Japanic Attack

Things that are freaking unbelievably awesome:http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UXR2SWKAS4URACRBAEKSFFA?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=10414645 In other, shall we say "related" news, my first kyu test for aikido is on Saturday, and AHH!  AHHH! AHH! I have been, shall we say, more than a little nervous about it.  I got a really extremely unimpressed performance review last Thursday after class.  Part of my test is called ryokatatedori jyiuwaza -- that's someone grabbing for both your wrists and you not getting killed and not hurting them neither, aikido style (free technique, I mean).  Thursday they put me up for three minutes and were really unhappy about it afterwards, but they told me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to be doing better, and I've been working on it a lot.  I think I realized that I was scared all throughout the bout on Thursday, and felt like I was competing with everybody that was coming up to grab me.  "That Nakata san!  I'll show him!"  "Take that, Murakami-san!  You're no goddamn samurai!"  Anyway, I did some resting and thinking and reading afterwards; came across a bit in a really good essay by Ron Kobayashi sensei (out of the book Aikido in America) where he talks about things that make aikido special, and one of the ones that shone out to me as something I have STOPPED thinking about was the "True victory is self-victory" idea.  It's one of those things you read and you're like "well yeah, duh," but I had been letting my training be very competition based and really been ignoring that whole inside part of it.  It's a lot about what I'm doing to the other guy.  So I've been keeping that as a mantra and my training has gotten a LOT better since then.  I've been able to be a lot more calm and less scared and less aggressive (when I remember), and I've been getting really good and positive feedback.  Training a LOT right now, but also being good to myself: getting good sleep, doing my laundry, eating fruit, doing sword cuts by the temple; I even cleaned up my apartment real nice and watered my plants ... oh yeah, I got plants!  I GOT PLANTS! They're wonderful.  I even got adorably cute handsome Japanese pottery to rest them each in so their water doesn't run all over my floors and cabinets.  Some are dark green and leafy, some hangy, some tree-ey, lots of little flowery ones, some frondy, and one little little piney one on my desk (but I think it's gonna get a neighbor soon!).  They make me unbelievably happy.  I'm such a dork.  There's one huge one that I have on a little stool and it just makes me feel so nice.  I like sitting under it when I iron things.  I'm such a dork. Oh yeah, so the temple thing?  One of my sempai has been teaching me about proper saburi - that's sword cutting - for aikido, and it's been super great for helping me figure out extension and posture and stuff.  He says that the way I've been doing it is the right kind of way (I imagine he means "more or less" and by which he would actually mean "less") for if I were studying kendo, but that aiki-ken is different; more extension and energy flow in different vectors and with different foci.  So I've been doing saburi in one of the courtyards by a huge temple near the city gym; it's freaking awesome.  Temple 56 of the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage path, with huge scary buddha statues and cool temple buildings and shriney things and ancient trees and stuff.  I found out that you're legally allowed to do just about anything in public places like parks or temples (anything that's normally legally acceptable, doncha know), like camping or playing games or whatever, so I figured sword practice HAS to be okay.  Right?  Right?  The first time I went I found I big tree with a little space next to it, kind of out of the way, and I could see the guys inside one the buildings eyeing me very warily the whole time I was locking up my bike and getting stuff out of my pack.  Then I took out the bokken (practice sword) and they were all like, "ohhhhhhh, he's just doing sword cuts," and all went about their normal business.  When a car rolls up and this woman gets out to talk to me, I think she's come to tell me to stop, but no, she just says, "umm, a child lost some keys here earlier...have you seen them?  And by the way, I teach a dance class here every saturday, so you should come whenever you're free."  If anything, she seemed more at ease to find me with a sword than she would have been otherwise.  Sword cuts in public at the temple.  Complete social acceptance.  This is a crazy life.   So we'll see how the test goes.  I think it should be fine; I've prepared a LOT for it (although my hamni-handachi katatedori shihonage still kinda sucks), and I still have like three or four classes to go to before the actual test.  So word.  Our dojo's shihan (that's japanese for "teacher-of-teachers," or "scarily calm powerful jedi guy") is coming down from a far-away prefecture to supervise testing, so that's an element of, how do you say, "scary" to consider.  I guess in Japan each dojo is recognized by it's connection to a particular shihan, like a lineage of touch connecting you to the aiki-Source or whatever.  Ours is named Nakamura shihan in Yamaguchi-ken - and it turns out he's actually the same dude as Allison's dojo's shihan!  Meaning he is both Allison's and my teacher - check this out: whoever your dojo's shihan is, he is also de facto "your teacher," because his is the pedagogical line you are a part of.  Even if you never see the dude.  When people ask me about training in America, my teacher was "Saotome shihan" even if I explain that I never actually got to train with or be terrified by him in person, ever.  Kinda weird, but makes a lot of sense with the way they do things over here.  There's the ostensible and the real, and sometimes they don't really have anything to do with each other. Okay, gonna go.  Got lots to do -- including rerecording my radio show since I botched the hell out of it yesterday, going to the bike shop to review my new bike ----NEW BIKE!!!!---- with the dude, Ezaki san, and see what he says, and, of course, Aikido class at 7.   Wish me luck!

