A couple more pics of the wee fella. He’s growing fast now. Really, he’s a little porker. I’ve checked around and he’s simply huge for his age (over 7kg at 3 months….) but I don’t care, it means he’s healthy! I just wish he’d sleep. He doesn’t even cry in the evenings, just lies there in your arms until 1am….
I think he looks really Japanese in this pic. He looks a lot like his cousin did at this age too. Maybe it’s just the light…?
Fat little git.
I’ve noticed that my posts are getting a little sporadic at the moment. This is probably work related (where I do most of this. Lunch times are more sunny here now with the improving weather, so I’m eating my yaki soba in the park! All good!) and mostly around that I’m just too fucking busy. However today I scored us a major new client, so I’m having a lazy 5 minutes to congratulate myself.
Another reaons I haven’t written much in the last two weeks is because I have been sick as fucking hells bells. Two days off work and a ruined shiai (still fought, but it wasn’t great), and making the baby ill too. Topper.
The shiai was a very mixed bag. I won the first match two nothing but was just no where near settled, and the ippon were very hit and miss. The second match proved it too. Although I was far more settled and in the swing of things I lost in encho. There are a number of reasons for this:
1) I was senpo. I haven’t been senpo in 5 years and was clearly not happy. This contributed much to not settling down enough
2) I felt like shite. ’nuff said
3) The refs were frankly diabolical. I say this because even though I won the previous match, I didn’t really feel like I had. The second ippon in particular puzzled even me, and I scored it.
4) The combination of the above 3 points just meant that my natural kendo was not even close to coming out.
This was further compounded at the Tokyo Electricity gashuku that I went to last weekend. I was 2 for 2 on losses. Now, I will say that both guys were honestly a country mile ahead of me in terms of kendo, really, the gap was enourmous. But, that doesn’t excuse. And that doesn’t excuse the fact that I was not settled again. So lesson learned. Calm the fuck down, and get on with what I know I’m supposed to be doing, watching, seme, forcing their hand, keeping calm. It works, and I know it works, I’ve just got to bloody remember it.
And when it works, it works and how. I got the Tsuki of the Century last night at the bingo hall. Grrr. Fucking mind games!
Last night I had the single best practise I’ve had, easily this year, and maybe since coming to Japan. Really.
I wasn’t thinking it was going to be anything spectacular on my way. Tired and irriated from work, I just wanted to get in and get on with it. Looking back, that was definately one thing that helped. The other was my focus on relaxed techniques.
First, and I think I’ve said it before, I’m really happy with the shinai I’m using right now. I’ve got 11 of exactly the same shinai. Fat handles, fat dobari, light kensen, and easy to move. Just like I love. So being comfortable with the shinai means I can essentially forget about it. This is important because if you begin with fighting your shinai you put alot of un-needed strength into what you are doing.
The second point was that by keeping everything as relaxed as possible in my kihon, even with my kakarigeiko, this fed directly in to my jigeiko. Everything was fluid and fast, my mental state was nice and calm, and as such I felt totally at ease with literally everything I was doing, and able to smash the crap out of the guys I was fighting.
And afterwards, because I wasn’t putting strength in to my attacks and extra power that wasn’t really needed, I didn’t feel knackered afterwards either. Actually, strangely invigorated.
Everyone’s a winner!
So, one of, if not THE most famous kenshi of modern times, Miyazaki Masahiro sensei, passed his hachidan exam a week ago in Kyoto, at the age of 46, on his first attempt, further cementing his god like status. Especially with foreigners who don’t know any other ones. Fnar.
Anyway, someone uploaded his gradings on to youtube, see for yourself:
(you fight 4 times if you get that far in the hachidan exam, though most are cut after 2, roughly 90% or so) So there it is for the world to see the master……and I’m not entirely sure how he passed.
I know, I know. You’re saying, HOW COULD YOU! or THE VILLAINY! Or maybe something more simple like YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!! And you’d probably be quite right, after all, I’m only a lowly 4th dan, he’s just passed 4 higher than that (amongst his other achievements), and was done so by two seperate panels of hachidan hanshi sensei, but like anyone else I’m entitled to my opinion (which you obviously want to read!! Yeah) so fuck off. But why do think that maybe he shouldn’t have passed (there, I said it!)?
