ginza sushi & shopping
Hiroko and I checked out the sushi faire in Mitsukoshi and then walked down Chuo Dori for some shopping.
Hiroko got a new cellphone (finally) and they used this machine to punch holes in her old phone to guarantee her old data doesn't get stolen.
(Please note: there is a machine whose sole purpose is to punch holes in used cell phones.)
Then we went to Uniqlo and I took Elvis' advice and got me some toe socks.
frustation indeed
Elvis is hitting a rough patch, so I figured I'd throw in my two yen about The Big Questions: why do I train? what's the point? who are all these idiots? when does it get better? where am I going?
Don't want to belittle his struggles, as they are totally valid and, I believe, a good part of training. I been through them myself. Hit three major valleys of doom and gloom at 3rd, 4th, and 5th dan. (Probably in my fourth now at 6th dan, but I'm in denial.)
I don't like giving advice. Everyone has to figure out what's best for him. For good or bad, no one has the luxury of being a samurai anymore and therefore having the right (the duty) to dedicate one's life to the pursuit of the martial arts. We gotta pay the rent. We have jobs, families, lives. So the first issue comes down to time management. I came to Japan because I always wanted to come here and train. And once I got here, I decided I didn't want to do nothing BUT train. I met a brilliant woman and married her. I have a well-paying but massively time-consuming, challenging, and fascinating career in the finance industry. I like to do a couple of decidedly non-budo things. And therefore obviously I don't train as much as I could, and maybe I don't progress as much as I could, and I don't study as many different arts as maybe I could.
And I like it that way. I dropped kendo for aikido, started Mugairyu, dropped aikido and added various other weapons the Mugairyu, and when all is netted out, the sword is the thing for me.
We have several hundred members in our organization, and I would honestly say a mere handful of them are actually interested in training as seriously (or more) than I. If there are four of them out of 400, that's a pretty good percentage I think. Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who train in aikido all over the world, only a handful are dedicated and serious enough to go to Honbu in Shinjuku and train for reals. Elvis is one of them. More power to him. If he has to make a choice to spend less time in Mugai and more on aikido, it's not a bad choice, or a good choice. It's HIS choice, and by definition it is therefore the right choice.
Like Buddha said (okay rough paraphrase): doubt is good. And the only resolution for doubt is action.
Don't want to belittle his struggles, as they are totally valid and, I believe, a good part of training. I been through them myself. Hit three major valleys of doom and gloom at 3rd, 4th, and 5th dan. (Probably in my fourth now at 6th dan, but I'm in denial.)
I don't like giving advice. Everyone has to figure out what's best for him. For good or bad, no one has the luxury of being a samurai anymore and therefore having the right (the duty) to dedicate one's life to the pursuit of the martial arts. We gotta pay the rent. We have jobs, families, lives. So the first issue comes down to time management. I came to Japan because I always wanted to come here and train. And once I got here, I decided I didn't want to do nothing BUT train. I met a brilliant woman and married her. I have a well-paying but massively time-consuming, challenging, and fascinating career in the finance industry. I like to do a couple of decidedly non-budo things. And therefore obviously I don't train as much as I could, and maybe I don't progress as much as I could, and I don't study as many different arts as maybe I could.
And I like it that way. I dropped kendo for aikido, started Mugairyu, dropped aikido and added various other weapons the Mugairyu, and when all is netted out, the sword is the thing for me.
We have several hundred members in our organization, and I would honestly say a mere handful of them are actually interested in training as seriously (or more) than I. If there are four of them out of 400, that's a pretty good percentage I think. Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who train in aikido all over the world, only a handful are dedicated and serious enough to go to Honbu in Shinjuku and train for reals. Elvis is one of them. More power to him. If he has to make a choice to spend less time in Mugai and more on aikido, it's not a bad choice, or a good choice. It's HIS choice, and by definition it is therefore the right choice.
Like Buddha said (okay rough paraphrase): doubt is good. And the only resolution for doubt is action.
you put your right elbow in...
Elbows. Gosoke always talks about sanken-no metsuke, the three points to watch: hand, elbow shoulder. Mainly, you watch the right hand if you want to know where the other dude's sword is going. And of course, if you want your sword to go where you need it to go, you have to pay attention to how you use (which generally means extend) your rist, elbow, and shoulder.
Today we focused on the right elbow. Alot of times the right elbow will be almost totally extended by the time the sword is drawn. This usually results in a locked elbow (sometimes even hyper-extended or tennis elbow) and a full arm swing from the shoulder. Lots of muscle, lots of rotation, not alot of forward momentum and minimal hip power, kind of like whipping the arm out after cocking and unwinding the hips.