Japananna Republic

Hi!!!
I’m writing from the end of a pretty long feeling day, but I wanted to get in a quick catch-up post because it’s been a while.  I can’t go to bed right away after this, although it’s late and I’m sleeeeeeepyyyyyy and really should, but I still have to hang some laundry up outside …. which seems like a really bad idea actually; it’s super super windy and the stuff I already have out there is whipping around like it’s liable to fly off the building.  Maybe I’ll just let the other stuff rot in my washer for another day and rewash it tomorrow.  Sigh.  This happens too often.
Oh shit, I think I just lost my bathrobe.  

I need to plan something or other for my san-nensei English elective class tomorrow.  It’s a funny crowd, the elective class. They’re the third year junior high kids, a small class (maybe 8 kids?) and their English abilities vary hugely – on the one hand is a kid who seems to know less English than I know Hungarian, and next to him someone who speaks like he’s being carefully computer scrambled to protect his identity from the mob or the government.  On the other hand, there’s Mia.  
Mia, in addition to having a normal-to-us sounding name, speaks English.  On the first day of school I had to go around to each of the kids and let them introduce themselves, which meant they said their names (unbelievably and thus incomprehensibly quickly) and some other stuff (one teacher had apparently taught her class the conversational phrase, “please call me,” but without teaching really why or when we might say it, so lots of the kids stood up to say things like, “my name is Koskei.  Please call me … Koskei.”  You’re the boss, Mr. Kosukei.  I mean Kosukei!  Kosukei!  Shit, sorry, I got confused.)  The forced handshake part of the introduction is also something that falls into the limbo between hysterical and endearing and awful – man, these kids suck at handshakes.  They also had to tell me ‘something about themselves,’ which meant, “I …. PLAY ….. SOCCER!”  Or, “I ….. like …. BANANA!  NO, PINEAPPLE! I LIKE …. PINEAPPLE!”  “I ….. LIKE …… CAT!”  
Now me, I like pineapple too, and cat, just never, you know, together; the tastes just don’t go right with each other.  Anyway, we’re going around the room with this, which takes an enormous amount of time and is endearing, if somewhat, shall we say, monotonous.  One kid in a third year class memorably stands up and fights out, “I LIKE ….. ORANGE….. AND …… ICE CREAM!”
“Ohhhhhhhhh!” goes the class.  “Sugoooooooiiii!”  And yes, well done; it is hard, I do realize.  Still, after four classes of this it’s become pretty grinding, especially when their vocabulary is limited across the board to fruits, sports, and animals.  Right when I think I’m reaching my wits’ end, I get to Mia.  Mia stands up, shakes my hand firmly, and says without any kind of accent, “Hi.  My name’s Mia.  I like animals, soooo … when I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian.”
No response from the class, likely because not a person could understand what she said, but me, I could have given her the Silver Cross for bravery and skill right then and there.  
So tomorrow I have the sannensei elective class – these 8 kids signed up to do these extra English lessons with me – and as of this week I’m fully in charge of planning and running it, so I gotta get something together, and something good; I really do like all these kids –especially the one who speaks through the cable TV style scrambler stuck down his throat– and they deserve a good activity.  I last had them two weeks ago, when I told them to watch a movie in English with Japanese subtitles and to write down some comments about hearing the language – if they could pick up any words, if they were dubious about the subtitling process for some things, if they heard things they wanted to understand, if they didn’t get a word of it, anything.  I actually watched the Beat Takeshi Zatoichi tonight, in Japanese sans English subtitles (it was on TV and there was nothing I could do about it).  It was a lot better the first time around when I could understand what the people were saying to each other, but it was still really good – I’d forgotten how unbelievably well done of a movie it is, how bizarre and poignant and cool.  And how well lit.  That is one well lit movie, let me tell you.  I found it on TV after turning off Lethal Weapon 3 halfway through.  A poorly lit movie, I have decided.  Lethal Weapon 3, in case it was on your Get list, is completely unbelievably terrible.  Lethal Weapon 1, enjoyable if somewhat belabored and dumb.  Lethal Weapon 2, a stretch on the ‘belabored’ and ‘dumb’ parts, but, you know, still fun.  Lethal Weapon 3?  Terrible.  Why am I watching Lethal Weapon movies, you ask?  
I think I’m working through the 80’s light-comedic light-action movies; in the last few weeks I’ve watched Kuffs, the first two Lethals Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop 1, and another one or two whose names aren’t coming to mind.  The 80’s light-action light-comedy is a theme around which we apparently made about eight hundred thousand different variations.  I think many of them are “buddy movies.”  Oh dear lord.  Ghost Busters 2 is next up for me; God help me if I ever get to Stripes.  See, I found a bunch of mediocre movies for sale at the Book Off – second hand CD’s, books, and Videos, and they’re the same price that rentals are just down the street so I got a bunch; this way I have something at my place I can watch, albeit somewhat painfully, with any Japanese friends that come over, and everyone can understand most of what’s going on (except of course that the answer to “why are we watching this?” will probably still remain a mystery).  Stupidly, I left Batman behind and someone else snatched it up.  But, you know, I’ve got 3 Lethals Weapon movies.  Thankfully, they don’t have number four, so I don’t even have to worry about trying to resist the temptation.  Yet.
Who is hammering outside at 12:10 in the morning?  Don’t they know this is Japan?  This is unbeleivable.  Oo look!  There’s monkeys on TV!  AHH!  AND SQUID!!  AHH! AHH!!!