UCL Lost Boys

This

Should I bother?

I’ve been toying with the idea for a while, purely because of some of the absurd stream of concious type thoughts I have during my dull train journeys, from work or the dojo.

Twitter has been in the news here alot recently, because it’s one of those big growing things that Japan has suddenly grasped and become obssesed with (some record was broken recently, like the 100th twat or someting, and a Japanese dude claimed it apparently), and it’s use is becoming more and more every day, so I’m tempted…..

The down side of course is it’s just more to do……..so can I be bothered…..might be fun, might be balls….

I’m finally going home for the first time in more than 3 years, at the end of next month, for a paltry week (it’s all we could manage!!!). In the past couple of weeks I’ve had to turn down 1 booze up, 1 keiko kai, 1 family road trip to Nagano, and 2 shiai for this…….it better be fucking worth it…..

So it ended up that the trots was the mere start of it, and I ended up sick enough last week to take time of work and seek drugs from those schysters otherwise know as Japanese doctors.

*incidentally, they gave me 6 (yes, SIX) different types of medicine, which my wife duely confiscated 4 of as soon as I got home

Finally being better, and no longer pooping like a champion race horse (that’s just a figure of speech, in reality I have no idea how a champion race horse would drop one, and have no desire to find out. I imagine it being something like 2 girls 1 cup, just without the girls. Or the cup, for that matter), I managed to haul ass to the dojo last night for my first keiko in 9 days. It was fucking awful. Like, really, truly awful. I’ve lost all of my stamina, and at the worst possible time, the middle of summer. My arms were already killing me after the suburi, and by the end of keiko I was done. If I was a sausage, I would have been at the put-a-fork-in-me stage.

Not happy. I’m gonna have to get back in to the exercise thing to sort this out. I want to have my stamina back to some respectable level before the end of summer, so that once I get back from my trip back to blighty I’m ready to tear it up proper like.

This is going to hurt…

I’ve had a medium level dose of the squits (Low being simply inconvenient, medium meaning that I’m visting the toilet in double figures, High would be explosive) and I don’t know why.

It’s not food, because even the water I’m drinking is different to the day before (ie bottled and not tap), so I’ve no idea whats given me the runs!

Not nice to have the belly gargle half way through a meeting…..or the constant fear that I might simply shart and end it all.

I went to a competition again a couple of days ago, the Nakano kumin Taikai. It’s a 5 man team competition that Kobukan won last year, so we had the defending champ pressure to live up to!

Oops….

We went out in the second round. The first round was a 5-0 cruiser, with everyone working well. And then the second round, and what was basically the final. We were facing what is probably recognised as the strongest dojo in the ward, Tokyo Shudokan. Senpo draw, Jiho 2-1, Chuken 0-2, Fukusho 2-1…….and then I lost 2-1. A draw would have done it but lookig back I don’t think a draw was ever on the cards. So out we went.

It wasn’t all bad though. Obviously the result fucking sucks, but I did actually get a couple of things out of it. First, I lost ippon from what I currently see as my big weakness. Why is this good? Because I needed this to firmly hammer it in that this is wrong (my long term reader – note singular – will remember that I learn best from having done it in shiai), so this will help. I’ve no doubt that I’ll get slapped a couple more times like that too, but it will only serve to cement it. It is definitely one of those things that is on it’s way out.

The other good thing is that the ippon I scored in the second match (from being 0-1 down) came about by doing what I have been working on none stop for the past year, since Brazil. Pressured seme, a hard chushin, and not moving when they come in. So when he came in for kote, I simply stepped back while keeping my chudan, he inevitably missed because there was nothing there, and I took hikimen. I was very happy with that, I don’t mind telling you. Then I lost kote, which still sucks balls.

But the important thing, at least for now, is that

1) I got something good and useful, in terms of feedback on what I am doing now and confirmation of my biggest weakness

and

2) I got to write my name on a posh decorative ribbon that remains a permanent part of the winners flag, in big black marker pen.

Snoogins.

And the hansoku that the title speaks of? One team had a HACHIDAN as their taisho. No joke. Fucking cheats! I hope they lost.

To B-day users everywhere: Have you ever tried to fart whilst having your asshole cleaned out by the spray? Due to reasons that my pride will not allow to be divulged, I would not recommend it….

As I’m sure many of my 3 readers have figured out, I practise with a guy who passed his hachidan in Kyoto last month. All hail the mighty O!

Obviously, this is a good thing, but I’ve been giving it a little thought as to why, exactly, it’s a good thing, for me at least.

Well firstly, I practise with him at least once every week, twice where I can. Why is this important? Well, it means that, in my own little way, I know him, him and his kendo. There is no mystery, there is no super special quality that I can’t see. I’ve hit him, he’s hit me, and it’s been round and round like that for 3 years. But what it also means is that I recognise what he’s done. I watched a DVD of his second round, and basically saw in there everything that we normally see in keiko with him, all his habits (you can easily recognise the way he walks and “draws” his shinai! heh), the techniques he uses, even, to some extent, the set ups, having been on the recieving end enough times.

So what does that all mean? Well, that he’s a normal guy doing normal guy’s kendo. This is important because he’s not a “pro” in any sense of the word. He’s not a copper, or a Phys Ed teacher, he just practises a bunch in all his regular haunts, and to me, this is the real inspiration of having a “shin-hachidan” where you practise. Nothing changes, obviously, but thats the thing, you’ve been practising with the guy already, and the next day is no different, he was already hachidan, just needed the bit of paper to show it. And by way of the keiko that he does with you, and the way that he has a chin wag and a cup of tea after keiko (and some times some fancy chocolate cake if he’s been over seas recently! Can’t get enough chocolate cake!) you see that, hachidan or not, he’s the same guy he was last week, last month, last year, also looking for the same things as me, to improve his kendo and to enjoy what he does. Just to illustrate this point, I sat down with him after keiko a few weeks before he passed, and we watched a video of his keiko just gone, and he was pointing out to me where he thought he went wrong…..I don’t think I’ve met someone of that grade, who is quite that down to earth, maybe, ever.

It’s important that this is the case, and that he isn’t some far away rozzer who teaches kidoutai teams as a job 3 times a day, because it means that as lofty a pinnacle as hachidan is, that we can all get there, if we simply take a leaf out of the books of guys like the O (that doesn’t mean ripping pages out of The Definitive Guide, by the way…).

And most of all? I still get to pound on him and have him try to push me into the kancho-shitsu whenever he can, and keiko is still as much fun with him as it ever was. All in all, he may have passed his Hachidan, but I think I’ve taken away just as much!