Change the Conversation

This is the third Monday practice in a row that we haven't done mawari-geiko. On one hand it's nice because I get to choose who I practice with and at what pace, but on the other hand, I like having the timed fights at regular intervals; it's good practice for tests.

I got through the beginning 210 suburi with more ease this week, which puts my relieved faith back in the bouce-backability of youth. Don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to count on that though.

Yuko and Ito-sensei were absent again today, both for health reasons. No one is really sure when Ito-sensei might be back, but as long as he's getting better, we can wait. Donna invited me out for a drink later on, pending the result of my visa. Success or failure, we'll be drinking to it. It's the kendo way.

I did a bit of long sparring with Koyama-sensei today who informed me that I'm still coming in from the side. I'm stepping too far to my right and my shinai isn't coming in straight. It's an old habit again that I'll have to put some serious effort into the correct once again. Right foot to right foot-- that is to say, move forward with your right foot as though you mean to step on your opponent's own right foot. This will put you in the path of his center. Of course, thinking of it cause the whole tenuous form to collapse and I got progressively worse while I tried, but that's normal, and Koyama-sensei was, as ever, patient and kind.

Finally, I got to practice with Donna for an appreciable length of time today. I'd forgotten how nice it can be to practice with someone who can speak your own language. She schooled me on the floor, naturally, but she gave me some nice advice that I do appreciate: "Change the conversation. More specifically, she pointed out I have a tendency to press too far to the left with my shinai  against my opponent's shinai. For me this habit evolved from my reliance on the connection between the two shinai to judge the future actions of my opponent. Last week, Sato-sensei also pointed out a weakness in this tactic in that it frequently tilts me off-center.

This week, Donna mentioned that the connection between the two shinai is like a conversation, and my side of the conversation is very one sided and repetitive, to the point that she always knows what I'm going to do, leading to a boring and predictable keiko.

I will try harder in the future to change the conversation, and find ways to not rely so heavily on the connection between the two shiai to gauge my opponent. I'll also spend some time working on new ways of moving my shinai in relation to that of my opponent. I'm going to lose out on a lot of hits while I try this, but that's the nature of the game.

Full House

Monday practices are always full, in part because we have the entire large gym to our disposal on that day. Because we're still in January and everyone is still basking in the sense of newness and freshness of the year, Monday practices have bloated even more, to the point that we almost don't have enough room for everyone to keiko together.

Itou sensei is still recovering, though the news is that he will be at practice next week. He had a successful surgery to set the broken leg, and is expected to make a full recovery. It goes without saying that everyone breathed a very large sigh of relief at that.

Fukao sensei apparently really liked the maple sugar cookies that I brought back from Canada. He offered to give me some money to buy some more the next time I went, but it's hardly necessary. I get a tremendous amount of quality keiko and instruction from him. That's worth way more than a couple boxes of cookies in my mind. I don't mind giving them away.

Back still hurt today and I needed to take a bit of a breather to take some of the pressure off. Sitting two or three minutes in a squat position is sufficient, it seems to relax the muscles again. At least it's something that I can adjust in practice. Problems with my plantar or heaven forbid another torn groin keep me out of practice for weeks with no recourse but to let the injury heal in its own time.

I got to practice with Donna san today which was great fun, even if it was just at the end of practice for a quick ippon. Another Italian guy came too, and from what I watched of him, he's really strong.

Asahi san cracked me three times like a hammer on my men today during waza practice so hard that I actually checked my scalp after practice for blood. I'm not sure if it was a retaliation hit because I may have been hitting too solidly myself, or if he was a bit stiff as well, but my god, it's not often I see stars in practice, and three times in a row was enough to have me shaking the cobwebs out of my head before the next round. I hope I'm not going to incur permanent damage in my later years from all the head trauma I take in kendo.

I practiced a bit with Sato sensei again, but it was at the end of the line, so he was exhausted and our practice didn't last very long. I also did a bit of my own waza practice with some of the ladies during ju-geiko, mostly to correct that bent elbow thing Yamada sensei was on me about last week. Fists up and forward, elbows relaxed, wrists snap. Must keep that in mind. Especially the fists up part.

