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!