again before starting college
The Ordinary Princess, by M.M. Kaye - this book is falling apart
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card - I think this book is the only one I can reliably quote from
Demian, by Hermann Hesse - I wrote my college application essay on this book
The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien - well, of course
Books that marked turning points (in order that they were read):
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo - marks my "populist" stage and the true source of my political liberalism
Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder - marks my "epistemological" stage and intense interest in metaphysics (largely dissipated now)
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - marks my "existentialist" stage and bizarre interpretations of personal morality
The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse - marks my "reactionary" stage and firm belief in the necessity for re-negotiations between individual and society
The Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong (trans. Moss Roberts) - marks my "oriental" stage and renewed interest in my own Confucian background
The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt - marks my "contemporary" stage and beginning of my excursions into mainstream contemporary literature (also fascination with linguistics)
Books that currently influence me (although I haven't finished reading yet, lazy person that I am):
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann
Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstatder
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, by Stephen Jay Gould
The Golden Bough, by James Frazer
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, by Albert Camus
5) Who are you going to pass the stick to (to three people) and why?
ladydaera, worldserpent (if she hasn't been tagged yet), solidark, all out of sheer curiosity since I think our reading tastes overlap and don't overlap in interesting patternsYours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-18 05:58 am (UTC)Do you know any good restaurants in NYC Chinatown? My roommate and I are heading down there this weekend, and last time we went to Chinatown we ended up wandering around for an hour trying to figure out where to eat. I'd take her to Kblock, except she's a vegetarian and thus won't appreciate 갈비 or 삼겹살 or any of the other yummy 숫불 stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-18 08:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 12:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 12:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-19 07:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-20 01:32 am (UTC)Anyway... DID YOU KNOW?! Rachel and Leah is out by Orson Scott Card?! AHHH!! I need to get my grubby hands on that book ;__; And Shadow of the Giant is set to release on March 8? .... OMFB... I need to get my hands on everything!! >_< AHHHH!! I can't wait! xD
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-20 01:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-20 09:21 pm (UTC)