Bouncing Around Holidays

There are more holidays in Japan than there are in Canada. Way more. Sometimes I find myself in a position where every other week I'm missing a practice because the dojo is closed due to a stat holiday. The strange thing for me is that Christmas isn't really counted among them. Aside from the 25th, there's not anything all that special about the days around Christmas. I've practiced on Christmas Eve in the past in Japan, and though it was a particularly meager showing that day, it was still an official practice.

Not that this is surprising given that Christianity is a minority religion in Japan, with roughly one percent of people claiming it as their faith. The big winter holiday here -rather than being Christmas- is New Years.

For a little over a week, traditionally, everything closes, shops, offices and community centres etc. The tradition of osechi (started in Heian period) began with a final meal cooked at the end of the year that needed to last through the first few days of the new year, in which the women did not cook. This tradition has grown over the years into elaborate and beautiful bento boxes that are meant to be a weeks worth of leftovers for a family to wait out the holiday season when all the shops are closed. These days, chain grocery stores and big department stores are still open during the New Years season, though the tradition of eating a large osechi meal with ones family over the week long holiday remains.


As for myself, I went home this holiday season. I caught a ten hour plane ride on Christmas Eve to San Francisco, followed by a two hour plane ride home to Vancouver where I was greeted, exhausted and travel shocked, by my mother whom I hadn't seen in over two years. It was a nice reunion, followed by two weeks of eating and sloth with the rest of my family before I took the nightmarish journey back home again.

I missed the first practice back due to extreme jet lag coupled with two weeks of poor sleep on account of sleeping on couches and floors at my parents' houses. The second practice, this last Monday however, I was in the zone. I had everything packed up all neat and ready, had myself psyched up to see everyone again, and all my omiyage ready to give out to all my friends.

I got half way to the dojo when I realized: It was a national holiday. Well damn. I called my friend to confirm and yes, the dojo was closed, no kendo on Monday. We just had a week and a half holiday at the beginning of the year and halfway through January there's another holiday!

I shouldn't complain, I know. Days of rest are good for the body, mind and soul, but I couldn't help but be a little disappointed.

Today, then, was my first day back, and warming up the joints was a little tough. Fukao sensei laughed at me as he watched me practicing, asking if I'd forgotten how to do kendo, since I looked so stiff. In the end though, it wasn't my arms, or even my legs that put me off balance; it was my back. My lower back as been giving me some cramping issues and I'm beginning to wonder if it has something to do with the frequency of pinched nerves I'm experiencing in my shoulders recently. More than likely it is yet another sign that I need to keep losing weight as I head into my thirties. That's a depressing thought.

That said, my stamina held out all right through the practice, but my back was slowing me down a fair bit. I'm going to have to give it a bit more TLC when I warm up, I think. Despite that though, the practice went well. I've been trying to spend 15-30 minutes before practice reviewing the basic techniques that I learned in Canada. It helps my body warm up to jumping into waza and keiko which we do with little in the way of changing the mode of movement from every-day to practice.

Yamada sensei advised me that I'm bending my elbows again, and thrusting my shinai forward from my chest. This is exposing my kote again. It's always the same old familiar patterns and bad habits we fall into, isn't it?

I had a great, energetic keikowith Fukao sensei as well, who at the end of practice badgered me with disbelief that I'd actually been gone for five weeks. Sometimes I'm not sure when he's pulling my leg and when he's being genuine. He's a bit of a joker, which I appreciate, but I'm not sure sometimes if when he says "You were great today! I can't believe it!" he actually means it, or if he's just being cheeky, especially considering that he could crush me without any effort in keiko if he really wanted to.

I practiced with Sato sensei as well, though he wasn't nearly as generous with the hits as Fukao sensei was. I did manage to pop off a nice men near the end though, that I got a few compliments on, so that was nice.

It's good to be getting back into the swing of things. As much as I sometimes gripe about it, kendo is my passion, and it's a sport, I think, that suits me well.

Happy New Year everyone!