Then again muscles on do work when contracting, not expanding, so in order to extend your elbow, you basically contract your tricep; not an impressively powerful way to generate cutting force. The key is, obviously, to extend wrist, elbow, and shoulder all at just the correct time, all moving together to channel the energy from the hips moving in, and don't forget the left hand pulling away and the right hand drives forward. Whole body has to move as one complete unit, all the bits doing their part in tune to all the other bits.
Today we focused on the right elbow. Alot of times the right elbow will be almost totally extended by the time the sword is drawn. This usually results in a locked elbow (sometimes even hyper-extended or tennis elbow) and a full arm swing from the shoulder. Lots of muscle, lots of rotation, not alot of forward momentum and minimal hip power, kind of like whipping the arm out after cocking and unwinding the hips.
Then again muscles on do work when contracting, not expanding, so in order to extend your elbow, you basically contract your tricep; not an impressively powerful way to generate cutting force. The key is, obviously, to extend wrist, elbow, and shoulder all at just the correct time, all moving together to channel the energy from the hips moving in, and don't forget the left hand pulling away and the right hand drives forward. Whole body has to move as one complete unit, all the bits doing their part in tune to all the other bits.
grandpa kuroda
Hiroko's grandfather (dad's dad) passed away in his sleep last night.
We had just seen him and everyone a couple of weeks ago when we went home for the new year's holidays. We brought a box of taiyaki, the really good ones from Naniwaya, and he was happy to receive. I think he ate two. Even after his stroke, he would still putter about in the yard, trimming the immaculate garden leaf by leaf. I think he finally just got tired, when to bed, and didn't wake up.
Wake is on Thursday and cremation on Friday, so Hiroko and I will go home for a long weekend.
We had just seen him and everyone a couple of weeks ago when we went home for the new year's holidays. We brought a box of taiyaki, the really good ones from Naniwaya, and he was happy to receive. I think he ate two. Even after his stroke, he would still putter about in the yard, trimming the immaculate garden leaf by leaf. I think he finally just got tired, when to bed, and didn't wake up.
Wake is on Thursday and cremation on Friday, so Hiroko and I will go home for a long weekend.
machida
Big turnout for the dan-ranked training seminar -- over 60 people!
After that, went down to Machida again to have Hataya-sensei switch out the tsuba on my cutter. The tsuba I bought last time I was down there but that he forgot to switch out for me. Hataya-sensei is a great, kind, and talented man. But he has a memory like a sieve.
Met Florida at the shop and walked back to his newly built home. Had dinner and marvelled at the droopy-eared pair of sausages running rampantly back and forth across his floor. Cool house, too. Heated floors and central air-purification are sporty!
After that, went down to Machida again to have Hataya-sensei switch out the tsuba on my cutter. The tsuba I bought last time I was down there but that he forgot to switch out for me. Hataya-sensei is a great, kind, and talented man. But he has a memory like a sieve.
Met Florida at the shop and walked back to his newly built home. Had dinner and marvelled at the droopy-eared pair of sausages running rampantly back and forth across his floor. Cool house, too. Heated floors and central air-purification are sporty!
basement
Elvis and Co. came over for some basement cutting. We did serious damage to ten targets with a variety of blades; his cutter, my cutter, my old cutter, and the wakizashi we just had polished. Elvis is still working on his cuts-from-the-draw; getting closer and any moment he will have the vital epiphany. Me, I am as lame as ever, and really, really need to change out the tsuba on my cutter as it is just shredding my hand every time I draw.
After cutting we gave the dojo basement a thorough cleaning -- rolls and nicely stack the mats and vacuumed the floor. Allergies are no fun with those old dusty mats!
After cutting we gave the dojo basement a thorough cleaning -- rolls and nicely stack the mats and vacuumed the floor. Allergies are no fun with those old dusty mats!
pen surgery
Bought this very cool four color pen from Muji. It's cool because it has black, red, blue and the fourth color is not the standard green by a nice highlighty orange. However, this pen suffers from the all-c0lors-in-one-cartridge printer syndrome -- I use the black the most, and so of course it ran out first. Instead of tossing the whole pen and buying a new one, I attacked it with my fingers, a folding pocket knife, and Gucchan The Brilliant who sits next to me at work.
The pen cap (non-writing end) was a red herring; it came off, but didn't give access to the pen innards we needed to swap. After much prodding, twisting, prodding, and praying, we finally just unscrewed the writing end, grabbed the black ink, and yanked it out.
