Date: Sunday 27 October 2019
Location: Collingwood Town Hall
Event Time: 11am - 4pm
Workshop Time: 12.15pm - 12:45pm and 2.15pm - 2:45pm
The JCAF focuses on mutual interaction & audience participation to enrich the cultural exchange experience through workshops, performances, music & art exhibition.
A big thank you to everyone who visited our little information booth outside of the Collingwood Town Hall (even when it started to rain and we had to scramble to pack up and cover our equipment!) and participated in our introduction to Kyudo workshops! It has been great meeting people and to see such keen interest from everyone had been a real highlight of our day.
Thank you to the VKA committee who were hard at work in the cold and in the rain for the whole day, and to all the VKA members who dropped by our stall to say Hi after their training!
We've hosted a competition challenging the public to see how long the participants can last in Kiza - the person who lasts the longest wins first prize!
The rules were simple: 1. Must be in proper form 2. Must hold the bow and arrows correctly 3. Need to hold ikasu with one knee raised at the correct height 4. Time starts when the arrow is nocked on the string
It was a tough challenge, and we weren't going easy on people! We checked the knee position every few minutes, and nudged the participants back into place whenever we see any slack in their form (we were pretty strict judges)!
People lasted anywhere from 2 minutes to 22 minutes (which we thought were a great effort already), however, we were absolutely blown away at our winner of the day, Mr Boris Hou, who sat in the cold holding the painful position for one solid hour (bordering supernatural)!!!
Congratulations Boris, a job well done - we hope you've enjoyed the tickets to the Japan Film Festival to view any standard screening of your choosing, kindly sponsored by the Japan Film Festival. The JFF will be showing in Melbourne over 21 November - 1 December. Find out more: https://japanesefilmfestival.net/
We would also like to give a massive thank the Japan Culture and Art Festival organisers for allowing us the opportunity in participating this event, and for putting together such a successful festival and ensuring everyone had a fantastic experience (and for all the photos and videos taken for us on the day). All photo credits below goes to Yuka Ito from JCAF!
A bit of our workshop demonstration was captured on video by JCAF organisers. Here we were demonstrating the basics of the shaho hassetsu (eight steps of shooting), with participants following along with gomu yumi or a spare yumi. Our competition 'Who Can Last the Longest in Kiza?' is also in progress in the background!