Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

I find it hard to believe how much time has passed since my last blog entry. Work has been busy, and my usual ramblings don’t seem important enough to sacrifice some free time. I have been doing a little behind-the-scenes maintenance though, and I’ve been very happy with result of installing Spam Karma 2. It has completely stopped the amount of crap coming into my mailbox, and I can at long last live without the annoyance of cleaning out junk mail. You have no idea how much this annoys me.
Today I thought I’d just cover a light topic that might be of interest to some of you. When I first came to Japan I had terrible posture. Even now it’s not perfect, but I have been actively trying to fix the way I sit and stand over the past few years. My mom always warned me about sitting up straight, but it wasn’t until I started Kendo over here that I finally realized why.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Kendo, it’s kind of like Olympic fencing, except it’s the Japanese traditional form of sword fighting using a two-handed weapon. Most of the gear is the same as in fencing except the gear is very top heavy and is constructed using plastics, wood and a heavy canvas-like material. I think the full set of Kendo gear wears around 20 lbs. (roughly 8 kg) and probably more than half of the weight is in the helmet. When you first put on the gear, you learn right away whether your posture is good or not. If your center of balance is off just the tiniest bit, it becomes very hard to stand up straight, and after about 10 minutes of trying to maintain your footing your legs feel like jelly. The key to doing kendo right is to keep your back straight even when moving forward.

Generally speaking most people in Japan have amazing posture. I think this might actually be a trait found in most Asian countries as it is actually part of education. You need to be sitting up straight to show that you’re paying attention. It’s actually a great thing to practice (I realize this now) and it always makes me laugh to see people from other countries slouching their way down the sidewalk. I must say though, correcting 10+ years of bad posture is a pain in the butt. It’s really something that you have to work at.

On a side note, and I’ve mentioned this before, I just love how much information there is out there to read. There’s just no end in sight for how much one can learn from the various agencies out there, and I thought I’d briefly mention some of my current topics of interest.

The Great Depression – I think this topic is of particular importance right now with all of the subprime loan issues in the US and around the world. It’s amazing to read about how the US economy was so devesatated by this time period in world history, and it’s even more fascinating to see how this economic depression eventually led to World War II. To be honest though, as much as I’ve read on this topic, it’s extremely, extremely complicated and since it covers such a wide variety of fields of knowledge it’s hard to get a grasp of everything that occurred.

The Dust Bowl – This is the term for a series of severe dust storms that took place from 1933 to 1939. This topic is strongly related to the Great Depression as many farmers had to leave their land to get away from the storms destroying everything. The Grapes of Wrath is based on this event in North American history and if you check out the photos, it’s scary to think something like this could happen in modern society (it feels very Fire and Brimstone).

Space – This isn’t really a specific topic, but I’ve found a couple of topics that are pretty cool. I originally found this information on Slashdot so I should give credit where credit is due.

Saturn’s Rings – This first article talks about how pieces of a smashed moon were found inside the rings of Saturn. The article is a bit confusing to read but it’s interesting to see how scientists were able to piece all this information together.

Black holes – This second article talks about how hundreds of black holes were found by NASA. This news is the first evidence that all galaxies were created with a black hole at their core.

Feel free to post a comment with information that you have found interesting lately!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 5:30 am and is filed under About Japan, Books or Writing, Random info.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.