UCL Lost Boys

The boy has been getting bigger and bigger recently, and doing things like learning to stand on his own,  eating more and more different things, pooping all over himself and the high chair, and breaking the wireless mouse on the computer by lobbing it across the living room. Seriously, he just grabs stuff and throws it over his shoulder.

Cheeky little blighter.

And this little sculpture too, one of my greatest works:

On the way home from the dojo at the weekend I was extolling the virtues of baby breaking my shit to one of the teachers, as we walked back to the station after practise. He relayed a great story of his where, after spending 200,000 yen on a nice big comuter for his home, he got back one day and tried to turn the computer on, with no joy. Looking down at the machine he saw that the disk drive had 2 knives sticking out if which had cookies strategically inserted next to them as well. Unsurprisingly, when he took it for repair he was advised to bin the thing and buy a new one.

Tidying up a few days ago I picked up an empty DVD case that was missing both discs. The wife had no clue where they were, not in the player and they weren’t in the immediate vicinity either. After some serious searching I managed to find both discs, rammed under the carpet with bits of chewed up biscuit stuck to the bottom. I daren’t put them in the player…..I don’t think technology and biscuits mix well….

Little bugger.

What the fuck is up with people here? Eh?

My contact with one of my clients has gone totally fucking snooker loopy recently, and has decided that making unreasonable demands of me and my staff is the order of the day, whether that is criticising the work I do despite not giving me the info to do it (including refusing when asked DIRECTLY) or telling someone that they have to predict the birth of their child to book their due holiday in good time, I just can’t get my head around it.

Some people need “lacks common sense and people skills” branding clearly on their forehead as a warning to anyone talking to them that they are about to enter the fucking twilight zone!

So, what AM I going to be working on in the next 6 weeks……..

I’ve been having some good practises recently. If you read this drivel on a vaguely regular basis you will know that one of my arch rivals is the captain of the power station team. Well I finally beat the fucker last week. 2-1, admittedly, but that is an enormous step forwards, because being able to beat him was a bench mark for improvement that I had set myself. Of course, it will mean fuck all if I don’t do it again, so consistency here is key.

I’ve also generally had some awesome practises recently. My general posture is continuing to improve, and my attacks are a far better “shape” than before too. Combined this means that things are more relaxed and finally (after more than 10 years…) starting to feel natural, which means my kendo is coming out again (not of closet. Not ready for that).

So the current emphasis, as well as just generally continuing to work on the above and my other points (good, concise footwork, not moving my hands, fully extended cutting), is Seme.

I practised with Yanai sensei two months ago (I have been bizarelly unable to get the time to do so again recently) and the main thing he said is that I need to be more active and pro-active, ie seme. So I’ve been working on upping my work rate in regards to applying pressure on the dude in front of me. It’s working after a fashion, and I am generally happy with the direction, so it’s really about fine tuning.

The combination of not moving the hands and some good pressure works wonders too. You stop the guy from coming (he’ll just impale himself – translated = I’m finally understanding the fundamentals of chushin a little more now….) and when you go in, if you keep them there as you start your attack, they have less options in their defence, because you don’t give them any. Set up over the “long game” ie not just diving in for a fast powerful men but setting up the decisive ippon, creates some very useful opportunities, that I am again finally beginning to be able to exploit. For instance, my debana kote, after a 2 odd year hiatus (ie when I came to Japan and reached the conclusion that I had to reconstruct my entire kendo….) is making a welcome return, and my tsuki has suddenly turned into a real weapon too.

So that’s it for now. More over the course of the next 6 weeks as I start to tune things more…..

I got the email I’ve been waiting for recently, I’ve been picked for the National team to represent the country in Hungary, at the European Kendo championships, in April this year. 6 weeks to go……

Now normally, you’d get me jumping up and down, giving it the spiel and laying out what my focus is going to be between now and then. I’ll do that, but I’ve got to say something first.

This is the first time in 6 years that I have been asked to pay to represent great Britain.  It’s not the first time, so you’re not going to get indignation and outrage from me (just in case your were hoping for a curse-ridden rant!), but I had really thought that we’d moved on from asking people who are going to, essentially, be the international face of the association, to pay for the responsibility as well.

I will always be happy and honoured to bear the flag on my zekken. I always have been, and it’s been a part of me and my kendo for all but a single year (the first!) of my kendo life. That’s a total of 9 years, and being a member of this team is one of THE most important things in my life to me. And I will go to Hungary and give my very being for the team, to take us as far as we can. I truly believe that we are capable of winning this competition this year, and I will be dissapointed not to be in the final, of both the teams and indies. But asking the  guys to pay is, just, a sad return, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the support that the squad, and myself personally, have recieved from the BKA, but this regression back to the old days, of essentially having the team that can afford to go, and not the team that can win the thing, is a potential step back to the days when team members who were stronger got left behind in favour of team members who are richer, and such potentially good results were left floundering in a sea of bank balances and pay slips.

