So school ended on December 22nd, and as it was our last day of school, a lot of the other international students had a fun time that night. But not for me. The next day, there was a tournament for the members of the judo club. 

Not all the members were participating. I think they had the choice to participate or not and also the strong fighters obviously didn't participate. So in total, there were about maybe 50 fighters. I offered my friend to help him warm up that day so I showed up at 9:00 with my uniform. After a few uchikomis, grip fighting, and some throws, we discussed the techniques of his first opponent. At 9:30, the tournament started. It was really interesting to watch the once friendly club members become enemies. In that moment, friendships were forgotten, as each member fought for themselves. My friend lost his first and only match but he was against a much bigger opponent. This tournament was all weights, so -66kg fighters could fight -90kg fighters. 

The tournament lasted about two hours and a half, and from what I could tell there were two winners from the two pools, cause the winners never fought. That or I messed up haha. After the tournament, Agemizu Sensei gave us all a long speech, mostly about the holidays, and what not to do, and then after that it was time to clean up the club.

They already had separated the members into three groups so I just pick number two and sat down as the captains decided which group would clean what. Our group was the winner, thus we has the easiest task: the dojo area. We cleaned the windows, the lights, the mats, and the mats again. It was pretty slack I found, and most of them didn't really clean it as well as they could. We could have finished in like 30 minutes but instead it took one hour and more. 

After everyone was done, they took out all the forgotten items of the past year and laid them out on the floor. Now this took for EVER. No one did anything. Most were too shy to take their things, so they just sat down and talked. About one hour later, we were finally allowed to go eat lunch, but we only had thirty minutes. I rushed back to the dorm, made myself the best sandwiches ever. 

When I got back to the club, no one was there. I called my friend and he informed me that the meeting was in a completely different building. At that point, I should have realized that it was not going to be the usual meeting, but no, I went over there blindly. Oh and did I ever have the surprise of my life, I walked into the classroom of building 7 and sat down with every pair of eyes on me. And my embarrassment didn't stop there. As I looked to the front, I noticed everyone had pencils and notepads and they were recopying what was written on the board. I wish I could tell you what was written, but unfortunately, it was all written in kanji, and not the cleanest writing either. As they all recopied onto their papers, I sat there trying to find/recognize one kanji that I knew. By the time Agemizu sensei started talking, I had found three... Even while he spoke, I could only catch words here and there, and so I felt out of place.

I noticed the time for me to leave was coming soon and I stayed as long as I could, but I unfortunately had to leave to prepare to go visit the Iwasa family. Once more, I left the room with everyone watching. From now on I'm going to make sure to know what I'm getting into, although I was glad to see what kind of class the other members have to go through.