Checking out from a hotel in Prague.. 2 days taking pics.. many pics that I will be able to upload only in 8 days from now…
A lot of time on the road, after Brandbu and Aikido with doshu (more pics to be uploaded), Italy with Vittorio’s wedding (pics already there.. check my Flickr on the side), Geneve – Tholon for work (a few pics about that too.. later )..
..and today I will go to Slovakia, for another Aikid seminar, 4 days with Endo sensei from tomorrow to friday.. next back to Prague (what a great city!!!!) and leaving from here sunday afternoon….
..and probably collapsing at home sunday evening, before 2 weeks of intense work for a major test!!
I can say that many among Vittorio closer friends had been surprised when they got the invitation for the wedding. And maybe wondered if it was a joke or for real
I had been extremely happy when he had asked me to be his bestman and, strange enough, I was not that surprised: it was more or less a natural step after living together in Norway with Annemie.. It was also a good chance to visit home, Biella, in summer time and enjoy good weather and say hi to my parents!
Anyway, it has been a really nice day, great weather, very international with friends from Belgium, Italy, Norway, France, Spain.. different languages and cultures meeting to celebrate the happy day a two good friends of ours!
I was extremely happy too when they told me that the dinner was at a restaurant at Oropa sanctuary, where there is one of the Italian most famous church and black Madonna (if not the most, for a bit of campanilismo!!). We also received a guided tour of the sanctuary, the museum, the Savoia rooms and the library with a good refresh of the history of the place.
I have finally updated the Aikido seminars page, with a lot of “goodies” and suggestion for the next months.. and still a few are missing.. especially some seminars of Endo sensei and Tissier sensei.. I will take care of that later on..
Just taking a look at the calendar, I realized that almost every weekend has something very interesting happening, and a lot will be going on in Norway/Sweden area.. That increases the chances to actually do something!!
But yesterday evening was time for a different kind of action:
Yup.. quite a change!!
Today I am on my way to Brandbu for the summer seminar of Norwegian Aikido Federation, with a very special instructor for the celebration of 30 years of Aikido in Norway and the cut had been appreciated already last year..
But but but.. my summer school will last only 2 days, since Saturday morning I am travelling to Italy for a quite important reason: Saturday afternoon I will be bestman for the wedding of my best friend Vittorio!
The coincidence of the two events, doshu in Norway and the wedding, and the wish to attend both of them, will cause me sleeping at Gardemoen airport the night between Friday and Saturday and pray as never before for no delay in the flight (direct) from Oslo to Milano!!!! May the luck be with me, once.. since I am usually a bit (understatement) unlucky..
But, everything important, will of course be in the hand luggage.. SAS being SAS…
Some of my pictures in Norway of Miwa Asao, 浅尾美和, a young cute Japanese beach volley player are published in a Japanese sport magazine, Weekly Gendai, 週刊現代…
I hope I will be able to get a copy of that magazine!!
“In the middle of our life’s journey” wrote Dante Alighieri at the age 35, first line of Divine Comedy.. and he was quite an optimist.. I do not know what life expectancy were in 1300, but he died at the age of 56, a good age, I’d say! Now, I am a bit of the opposite (ok, more than a bit, I’m a bloody pessimist!).. So, let’s say I can celebrate I reach 35.. and I hope to have a few more good ones [years] with no need to reach any target age.. Just maybe not wasting too much time or chances..
In truth, I feel more like a different verse from Dante: “Abandon every hope, all ye who enter“, enter both in my life and in my house! The latter, it is messy.. been a disaster in the last months.. The former, it is flat.. been a boredom in the last years..
With the big day.. better the “large number” day.. falling in July, close to the middle of the year, it permits me to do a follow up of something written in January, after suggestion of the inventive wordpress-gang: the 2007 resolutions and predictions posts!
I successful predict that 10% at most of my resolutions will become true and I probably was an optimist I have been in Asia.. But I do not know how many other of the resolutions will be resolved in the next 6 months.. I doubt many!
On the other hand, I also said: “I will meet new interesting people“, and it did become true.. especially during my trip to China, but not only.. Also Aikido trips and Stavanger life can be thanked.
Just as a reminder of what was going on last year, almost the same days, an article, in Italian, about one of my passions: football!!!! It is not a coincidence that probably tonight I am going to shave (beard and hairs) again
Initially, and unsurprisingly, the Japanese tea ceremony, chadō, 茶道, was an activity indulged by the nobility, as tea itself was primarily the elixir of the upper class at this time. While the essence of a samurai’s life lay in acquiring skills in the art of war and practising the code of Bushido, in times of no war, he was also exhorted to cultivate more peaceful pursuits. The tea ceremony in many ways could be a metaphor not only for the samurai ideal but also for the land of Japan itself: “throughout the ceremony, the hosts and guests both aspire towards a sense of tranquility” and in official (or private) tea houses the samurai were to leave the swords outside the house, according to a code formalized by Sen no Rikyū, 千利休, the historical figure with the most profound influence on the Japanese tea ceremony. At the same time, however, the isolation and calm of the tea house provided the ideal location for private discussions of sensitive military matters.