The first and biggest thing that struck me was that it seemed really forced, not really natural. I’ve watched MUCH of Miyazaki sensei’s shiai, one of my favourite techniques is one I first saw him do on video, but this was an obviously restrained Miyazaki compared to the confident one I’d seen in videos. And the zanshin after his menuchi doesn’t add to the image either, like he’s fully aware that it needs to be done, which is why it’s there, as opposed to something more fluid. It really seems to me like he is holding his natural self back, and a lot. Take a look at the second fight of the second round, because this one in particular looks like he got at least moderately owned because of this.
The other really noticeable thing is that he just doesn’t appear that “graceful” through out. Again, maybe this is my lowly 4th dan mind speaking (of course it is!!) but I’ve always thought that hachidan’s, passed or grading hopefuls or otherwise, need an element of gracefulness about their kendo, regardless of their style. Certainly the great majority of what I have had the opportunity to see and practise with, including the younger ones, had at least an element of this, but I was really struggling to see it in the videos. Again, maybe I am wrong, but take a look for yourself. For me I think it is directly linked to what I said above, about having to hold back too much, and restrain himself.
That then brings a question about gradings in general that I have long thought about, really for years, in my own grading persuits: If your own natural kendo is not fit to pass, but kendo that you do specifically for the sole function of passing a grading is, is that right? For you? For the grade? I’m sure you can guess from what I have written so far in this post is that I believe No, it is not enough, purely because it’s not really your kendo that you are doing at the grading, it is what you are aware the grading panel want for a textbook pass. But if the general picture of your kendo outside of the grading is not what you do in the grading, again, is that right? Some people are simply happy to have the grade, and that’s up to them, of course, because we are all in this thing for different reasons and goals. But for me, I want the kind I do all the time to be under scrutiny, not the kendo that the book says will pass the grading. For me, this is a far more natural path up the grading ladder, but like I say, that’s just me.
So back to Miyazaki sensei. Well, I could say more (like he does almost exclusively men, or doesn’t really control his opponent enough to not get stuck on a kensen several times, including his shotachi in one of them which is arguably the most important cut in the whole jitsugi – the start of the second clip especially) but I’ll let you watch the videos and decide for yourself if it was his kendo or his name that passed the grading.
On the flip side, maybe I was expecting too much? Hoping to see something special given what he has done in pretty much everything else he’s entered? But I’m not sure…
I’m only saying what others are thinking….
But he was on TV!
This is my first kendo teacher, from Oxford Uni, all those years ago. So yes, it’s all his fault.
His head isn’t normally that big, my phone did someting to the picture and now he looks like something out of a cartoon. And he was doing nothing to do with kendo, or his speciality either….bizarre!
For some reason Axel refuses to go to sleep anything vaguely resembling early at the moment. I was still awake and holding him at 1am this morning. Although not a regular occurance I could do with more than 6 hours sleep after keiko….the joys of fatherhood! Oh, and he pee’ed on my in the shpwer yesterday too. Cheers then.
So, now that I’m back in to a vague keiko routine (though a little lighter and a little less frequent until the arse end of my Plantar Fasciitis is done) I’m enjoying myself and chucking myself round a lot, but fucking hell am I knackered. I went to Shinjuku last night and had an awesome keiko with Kurihara sensei (ex-keishicho and all round great geezer. I love keiko with this guy, he flies around like he’s still in high school and loves a ruck) and tsukied another hachidan too. All good. Actually, my tsuki is coming on great guns at the moment, bizarelly. I won all of my ippon shobu at the bingo hall with Tsuki on Monday, and then got a couple of treats last night too. Let’s see if that carries on for tomorrow shall we?
There is always a down side though. I’ve lost some of the fighting distance I had gained before the injury, partly out of preservation and partly out of a lack of kihon geiko for 4 weeks. That’s point number one for the post-Golden Week binge. Point number 2 is my debana men has gone a bit skew whiff, for the same reason, so I need more kihon to practise that.
On the plus side, the Tokyo Electricity team invited me to their “extra curricular” weekend keiko over 4 weeks in May and June, for preperation for the Kanto region Company Team taikai. This is good because these guys are all fucking awesome and they’ll be doing much kihon too, one assumes, as well as a ton of shiai geiko as well.
Oh, and another little goody, my enfored break has gifted me with a new sense of aggression which has helped muchly in that last few practises as well. I think I had actually calmed down too much recently so that I had become too passive, even in shobu, so having this edge back, and the applied pressure it brings, is definately a helping hand. I’ve just got to apply it in the right direction now.
So, a bit of a mixed bag, but as a general rule lots of black fruit gums and not too much liquorice.