UCL Lost Boys

In the stupidest of ways too.

It’s not me being busier at work and therefore needing to stay late and miss keiko (an event rare in itself) but something far more Japanese.:

The complexities of topping oneself at the most inconvenient time for the rest of the travelling public.

The Japanese have a soft spot for ending their own lives when things go wrong at the best of times, but the new year has brought a spate of self termination. And an intriguing pattern, it seems to happen between 6 and 8pm, roughly. Ie, Tanaka Taro has a shittier than usual day at work, get’s fired or something (happening a lot in the news right now) and decides enough is enough, the world hates him, and decides to shuffle of this mortal coil, right in to the path of the Yamanote line.

Which happened yesterday, about 10 minutes before I arrived at the station. Cheers then. Bugger trying to navigate a round about route to and from the dojo and add 30 minutes to either side of my journey. I went home instead.

And the up shot? I’m sure this is only the start of it…

*sigh*

So kendo has been fairly quiet recently, mostly because I’ve been keeping my head down and trying to just get on with it. Keiko is still continuing a pace though, expecially now with the wife having finished work it’s easier for me to bugger off to keiko now. Which I do. So we’ve increased keiko from 4 back up to 5 times a week (mostly), which is pleasing.

The World Championships are this year, however, and now less than 7 months away. 7 months is not a long time. The team hasn’t been picked yet, but I’m keeping up the practise so that if the call comes I can say I haven’t been slacking!

Still working on the same stuff, though my seme is starting to show some improvements these days, with people actually telling me they feel really pressured when they fight me, which is good!If anything I feel like recently I’ve been able to apply a much more sensible logic to it, and use observation combined with this in making ever better openings. To support this I got two pretty dam good men-uchi at the weekend from a guy who I’ve had trouble with up to now.

On the flip side I think my strikes are still a touch light, so part of the focus is to put more snap in there, so that the strikes have more power for the same amount of force, if that makes sense.

An interesting point from keiko yesterday actually…. I was training with Mitsubishi Bank, and the standard guy wasn’t there so there was a different guy doing the gourei. One of the first things he said (and mentioned every now and then throughout) was to remember to actively concentrate on each and every single attack you do. Now not to say I don’t, but having the reminder made me focus on it a lot more and made the kihon feel a lot more productive for me than it normally does. Like I was actually making good progress for a change.

Concentrate more and things improve? Who’d of thought that!

Only 5 more weeks and I’m going to be a dad! Blimey.

The Mrs is HUGE now, and the wee ‘un moves around to the extent that her belly does when he stretches out. It’s freaky watching here stomach move around!

And much to my surprise, I’m actually not worried by the prospect of being a parent. I’ve heard from countless people xyz and 123 advice and anecdotes (mostly “Oh, it’ll change your life!”. No shit. Thank you for that peerless nugget of advice. You must have had a hard time thinkiing it up by yourself) but can honestly say I’m rearry looking forward to it.

He better have good footwork.

I had to explain to a Japanese colleague what LOLhead meant, and why I called him it.

Odd.

So, plenty of people who do kendo greet the New Year with a “wish list” of things they want to change or do, and the attitude they want to take in to keiko. Only the part-timers and Sunday Samurai don’t think about it (you know who you are).

What is it for me? Fairly simple really. I want to use my shinai less in seme, and make the threat the implication of attack instead of the denial of theirs. This will hopefully bring about an increase in oji waza for me, which is the second thing. I want my oji waza to become natural, which involves giving them a chance to hit me. This one will be harder because up until now my tactic has been to step out of their distance as they attack and then attack what they open in their failed shikake waza. I’m going to keep this but try and add the extra layer of flexibility that good, natural oji waza can add.

Finally, I want to sharpen up my general datotsu. This is two fold for me: firstly, my feet, as ever. I want to continue to improve my foot work. To make the movement before the attack smaller, faster and sharper, and then during the attack I want to use my left leg more and step forward with my right more ie: a wider fumikomi. The second part is to push forward with the left more and force it into the driving seat, and lever it more at the end of the attack.

Not that much to think about then….

Yesterday was the first keiko back of the year. I haven’t been arsed to write anything since then but I’ve been up to a little. Got a new computer (which is a total fucking beast for a non-gamer’s home PC), got a dirt cheap new set of armour too, which I am well pleased with, from Eiko. Did loads of shopping, a bit of cleaning, and no kendo. Really none, between the 28th and yesterday.

And it felt great to be back in the dojo.

All day yesterday I was sure that I couldn’t be assed with it. I hadn’t slept well, I was knackered, I was really busy at work, and it would have been easier to go home. And maybe last year I would have done. But over the New Year break we went to a local temple to pay our dues (heh) and one of the “fortunes” that I got was if I work hard I’ll get what I want. So I made my New Years resolution (one of a few) to apply this to kendo. Always go for that extra kakarigeiko. Always go for the teachers I didn’t like practising with. Get as much as I can from each one.

So with this in mind, in the pissing down rain, and tired and hungry, aI made the trek to the bingo hall. While wondering what the fuck exactly it was that I thought I was doing, because I was really not in good shape.

Thank god I went. It took a while to bruxh the holiday cobwebs away, but it was great. And a bizarre feeling of (Bushism on) naturalness (bushism off) that I could have sworn I didn’t have. And a great debana men and a spanking kote too. Not a bad start to the year. And I even pushed myself to go in for the extra kakarigeiko, and to practise with the guy I didn’t enjoy with too. Just got to keep it up…

And that’s all you’re gonna get from me.