We didn't figure out how the pen was assembled in the first place, but I immediately sacrified a black-only pen, cut the ink stalk down to size, and jammed it back in.
Works like a charm!
taco derio
Actual genuine Mexican food, not five minutes from work, at Taco Derio. Handmade by a lovely old Japanese woman and her two sons, or something like that. Damn fine nachos, delicately shredded chicken, taco rice that fills ya up. Good eats.
walking on thin ice
Had another one of those "in the dojo, as in real life" moments whilst teaching. We were working on moving from the hips. It has lots of names: namba-aruki, musoku-ho, nijiku, etc. but the basic idea is to move from the center, and move the whole body as one unit. There are all kinds of comments about twisting, rotating, turning, pivoting, kicking-off, floating, and a million other magical/physiological explanations that make no sense to me. Basically, I try to move as effortlessly as possible, simple economics of motion. I try not to move my arms and legs first, nor independently from the rest of my body. Instead of extending the arm to reach forward, half the work can be done by moving the body forward. Given that the arm is connected to the body, moving the body moves the arm. Net result is that the arm gets to where it's going faster/easier than relying on just the arm itself.
So we were working on walking, moving forward, and keeping centered; keeping the shoulders are trunk over the hips. More accurately, generally what happens is when moving forward the upper body tends to lean in, and the legs kick alternately, but the hips are left behind, with the butt sticking out. So we try moving from the hips first, keeping the shoulders over the hips, and the legs, connected to the hips, have to come along as well.
I was trying to explain the feeling of keeping the knees bent, sinking the hips forward/down to sort of fall into the forward movement, not locking the legs stiff, which just ends up precariously thrusting the body up, unbalanced. And I remembered when I was walking across the icy sidewalks with Elvis. I was having trouble balancing, because no matter how carefully I picked up and placed my feet, I would invariably find some hidden spot, or some uneven surface, and I would lose my balance. So instead of trying to adjust so much with my feet and legs, I just pushed forward from the hips, flexed the knees, and in a right foot forward stance, slid across the ice. Flex knees, hips forward, slide. Repeat.
So back in class I was trying to explain how to do the same thing from a sitting position. Great thing about seiza techniques is that they are designed to force you to move from the hips. You can't use your legs; you're sitting on them. So I was thinking about the ice, and friction, and Elvis and I tried something.
He held onto my hips and I simply sat UP: I pushed up and against his grip and, he being in a dominant position, my legs simply slid out from under me as the force rebounding from his iron grasp easily overcame the static friction of my cotton uniform on the smooth wood floor.
So then I tried sitting IN: instead of trying to push with my legs, I tried to extend my hips forward as if I was moving into the cut. This time he got pushed back and over, whereas my legs stayed firmly under me.
I don't know the mathemati-physical explanation of opposing forces and static friction, but I know that when I move from my hips, my legs aren't stressed and pushing, and I move IN considerably more than up (or down or any other direction.) Obviously my legs and feet are pushing against the floor, otherwise I'd never move relative to the floor, but it must be significantly less force than when I purposefully kick off with my feet and legs. I think this may be one of the big differences between "normal" walking and moving from the hips in a more budo way.
I know I am not particularly good at whatever it is I am supposed to do, and I'm not even sure when I think I do it right that I am even doing the right thing, but sometimes it feels effortless and looks as right as I can tell, and the cut is strong, clean, and true. And then I slip on the ice!
So we were working on walking, moving forward, and keeping centered; keeping the shoulders are trunk over the hips. More accurately, generally what happens is when moving forward the upper body tends to lean in, and the legs kick alternately, but the hips are left behind, with the butt sticking out. So we try moving from the hips first, keeping the shoulders over the hips, and the legs, connected to the hips, have to come along as well.
I was trying to explain the feeling of keeping the knees bent, sinking the hips forward/down to sort of fall into the forward movement, not locking the legs stiff, which just ends up precariously thrusting the body up, unbalanced. And I remembered when I was walking across the icy sidewalks with Elvis. I was having trouble balancing, because no matter how carefully I picked up and placed my feet, I would invariably find some hidden spot, or some uneven surface, and I would lose my balance. So instead of trying to adjust so much with my feet and legs, I just pushed forward from the hips, flexed the knees, and in a right foot forward stance, slid across the ice. Flex knees, hips forward, slide. Repeat.
So back in class I was trying to explain how to do the same thing from a sitting position. Great thing about seiza techniques is that they are designed to force you to move from the hips. You can't use your legs; you're sitting on them. So I was thinking about the ice, and friction, and Elvis and I tried something.
