Archery at Yasukuni Shrine

It was health-sports day in Japan so what better way to celebrate my heath and sports than to go to Yasukuni Shine to take in a bit of archery. Kyudo, as its called in Japan, is a super old sport. it's not robin-hood-exciting in any way; it's slow, methodical, and done with quite a bit of ceremony.

first the priests and the judges file in:


next the archers:


there were two teams, four to a team, plus the leader. The teams lined up and took a shot one by one from the same vantage. if the judge wanted an explanation of the shot (which he almost always did), there would be a lot of posturing and yelling of the clarification. the question mainly was, where on the deer did you mean to hit? if he hit where he was aiming, he got the point. if he answered wrong, he didn't get the point. kinda funny.



The bow holding arm was always out of the sleeve during the competition.


the single hot dude there:


she was pretty amazing. great form. the draw:


and release:


then they each had to put a stake in the mound of dirt to signify how many hits they got. there was also some rule about the placement on the mound and such but i didn't catch all that:


the 2 team leaders went at the end. their shots were 2 points a piece:


waiting for the results:


it was a beautiful day. the light was very bright so my shots are a bit over exposed but after a string of rainy days, i was happy for the good weather:




as it was health day, i decided to improve mine a bit by taking a lengthy walk through the imperial grounds:





it was a gorgeous day to be outside: