I like the frogs. They are plentiful during the rainy season. They don't make noise, they just come out of the bushes and flop around on the walkways running to and from my aparment. However they are also not so bright. I have come home many a night this week on my scooter, carefully weaving my way up the path at a slow crawl only to have a frog brazenly jump from the relative safety of the edge of the bushes to directly in front of my tire. I am yet to squish a frog, and I don't look forward to the inevitable day when it happens. They ain't small by any means, and scooter-flattened frog will not make or the walkway any better. Alas, yet another chapter in the battle of man vs. the elements.
In other news I've been cranking on the iaido report for Gosoke; checking all the web directories, search engines, and asking about on various bulletin boards for English information about Mugai-ryu. Most information seems to be from a certain Takada-sensei in Finland, and the pupils of the late Kuniba-sensei in the U.S. are also quite active, though it seems Kuniba-sensei created his own school based on Mugai-ryu...interesting how these things develop. We shall see how Gosoke feels about my report next week as I'll hand it over to Kanai-sensei on Monday.

Gosoke is the honorable reference to the head and/or leaders of Mugai-ryu. English equivalents like "16th Grand Master" just sound silly, so we'll stick with Gosoke.
I am definitely liking this tuesday iaido practice with the college students. Last night Kanai-sensei drilled us for over an hour in basics; repeating cuts back and forth across the floor. I think some of the guys get a little bored, but since I still don't have any idea of what I'm doing, I appreciate the attention to detail. Kanai-sensei doesn't miss anything and is always correcting my blade angle or wrist position. We then went into individual practice to get ready for the enbukai end of this month, and somehow Kanai-sensei manages to be watching me the one time (ok one out of ten times) I step on my own hakama when standing up or something. At least I'm getting the bows correctly (I think.)
After practice Shiokawa-san had about 8 calls on his cell from Gosokei (THE head of Mugai-ryu!), who told him to tell Kanai-sensei to call him with me around. I immediately assumed I'd done some horrible impropriety and would be banned from Mygai-ryu for life or something, so trembling with fear I told Kanai-sensei to call Gosokei and...her cellphone battery was dead. So we waited for Shiokawa-san to come down and give her the phone number and she used my phone to call him.
Turns out he's really interested in the English translations of the homepage I've been working on with Chihara-san, and wanted Kanai-sensei to ask me about search engines and such in English so that Mugai-ryu can get properly registered and understood around the world. So I'm going to do some research on top martial arts sites and search engines and report to Gosokei.
Too much food. Fear of World Cup hooliganism (and basic lethargy) prompted Hiroko and I to have a lovely meal at Lucky on Friday, and then last night Hiroko cooked up another monster-meal when Kevin, Z, Ericka, and Jeff came over. Jeff and Ericka just came back from doing time with the relatives, and they shared stories about his disfunctional family and near-death experience on the flight home. Plans for a Costco trip where put in motion, but since Jeff is off to Europe for a couple weeks it'll wait until he gets back.