My trip to Korea was a really good experience. It's probably one of the shortest flights I've ever taken: a 2 hour and a half flight to Seoul, and then a 1 hour flight to Jeju Island. And it's the first trip I've done where I didn't need to adjust the time on my watch because Japan and Korea are in the same time zone. That's not to say the trip was easy. In Japan, nothing is really easy.
To get to the airport on Wednesday morning, I rode to the station on my bike, with my backpack in the front basket and my huge judo bag on my shoulders. From there, I took a train to Hon-Atsugi. I met my grandaunt at the platform and together we took a one hour bus ride to Haneda Airport.
Then, arriving in Seoul, Korea, I went to check in my baggage for my connecting flight only to be told I had to take a bus to get to the domestic terminal. In Winnipeg, there is only one terminal, and the one terminal we have is smaller than the domestic terminal in Seoul. Anyhow, thank goodness airport layouts are fairly the same in any country so I was able to find my gate without any problem.
 |
| Airport in Seoul |
I arrive in Jeju... and it's raining. In fact, it rained every day we were there.
The competition went well. I lost my first and only fight to Concepcion Bellorin from Spain, currently ranked 17th in the world. But I'm happy with my performance. Until the last 30 seconds of the fight, there was no score. In the last 30 seconds, she managed to throw for a yuko score and then pinned me for 25 seconds for the ippon.
In the past, at this level of competition, I usually felt a big difference in skill level between my opponents and me. This time however, I barely felt that. I felt like I belonged there. For sure, I still need to work a lot more on my gripping and my positioning to enter for throws. But I felt good out there. And I wasn't even tired! Since I've been in Japan, we've been doing rounds after rounds of randoris without any break in between so I feel like my stamina has really improved since my arrival here. So it definitely helped me in the fight because I didn't even have to think about being exhausted.
 |
| The tournament site |
 |
| The beautiful ceiling |
Korea is an interesting country. In many ways, I felt like I was in Japan. It rained every day. The ingredients used in their cuisine are quite similar to Japanese food. They have little convenience stores at almost every street corner. Lots of shop names are also written in Japanese characters. And of course, everyone has Asian facial features. But I found the Koreans to be a bit more rude than Japanese. When we landed in Korea, instead of waiting their turn to get off the plane, everyone just stood up and started shoving each other to exit the plane as quickly as possible. And for me, personally, I find Korean a bit hard on the ears. After listening to it for a while, my head hurts and I just want to cover my ears. I'm not sure why. Maybe because certain words have harsher pronunciations compared to Japanese where syllables seem to melt together.
 |
| The streets in front of our hotel |
 |
| A familiar landmark : p |
 |
| Our hotel |
 |
| Jeju: I was surprised by how commercial Jeju Island is. Along the streets, that's almost all there was, store after store, selling popular brand name products. |
Now I'm back in school and back into my routine. At Tokai University now, there are many athletes from other countries who are there to prepare for the upcoming tournament this weekend, Grand Slam. I'll be going to watch the tournament on Saturday and Sunday. My teachers aren't too impressed with me missing classes. They don't think judo is a valid enough reason. Well... too bad. I'm going to see the tournament anyways. How many times in my life will I get to go see a competition of this caliber?
At the end of the month, I'll get to have a short break from classes and judo. I'll be going to spend some time with my Japanese family in Kyoto. I'm looking forward to it. I just learned today that we have judo on December 25th!!! Christmas Day!!! I couldn't believe it! lol Christmas in Japan is pretty much nonexistent. New Years is what really counts here. So, not only will I be spending Christmas Day alone in Japan, I'll also be doing judo that day. Sounds like fun ; )
0 comments:
Post a Comment