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!