Taichi Anyone?

Though I refuse to drive to Taichi class with 2 feet of snow on the ground to work out in an unheated gym, it's worth mentioning that toward the end of summer I joined a Taichi class. The group consists of mostly farmers living in Wajima, who meet once a week on Thursdays to practice the 24-step, 48-step, and a Chinese fan sequence. Before I left for winter vacation, I nearly had the 24-step sequence down. You can be sure that I've probably forgotten all of it during my month and a half hiatus. Learning has been a slow process because the names of the different steps are all taught in Chinese (which I don't understand), and then the teacher only speaks Japanese (most of which I don't understand). Slowly, I've gotten the hang of the Japanese directions, but still have a long way to go to memorize the Chinese directions. Luckily, the group members are extremely patient and friendly and hopefully still will be when I show up for class again next month.

The lady on the far right wearing the white t-shirt made me a yukata (a summer kimono). It's really pretty. She presented it to me in August and in the sweltering heat the entire group showed me how to properly put on the yukata. After I finally had the entire outfit on, our male instructor was made photographer of our mini-photo shoot. If I hadn't already been sweating in the un-air-conditioned gym, I definitely was after adorning a tightly-belted robe over my workout clothes. The woman even brought me a pair of traditional sandals to complete the outfit. I'm excited for the chance to wear it next summer before leaving Japan.