JAPAN TRAINING 2015 -- August 3 -- LAST DAY

August 3, 2015.  1800 Japan time
Japan Airlines 60.  Osaka Kansai to LAX

I’ve had a wonderful visit to Tokushima to visit Masumi and Dave Cooper and the Toyosaki family. They were awesome hosts and Masumi’s father, Masao, would not let me pay for a single thing – from my hotel to the express bus to Kansai this morning.  He said it was because Terri and I took such good care of Masumi when she came to visit us in Texas about ten years ago, but I suspect he would have done that anyhow.

Yesterday we went shopping at the new mall on their side of the Yoshino River from Tokushima City. Since it is new and since it is hot as hell right now, the mall was packed, and my true feeling is that if you’ve seen one mall, you’ve  seen most malls and this was no exception.  I found a couple of very cool shirts for Jacob and a summery shirt and breezy trouser set for myself, and then we ate in the food court with the kids.  After we dropped Masumi and the Kids off, Dave and I went for a massage.  Male masseuses work on males and female masseuses on women.  You are fully clothed in a little Jack LaLane style jumpsuit.  No oils.  My guy was very good however and after two weeks of travel and karate, he had me asleep on the table after about twenty minutes.

Dave dropped me off at the hotel while he went to catch up with his Awa Adori dance group at a Shinto shrine where they would perform later.  Masumi and family picked me up later and we also went to the shrine.  Got there right at dusk and the orange full moon was rising over the massive tori gate entrance. The walkway was lined with glowing lanterns on both sides and I had a feeling something magical was about to happen.

The Awa dance dates back to the 1500’s when Tokushima prefecture was known as Awa and was the fief of a Samurai daimyo.  The dance is very tribal and seems a little like a mating ritual, with the women in their geta and kimonos, very fluid and supple as sea grass, and the men in jembei and colorful headbands and tabis, dancing around the women like dervishes.  The drums are pounding, shamisens and wood flutes droning on, and bells ring constantly.  Like reggae, it is almost impossible not to start moving your body with the beat.  The saying for the Awa Adori matsuri is “You’re a fool if you dance and a fool if you don’t, so you might as well dance.” The dancing lasted about an hour and then there were sparklers for the children.  Afterwards, Dave and I took the other car to the local onsen baths and had a most wonderful soak.  Then a light meal and some good conversation before he dropped me off.

Today Masumi, Dave, and the kids came to my hotel and we walked to the JR station together to have a light brunch at Starbucks and some last minute shopping.  I was terrified that I was not going to find the items Terri had given me for her “shopping list” but at the stores around the station, I scored big time and found everything she had requested.  She likes the small, interesting items like coin purses.  Tokushima is famous for its indigo blue dye and I was able to find the items in that beautiful deep blue with almost tie-dyed patterns.  Very exquisite.  Then we had to say our goodbyes and I boarded the express bus for Kansai, while Dave and Masumi had plans to head for the Oboke Gorge to visit their whitewater rafting pals.  Both of them used to be river guides.  They were such great hosts and are dear friends indeed.

All over Japan I am impressed with their civil and structural engineering fetes, mainly the way they have managed to build amazing roads, tunnels, and railways throughout this mountainous nation. Today, however, I was awed by the entire area around Kobe and Osaka.  The area is one huge network of ports and bridges that almost defy imagination.  Wow!  Kansai airport itself was created as an island by using cofferdams, pumping the ocean out, and bringing fill in.  Then it was connected to the mainland by a bridge that must be four miles long and allows shipping passage beneath it.  This is one amazing country and a very ambitious people.

In another eight hours, God willing, I’ll be in Los Angeles.  I always suffer a reverse culture shock upon arrival after the  politeness and orderly manner of Japan.  But it’s my country and I miss it.  I mainly miss Terri and Jacob.  It seems a long time since July 18 when I departed on this journey.  Thank you, love, for supporting my need to go.  Thank you to my senior students who took the dojo classes for me while I was away.  Thank you Dave and Masumi, and also the Aussies who always adopt me.  Thank you to Shihan Fujiwara and his wife and family for being so hospitable at their ryokan, and for him being my teacher.  Shihan, you are the best of the best.  We all know it.  I hope you do also.  I think other ryuha thought Seiwakai would be diminished after Tasaki Hanshi passed, but we have in fact grown and are getting better.  That makes me happy and proud of our legacy that I try to instill in my own students.

