December 1st 2012 - Day 86

Pinch punch first of the month of Christmas, no returns. Ha! Got you all.

Most of this day wasn't overly exciting, pretty standard. I gave my suit and ties into the cleaners first thing, then went and did a food shop (and arrived before the store had opened, so got to be one of the first people through the doors). I also took this chance to arrange a point card with the food shop - big stores are really into point cards, and I already had one for Yodobashi and Nitori, but I realised recently that getting one for the food shop I go to every week, is probably a good idea (I'm not good at thinking of smart things).

After dumping the food back at the apartment and a quick relax, I headed over to suidobashi. This area is most famous for being the home of the Tokyo Dome, but I was going there to visit a kendo weapons and armour store. It was pretty cool to see the inside of an authentic Japanese kendo store, but tricky to find the right type of shinai for me. After that I came back and headed into Yodobashi for work supplies, new years cards, and lunch. Good old double portion katsudon - never fails.

Then I came back to the apartment and spent a large portion of the afternoon giving the place a 1st-of-the-month, thorough cleaning. The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to organise all my work notes into a new file, and then sorting out some organisation on my computer. All the while with crazy Japanese tv on in the background, and I mean so crazy even I couldn't understand it, and I'm a loony.

In the evening I headed to Kendo club practice. Very quite tonight (only 4 including me) which meant I was able to get a good amount of help from the sensei and sempai. And by help I mean effectively relearning everything from scratch, and then being told to relax a thousand times. No one in the history of sword fighting on any continent has ever relaxed when being given a weapon and told to fight somebody else, this is the hardest thing I will ever do and haven't been able to get right for years. Needless to say I ended up self hating on myself a bit this evening. To cap it all, the brand new shinai I bought this morning for 3000 yen broke beyond repair after 40 minutes. I either hit too hard, or got screwed by the old lady in the kendo store.