back to basics

In Japanese, hisashiburi means "it's been a while!" Today I met Kiyo-kun for lunch at Miri's. Haven't seen him in a couple years. He's graduated (amazing!) and working at some company, training on his own with a small group. After lunch we went back to my house and goofed off in the dojo; always fun to play with him as he's such a budo-freak; worse than me. Also good to see that even though he's grown up a bit he's still fairly immature and dorky kid at heart!
Later in the evening I met up with Elvis and we headed down to Machida to do some proper cutting with Roger and the Toyama-ryu guys. Haven't seen many of them in a while and they're such a nice bunch of folk.
As expected, I cut like ass. I mean seriously, I have never cut that badly in all my life. Just couldn't even do the basics. And after three rounds and some pointers I was thinking "This is great! I'm always teaching and telling people this stuff, but now I'm lame and being told basic pointers like grip and angle and technique!" Feels so good to realize how much I suck, and to go back to the basics; forget all the crap I think I know and just let someone teach me and start all over learning from scratch! Will make an effort to motivate down there at least once a month!

crowded

Managed to make it to practice not too late and had a nice session working in the corner. Only a few folks on the floor, so I could zone out nicely and do my own thing. Last 30 minutes we did kumitachi as always, so Gosoke had me teach. *sigh* I think some folks are generally unclear on the concept and really need a good bonking on the head with a hard piece of wood. It may look and feel cool to rush quickly through a fancy sword-fighting pattern with your partner, but it certainly doesn't make for much practice when you just slop through the moves with no regard for what the other guy is doing.
Much better to get as fast as you realistically can and actually react to each other, i.e. evade/block/counter once you have been attacked. What generally happens is you know you do A, he attacks B, so you counter C. And so you do A and then C, and somewhere in between he's done B, and oh looky there what a neat kata! If you actually watch the other guy, wait until he's committed to burying his piece of wood into your soft skull, and then at the last possible moment evade and counter, you discover 1) You're not nearly as fast as you thought, and 2) you need alot more practice. Especially if the guy swinging for your head actually tries to hit you in the head instead of just putting the sword out there for you to duck under.
After practice I went by Miri's to get some dinner but the place was totally packed, and so after a quick PB&J I went home and straight to bed.

ok bokujo 2

OK, now we're just getting silly! Went to OK Bokujo again with some guys from work. This place is just so camp it awesome. Stuffed ourselves silly with BBQ meat, many a beverage was consumed, and we were back on the street by 10:15. Still too early to call it a night, we headed over to a local grungy old-man bar, nursed bevvies and trash-talked work until closing.
A quality evening as can only be had in Tokyo!

accordian maid?


accordian maid?, originally uploaded by renfield.

akibabes

We cruised the main and backstreets looking for laptop bargains. Yodobashi Camera and Sofmap Mac both had the white Macbook (the black being totally sold out) but the cheapest was near 180,000yen. On a whim we ducked into Mouse Computer and there it was! A sweet 14.1 inch laptop with duocore processors, dvd writer, and all the trimmings for only 140,000yen.
We swung back through Yodobashi to get a laptop bag, and then on the way back to the station, we ran into the lovelies.


turkey @ cravings


turkey @ cravings, originally uploaded by renfield.

Met the Zacchinator at Temple U and headed directly to Miri's for some quality turkey sandwhiches, and then off to Akihabara!