Geocaching in Okayama

It's been just a month since I've left Germany and started to settle again in Okayama. One of my favourite games whenever I wanted take a rest from work or just went outside for a walk with Machi was to find small hidden objects, so called geocaches, as you might remember from my previous posts from Australia.

This game is not very popular in Japan, at least not in Okayama. They're some caches around Tokyo and Osaka and even one in Saidaiji, but only one in Okayama and a couple around it. Nothing is hidden in a walk-able distance. So one of my hobbies now is to hide caches in places I like to stay in Okayama. So far Handayama and the University is marked as well as the Dojo where I try to shoot as often as I can, which isn't much recently. However, it's quite fun to hide them and to think about new locations. Two of them are traditional caches, but I don't really want to make so many traditionals. The one at Uni is a mystery cache, my first one, but so far no one has found it. I hope to get the game a bit popular while I'm staying in Okayama.

Thomas, a good friend from America stays at the moment with me. Japan is his first place ion a long journey around the northern hemisphere. He might be in Germany in June.

Korean food with (left) Yuki, Johannes, Thomas, Stefanie and me.

With Thomas and Sten out for Sushi!

Thats Purikura - get your eyes bigger and some extre make-up! I look even more like a girl because of the automatic Photoshop software! But it's a good souvenir for Thomas.

 

About the aim

Lately I’m thinking a lot about the aims we have in front of us, our physical or mental eye. Before I left Japan, my first Kyudo sensei, Tsuzui-sensei, from Tokoyama Dojo gave me a couple of advices. One was, that I shouldn’t mind whether I hit the target or not. I should only concentrate on the technique, on what I’m doing and if this is right, I will hit the target anyway. In other words, I should mind the way, not the target.

As it is with words sometimes, you forget them and you remember them. Some other time. Besides the times, when I was back in Dresden, I heard the words of my German teacher first and remembered finally the words of the old teacher from Japan. I think they came back to me, because I was missing a teacher for Kyudo in Australia and my mind was trying to educate itself by remembering things it once had learned.

It’s a strange thing with the aim. I keep records of my hits and misses, which doesn’t make it easier for me. Even though I try not to think about the aim I will count hits and misses in my head: one hit, one hit one miss, one hit two misses – I have to hit now – and there it is again. The thinking about the aim and the forgetting about the way. It’s with so many things in life: we forget to remember other things on our way to our goal, our personal targets, things we want to achieve. Since we don’t care the way we walk, we miss a big opportunity: every single path we step on is a trail, is time, we can use to complete our self; master our self. The aim is nothing. You can not even fix it in time. It is not before you have not released the arrow and it is gone as soon as it has hit the target. A tiny moment, gone and you have to go on. Next arrow, and forget about the last one. Sometimes you can’t forget it and you live in the past, forgetting the present. If you only mind the aim, you will only walk from tiny moments to tiny moments, but if you concentrate on your way, our aim becomes every moment, and every moment you might become better in it. Mistakes will help you a lot. And the time might come, that I don’t need to think about the aim any more, that I will just go the right way, always hitting.

remembering: Tokuyama Dojo. Photo taken by Charlie Chayatan.

Video und Bilder + 26. Woche

Hallo Ihr Lieben,

als kleines Ostergeschenk gibt es das hier! Ausserdem habe ich auf dem Weg zum Dojo mal einige Kirschbäume photographiert, denn es beginnt Sakura und Hanami (Kirschblütenschau) in Okayama. Morgen werden wir auch den Tag draußen verbringen.
Vllt. könnt ihr euch vorstellen, wie es ist durch eine Stadt zufahren, wo an jeder Ecke ein Kirschbaum blüht, bzw. diese besonders in Parks in ganzen Scharen vorkommen.

Grüße und frohe Ostern euch allen.
Euer R

Nachtrag: hier findet ihr den kurzen Bericht der letzten Woche. Ab kommende Woche geht die Uni wieder los :s.