this is like so japanese tv stuff so after almost 20 years of being here are you more japanese
in your mannerisms your speech you've changed a lot yes i think so
it looks so difficult and i'm gonna give it a try
welcome to the north side of tokyo have you ever wondered what it would be like
if you left your country and spent the next 20 years living in japan
you came over here fully immersed in the language culture married a local had children
here and barely even spoke your own language anymore well i know a girl that did exactly
that she's from new zealand and after we get dressed up she's got a lot to tell us let's go
so who is this western woman who devoted her life to studying the traditions of japan her name is
jessica and she's from new zealand also known as the kiwi in a kimono she is a japanese tv star
and also the ambassador for tourism in saitama prefecture and she's really good at archery
are you satisfied i'm not really yeah. Perfectionist
I got 2 out of 4, which isn't bad.
so i'm here with jessica today from new zealand
who's doing the coolest hobby you could possibly do in japan
and i'm gonna give it a try it looks so difficult i'm gonna it might be a an episode of fail army
yeah i did that before no wait no i didn't yeah i did one time in summer camp man
20 years ago so we'll see so this is made of straw and it's like compressed together and we
stand about a meter away and we should into here and as you can see behind you there's a mirror
and no self teaching right this is not something you can just teach yourself
no i do not recommend self teaching for kyudo so it's just you do a little warm up before you go
in front of the target. You can join in.
the kyudo teacher is a really nice guy despite the fact that he could
slice you in half with an arrow in three seconds if he wanted to
i feel like a big falcon is gonna land on my hand
our teacher is a competing kyudo master with over 20 years of experience
but i was about to show him and everybody else how it's done
is this your full-time job i wish it was i wish it was a full-time job unfortunately
it's not my full-time job and you've been doing this for how many years now for
just under four years one of the most interesting things that i noticed about jessica was comparing
her old english news interviews to her english today it seems to have changed
i live in saitama at the moment which is a prefecture a region north of auckland sorry
make that north of tokyo listening to a clip like that that sounds like a typical new zealander but
that's not how she sounded when i met her today but perhaps that was just because she was speaking
japanese all day and suddenly had to switch to english when she was getting interviewed by me
so how much would one of these bows be
glass fiber and carbon between the us dollars about 300 upwards
bamboo bamboo made by hand so there's a craftsman that will take years to make one bamboo
upwards of a thousand or two thousand dollars so after almost 20 years of being here are
you more japanese in your mannerisms your speech like you changed a lot yes i think so
the way you move your body and the way you act i think it's probably like this two-hand
wave this is like so japanese tv stuff um i didn't notice that. You do TV. so i get why are you waving
with two hands and i'm like what is this not done you're looking at yourself on tv like i've changed
you've taught yourself japanese and you've done really well thank you
very well that's awesome yes i'm self-taught i just learned from tv mostly from tv yes anime
uh no just regular daytime variety tv okay wow amazing now we're gonna do two
3 misses
Yeah, I didn't hit it for 6 months.
oh really for six months so i don't have to feel too bad about that
six months i did something it was just around
you should go have a look and see where your hours went okay did you just wake up one day and say
i want to shoot arrows at things um i've always loved archery as a child about 12 years ago inside
of my saw practice by chance and i decided after i saw it like that's what i want to do
12 years ago so how many years have you been in japan i've been in japan about 18 years oh my gosh
that's that might be me one day because uh i'm already at almost 10 in china and japan though
just three years in in japan so far six in china and wow so i feel like i'm looking into my own
future like i'm not gonna be doing kyudo as well i hope so well that would be cool that would be cool
okay baby you're the target next so just stand right here and we're all gonna go over there
so you're a mom too and you come here on the weekends to relieve some stress
and how many kids do you have so i have three children and the eldest my oldest daughter is
13. i have a 10 year old and a 7 year old mothers are the main caregivers here so
we kind of have a duty to look after the kids however me being a new zealander
i think that i should have time to myself sometime i think so too
yeah i think that's fair for us it's like normal right but here it's not
if you're not like 100 devoted then you're a bad mom or people say stuff really yeah yes
yes because this is like fun right it's like a hobby
right i should be you know but i can't do that so yeah i mentally uh um
a much more a nice person and a better mom i think if i practice to be honest
thank you jessica thanks for showing me around no problem okay all right until next time okay bye