July 4th Recap: Bugs, Bows, and Hot Tubs

 On July 4th, the main events of my day were experiencing the archery club, and going to Spa world. After class, everyone went to the Archery club. It was very cool sitting in the range looking at all the bows and the targets on the opposite side of the grass field. It’s interesting how different but also the same Japanese archery is to western archery. The similarities of course are that its a bow that shoots an arrow, but the style of the bow and shooting here is quite different. I’m not an expert on archery of course, but my experience with archery in the west is that its focused entirely on hitting the target. However the archer manages that much is a moot point. But here it seemed almost the opposite. Most of the archers hit their target in some fashion, but the really specific, slow, controlled movements leading up to shot seemed as if not more important than the shot itself. The whole craft seems set up more towards the art of archery instead of using it as an actual hunting craft, which is pretty cool. Another fun thing was just looking at the grass area where the archers were. In Arizona I’m used to these massive horrid yucky-ass jumbo grasshoppers. But here they were really small more friendly looking versions, as funny as that sounds. And there was even a cool spider, an image of which i have attached.  

In terms of spa world. I don’t think in America there’s anything remotely like the bath houses here. Of course there’s stuff from other cultures in the U.S, but bathing publicly is a foreign concept for sure. If you haven’t yet, its definitely worth a shot. the showers are high quality, and since there’s a lot of money going into the place, the baths are pretty elaborate. this month, the men have the Asian floor for the baths, so there’s a whole bunch of different areas with different baths from parts of Asia. There’s a huge outdoor section modeled to look like a traditional Japanese outdoor bath, there’s a bunch of saunas, and there’s some sections of ice cold baths too. They even have this crazy super cold bath that’s full of carbonated water, which is supposed to be good for blood flow, but it just kind of feels like you’re sitting acid after a minute which is quite odd. Regardless, the experience is really cool, and since it’s pretty far removed from what most Americans are used to, It’s a great experience. In total, the archery event was very cool, but my favorite thing I did was definitely spa world. If its your first time in a place like that its definitely a bit of a culture shock, but it’s really nice once you get used to it.