gyoza

Too much eating. Hiroko and I started chopping veggies about 1pm, and by 6pm the apartment was packed; one table was a gyoza-stuffing sweatshop, the other table a gyoza-eating contest worthy of primetime television. Chie made crepes, Tomo brought his famous brownies, Amy played with empty plastic bottles, the iPod fed random tunes through the tv speakers...did I mention the gyoza? Pork and cabbage, chicken and mushroom, shrimp and onion, beef and tomato. And then the playstation 2 fired up so that Ollie and Chiori could shoot vampires. Beer and wine was consumed with wild abandon. Gyoza was made. Gyoza was eaten. Gyoza was put into ziplock bags and shoved into people's pockets; no one escaped empty-handed.

timing is everything

Sekido-san just got his sword back from the polishers and he's selling it. If I'd known this earlier, I would have jumped all over the chance. As it is, he's showing it to Takeda-san this weekend, but if I'm lucky Takeda-san won't like it and I'll have a chance to buy it. It's the same length as my sword, only about 80 grams heavier and 400 years older. I think I'll send my sword out to get cleaned up and sell it, using the money to (hopefully) buy Sekido-san's.
The one he has now and the one he's replacing it with were both Niina-gosoke's personal swords, so there's no doubt as to the quality. If only my timing were a bit better, I would never have bought my modern blade in the first place, and would have bought Sekido-san's sword when Niina-gosoke was first selling it.
In other issues of timing, getting that front foot timed correctly with the sword strike is the big issue of the day. Niina-gosoke ran us through several different kata, illuminating the simple fact that they're all basically the same; sword cuts and foot steps at the same time. If only it were that easy.

i am an idiot

So I got home from practice last night and realized I didn't have my uniform, which I usually carry around wrapped up in a cool blue furoshiki (big piece of cloth.) After cursing myself for several minutes, I got back on the mightier steed and drove all the way back to Akihabara. Needless to say, it was nowhere to be found, and the building was already closed.
Drove all the way back home with one eye on the curb, wondering if I had left it on the back of the Mightier Steed, forgetting to put it under the seat after taking my helmet out.
This morning I called the Chiyoda Park Plaza and as a matter of fact, they did have a black uniform wrapped up in a blue furoshiki. It was left sitting next to the elevator on the 4th floor.
I emailed Sekido-san about some homepage additions and casually mentioned that I forgot my uniform, and he replies something to the effect of "Yeah, I saw a furoshiki that looked just like the one you always use, and thought to myself 'That looks just like ren's. Uncanny...'" Thanks for mentioning it, buddy.
Anyway I ended up spending all bloody afternoon driving back and to Akihabara to get my uniform. Where in the hell do all these people come from, driving REALLY BADLY in the middle of the day? And how do they not absolutely kill each other when faced with the tremendous stupidity of their fellow drivers? And lastly, what moron decided to replace all the Ginza traffic lights with brand new, ultra-modern super-bright LED lights and pave the street with some magical gray-painted blacktop that is absolutely wonderful to drive on, but decided NOT to change the traffic light software, so even with the new lights and pavement, all twenty lights change to red at exactly the same time? I'm no fluid mechanics engineer, but that has got to be the least effective way to move traffic down a major artery.

rain

Ah, the cold and wetness of autumn rain. Will was giving me crap for not writing about enough interesting things in my blog, so I was forced to remind him that my life is only interesting in short-lived spurts spaced far apart, and also my mom is an avid reader of G.Y.M. (the main reason I started this blog, actually, was because every now and then I'd get a "You might be dead, but would your mother know, the amount of mail she doesn't get from her youngest son..." kinda mails) so I've got to keep it PG-13 at least. So Will bought me some O.J. and we debated OS merits with Todd for a bit before those two digressed off into geekland; I was never a Commodore 64 dork like them (Atari BASIC thank you very much.)
Other than that, it rained alot today.

all day

It being the national Holiday Sports Day, we had an all seminar today in Toritsudai. Got there a bit before nine and didn't leave until almost five. Niina-gosoke ran us through the fundamentals and various kata, focusing on the simple but alusive point of timing the front foot with the sword; foot to early and you leave yourself open with your sword above your head. Foot too late and you're only cutting with your arms, not your hips. Suffice to say I am now even more confused than I was before.