In the warrior’s primer book, Budō Shoshin-shū, 武道初心集 [here for the ebook!!! ] (written in the 17th century), Daidōji Yūzan, 大道寺友山, advised: “Though Bushido naturally implies first of all the qualities of strength and forcefulness, to have this one side only developed is to be nothing but a rustic samurai of no great account… [a samurai] should take up verse making or Teaism… for if he does not study he will not be able to understand the reason of things either past or present”. However while the samurai pursued various aesthetic and artistic pastimes, it is important to remember that there was always a suspicion that the acquisition of literary or artistic skills might weaken a warrior’s fighting ability, corrupting their elite code with the values and practices of the merchant classes. For, as Daidoji Yuzan warned: “Rather then becoming such a dilettante, it would be better to have no knowledge of the way of Tea at all, and to be unpolished to the point of not even knowing how to lift a bowl. These words are for the understanding of warriors”.
But a te house is also the set where one of my favourite animated tv-series starts. It is probably the best japanese samurai anime I have seen in my life: Samurai Champloo, サムライチャンプルー(and an occasion to define a new tag in my categories, hoping in future posts: “anime“, tag already much used in WordPress world).
A quite short series, only 26 episodes, too few when you start watching it, since you become a fan in no time! Extremely well done, mixing the traditional samurai style with a very modern soundtrack, a blend of historical Edo period backdrops combined with modern day styles and references that are largely anachronistic. The word “Champloo” in the english title, comes from Okinawan word “chanpurū“, チャンプルー, which means to mix or blend.
This is a video from the first episode showing fights of Mugen and Jin, the 2 samurai main characters, starting from their first encounter in a chashitsu (茶室, literally “tea room”), great swordsmen with very different fighting styles.. that end up fighting each othr! Uhm, you can see that in this specific tea house the samurai were not leaving their swords at the door!
A tribute to Jin:
..and a tribute to Mugen (and his more “artistic” fighting style):
Of course there is one female character, sweet young Fuu, that convinces the 2 samurai to not fight among each other but start an adventure with her in search of the sunflower samurai..
After many days of intensive beach volley a break is necessary and well accepted!! Saying beach volley, one would immediately think about gorgeous girls in tiny bikinis, athletic men in shorts and sculptured bodies, sun, seaside, sand.. yeah.. I would definitively think about the same things.. But the FIVB Swatch beach volley tournament I am talking about has been going on in Stavanger, Norway, where the weather changes in minutes and the trend was, uhm, toward shitty to terribly shitty weather..
I must not complain anyway since for the final matches of the women tournament in the main arena we had great sunny weather.. very very unexpected!! In any case, I would have not seeked cover under the small rain protections in the main arena, since one day the cover broke pouring liters of water on the head of the poor people under.. thank god it was not me and my precious new camera!!
Anyway, being the weather cloudy and not too warm, a good tasty tea is perfect for an afternoon break.. And when I think about tea I think about Asia.. with 2 clear pictures in my mind: the Japanese tea ceremony, chadō, 茶道, and the Chinese special tea bags I brought back from WenZhou.
A Chinese friend, DanDan, wrote a very nice post about Japanese tea ceremony: her thoughts are very well expressed and quite deep, so interesting to see what a Chinese person thinks of such a Japanese tradition.
Japan and China are intimately linked when talking about tea. From Wikipedia, “..drinking of tea was introduced to Japan in the 9th century in the form of the boiled tea (団茶,dancha) by the Buddhist monk Eichu (永忠), who had returned to Japan from China, where it had already been known, according to legend, for more than a thousand years. Tea soon became widely popular in Japan, and began to be cultivated locally..”
But the tea ceremony is not only merely the drink preparation: in the Japanese tradition it encloses a more spiritual part. The place where the tea ceremony takes place, the tea house, is called chashitsu (茶室, literally “tea room”). The design of such a room is influenced by Zen philosophy, ying and yang.
Everybody knows that Japanese people are quite precise about tradition and way to perform things, so the next brillant video is necessary for obtaining the perfect taste when preparing your green tea! And it is so funny!!!
If you still had not enough and want to see a real tea ceremony, the next video is more appropriate.. and serious! It shows also that even young Japanese do not generally know everything about how to properly behave at such a ceremony.
At last, a video showing a bit of everything, from history to how to prepare, in a more casual way, a good cup of green tea!
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