Don’t get me wrong, this is by no means a rant, in any way really. At the end of the day, of course, I’ll go, I WANT to go, and I’ll pay my bit, and I’ll give absolutely everything that I have and I am possibly capable of giving, as I always have done, because it really is this important to me, and I really hate to lose. But a little part of me will be sad inside that, despite the significant improvements in the last 3 years (the team got medals for the first time in something like 10+ years in Portugal, then repeated that in Finland, cementing our rise and place among the top teams)  the value of the national team to the association has dropped to this point.

Not angry, not even dissapointed, just a little bit sad. It’s not really all about the money, I can justify that to the Mrs (she knows how important this is to me as well!), it’s more about the sentiment and meaning that this represents.

Get in there!

Get, The Fuck, in there!

I are ordering a new set of bogu this week. Valentine’s day negotiations went well, which means that if they make it quick I can take it to the European champs too….

Pics when it comes!

But I am slowly trying to convince my wife to allow me to buy some more armour (set number 6)….update soon…..if it’s worth it, that is!

Every time I go to Shinjuku for keiko recently, a new security guard asks me if I’m going to play basketball. It’s not:

“What are you here for?”

“Kendo”

No, it’s:

“Are you here for the basketball?”

And it’s every single time. How does that work…? Because I am tall? Has he not noticed that the entire basketball group is all chinese….? Or my shinai bag……?

Having done some major hansei after my idiocy over the new year, and gotten back into keiko and work (fucking work!) I polished off January with a small competition last sunday, the Jousai Goku (roughly translated as 5 wards west of the castle).

Involving (as the name suggests) 5 wards, Nakano, Shinjuku, Suginami, Setagaya and Shibuya, with the hosting area allowed 2 teams. Sounds small? Think again, because it is 17 people per team, and each match lasts for closing in on an hour.

So how did it go? Well, another mixed bag. It helped cement the conclusion that much of my shiai issue is mental, and that with that sorted I can do well. I had a very average first shiai, where nerves made me stiff and unwilling to attack, then the polar opposite in the second shiai where I scored men from something that felt like slightly outside of to-ma and ended up on the other side of the shiaijo when I was done.  Basically, without the nerves I can keep the variety, focus and concentration of my normal keiko right at the front.

I was happy with how my kendo was technically (following on from the improvements I’ve been trying to make for a while now) so this is for me the last big hurdle before the Euros. If I am in the state of mind and condition that I was in the second shiai, and can maintain it.

Time to start researching this stuff again I guess….meh.  Anyone got any ideas?

I don’t normally apologise for anything, but I wrote something on here that I really shouldn’t have, and regardless of the reasoning that I used to justify it to myself, I want to apologise to the people that I’ve pissed off, offended or otherwise effected, in particularly the totally ruined relationship with a previous best friend that I now have.

I’m truly sorry.

And I’m not even sure that I spelled that right either. But who cares? You? Fucking spelling nazi.

So why am I a hypocrite? Weeeeeell (large in take of breath) I’ve started doing suburi at home. I’m not going through the done-to-death 1000 a day for 1000 days, mostly because I haven’t got the spare hour it would take, and I don’t want to do 1000 suburi, ever.

So why am I doing it? Well first of all, if you’ve read the last post (you might have done, if your are at least not as lazy as me) you will see I’ve given myself quite a few objectives that need working on, in my opinion (hands still, more and better seme, keeping on with the sliding foot and seme “over” my opponent etc), but over the last couple of keiko I’ve also noticed more stuff that I think needs work, of a slightly more fundamental nature. Because not everywhere I go to does kihongeiko, I’m running out of options, apart from one: The dreaded “suburi at home” route.

So I started. Nothing serious, like I said, just 150 swings of the stick then done. 50 men, 50 kote, then 50 more men. OK, but why, I hear you enquire politely. Well, mostly, I want to improve my kote uchi, and the sharpness of my cuts in general, and I’ve forever been an advocate of “fix it in kihon first”, so without the kihon, we have suburi.

It’s also presenting a challenge in terms of quality, that I hadn’t realised until I started either, in that often in the dojo, at least with suburi, I just go through the motions, and use it more as a warm up. This has gotten better over time, but when I do the suburi independant of any other keiko, it stands out as not enough, so this is also going to be an exercise in improving my concentration as well, which can only be beneficial, right? The first session was ok, and went past the intended 150 because I wasn’t happy with the suburi I was doing so continued past 200 until I was happy. Yesterday was a vast improvement over other days in terms of both relaxation and concentration, particularly the latter half of the last 50, which were just nice. Problem? Getting the other 125 of the fucking things up to the same standard.

But it’s a start.

Oh and why bother at all? Well, I’ve figured that I am comfortable enough, after 10 years, with kendo in general, my own kendo, and my own ability to honestly analyze (heh, ANALyze) what I am doing to get something of substance out of it.

Shall we see.