He held onto my hips and I simply sat UP: I pushed up and against his grip and, he being in a dominant position, my legs simply slid out from under me as the force rebounding from his iron grasp easily overcame the static friction of my cotton uniform on the smooth wood floor.
So then I tried sitting IN: instead of trying to push with my legs, I tried to extend my hips forward as if I was moving into the cut. This time he got pushed back and over, whereas my legs stayed firmly under me.
I don't know the mathemati-physical explanation of opposing forces and static friction, but I know that when I move from my hips, my legs aren't stressed and pushing, and I move IN considerably more than up (or down or any other direction.) Obviously my legs and feet are pushing against the floor, otherwise I'd never move relative to the floor, but it must be significantly less force than when I purposefully kick off with my feet and legs. I think this may be one of the big differences between "normal" walking and moving from the hips in a more budo way.
I know I am not particularly good at whatever it is I am supposed to do, and I'm not even sure when I think I do it right that I am even doing the right thing, but sometimes it feels effortless and looks as right as I can tell, and the cut is strong, clean, and true. And then I slip on the ice!
happy couple going to machida
Almost killed ourselves on the icy sidewalks, but we managed to get some good Chinese food for lunch before heading down to Machida. I got uraBaby's cutter sharpened up best as it can be done, but Hataya-sensei took one look at it and went "Hmm....this is a looker, not a cutter!" Oh well, it's better than dull. Also got the other wakizashi sharpened up so that'll be fun to cut with. My cutter's finally been re-registered and I picked a new tsuba for it as the one on it now looks really good but shreads up my hand like a rough file. Hataya-sensei will ship it back to me this week and Elvis and I will cut in the basement this weekend.
kumitachi ouchie
Been practicing the old Mugairyu habiki-no-kata -- the old kenjutsu kumitachi . Huge quantities of fun; straight and simple, with edge-on-shinoji blocks and deflections. Busted two bokken in a week, and will likely go through many more as most folks don't seem to understand the concept of control.
A couple of examples: in the second kata, shidachi attacks first, uchidachi counters with uke-kaishi; a deflection and quick counter which shidachi immediately parries and finishes. Shidachi sets the pace by attacking first -- he comes in fast and hard, I counter the same. And that's exactly what I did. Every time he'd come in faster than the last, hoping to get in quick enough to counter my counter, but every time I would just use his speed to deflect and counter, and ended up sticking my sword a centimeter from his forehead every time. I kept telling him that I would match his pace, so if he wanted to finish the kata he needs to slow down to a speed we can both handle. I don't think the message got through.
In the first kata, the simplest, uchidachi attacks, shidachi blocks and counters. I came in slow and steady with an easy full swing, but uchidachi panicked, jumped the gun on timing, came in way to tight and early and instead of blocking my sword he ended up blocking my right wrist, cracking it just on the corner bone and shooting needles of pain up my whole arm. Like the nice instructor guy that I am, instead of burying my sword in his forehead I smiled and said "no problem!" and took a little break to whimper in pain in the bathroom for a couple of minutes.
A couple of examples: in the second kata, shidachi attacks first, uchidachi counters with uke-kaishi; a deflection and quick counter which shidachi immediately parries and finishes. Shidachi sets the pace by attacking first -- he comes in fast and hard, I counter the same. And that's exactly what I did. Every time he'd come in faster than the last, hoping to get in quick enough to counter my counter, but every time I would just use his speed to deflect and counter, and ended up sticking my sword a centimeter from his forehead every time. I kept telling him that I would match his pace, so if he wanted to finish the kata he needs to slow down to a speed we can both handle. I don't think the message got through.
In the first kata, the simplest, uchidachi attacks, shidachi blocks and counters. I came in slow and steady with an easy full swing, but uchidachi panicked, jumped the gun on timing, came in way to tight and early and instead of blocking my sword he ended up blocking my right wrist, cracking it just on the corner bone and shooting needles of pain up my whole arm. Like the nice instructor guy that I am, instead of burying my sword in his forehead I smiled and said "no problem!" and took a little break to whimper in pain in the bathroom for a couple of minutes.
kagami biraki
Did some cutting in the morning with Elvis so that he could break in his new sword, and then Hiroko and I got kimono'd up and went to Ginza. We checked out the Kaga Exhibition at Matsuya Department Store, bought some munchies and sake, and looked at the cool pottery. Then we headed over to the dojo and ate mochi and goofed off with Niina-gosoke and folks to celebrate kagami biraki. Literally, it means "mirror opening". Mirror refers to the roundness of the kagamimochi that you put out for new year, and since "cutting" has bad connotations, you say "open".
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