Now it is back to our lives.  Being able to attend a gasshuku such as ours is like entering a monastery. We live and breathe Karatedo and don’t even think about news or politics or the mundane things that typically fill up our existence.  We get to do ONE thing and do it to the best of our ability.  And when it’s over we’ve  grown in ways we don’t even know and have hopefully changed in positive, subtle ways.  I know I have.

So, from somewhere over the Pacific, I’m signing off for now.  Thanks for coming along on this journey, whether actually or vicariously.  I hope you’ve grown some too.

JAPAN TRAINING 2015 - August 1st, Day ?

August 1, 2015.   1006
Between Kokura and Okayama
En route to Tokushima, Shikoku

I left behind my many karate friends at 0800 to catch my trains.  The people you come to know through this strange and exclusive international organization is what keeps me involved.  I’ve met people of so many countries and occupations through Goju-Ryu Karatedo it is unbelievable, and I don’t see how our paths could have crossed any other way.  Some are merely acquaintances, but many become like brothers and sisters – family – whom even if you don’t cross paths for a few years, when you do, you take up right where you left off and are genuinely joyful to be together again.  And they are trustworthy, honest, and loyal, always willing to go the extra mile and watch your back in any country or situation.  In a word, it is wonderful.  So it was with genuine sorrow to say goodbye.  I almost teared  up when I said goodbye to Fujiwara Shihan because I like him so much and he always brings out the best in us and is an amazing host.

I’m heading to Tokushima to visit my dear friend Masumi Toyosaki Cooper, who I first met in 2004 on a whitewater rafting trip on the Yoshino River after my first Japan training.  Masumi spoke very good English and wanted a native speaker to talk to.  I now know her family, who are now my family too, and her husband Dave, who was a rafting guide from Australia, living in Japan.  They now have three children and live in Brisbane, but are here visiting her family, so I finally get to see their beautiful children.  Tokushima is a gorgeous city on the Pacific side of Shikoku, just across a straight of water from Osaka.  It is the home of one of the biggest matsuri festivals in Japan, the Awa Adori Matsuri, which draws over a million people to dance in the streets and have a great time.  It is the Japanese equivalent of Mardi Gras Festival, and like the Mardi Gras crews, the various Awa Adori dance troops will be practicing in the evenings while I am there.  When you walk along the river downtown, the big drums are slamming out a heartbeat rhythm, and everywhere are dance troops practicing.  Masumi and Dave are both dancers and I think Dave is quite famous as one of the few gaijin who can do it.  Not to mention he’s about 6’3” tall with a shaved head!  Very recognizable amongst the dancers.

My first two trains had no reserved seats left, so I’m using the unreserved cars, which is quite fun and like a land rush to get on, because there are always some folks left standing, kind of like a game of musical chairs.  And there is absolutely no chivalry.  You snooze you lose... and nobody offers a woman a seat.  I dropped my hand bag and already broke a real good bottle of sake (second time in that soft bag.  First time 2006) so my bag reeks of sake and people probably figure I’ve been on a drunk.  Oh well.  Good times!

My body has reached its absolute physical limits from the travel, time changes, different diet, gallons of sweat, and nine straight days of karate in a soaking wet gi.  I really don’t even care to put one on for a few weeks, because I am so sore and exhausted.  The training has been very good and very technical, but I really don’t know how many more times I can do this.  But I always say that, don’t I?

I found out this morning that I did not pass my Rokudan grading.  I thought I did a good job and had a better chance as there were only 13 grading this year (5 passed) as compared to 18 (3 passed) when I graded two years ago.  You never know what the grading panel is looking for and the standards are quite high at this level.  I know I am fighting the battle of age also.  In fact I was surprised to find I was the oldest one grading for Rokudan, which explains why I was number 13 out of 13.

The grading was held in a smaller Kendo room off the main area of the Beppu Budokan and it was so hot, instead of all of us going in at once, they brought us in in three groups of 3,5, and 5.  I was in the last group, which was apparently the eldest of the group.  That’s a good thing really, because you don’t really want to come right after a guys who is 48 or 50 and can stick a kansetsu Geri like a locomotive.  The older guys try to be a little more precise about timing and Kime (focus points) because they have lost some power.  Vassie Naidoo and I were speculating there are probably not many guys in their 60’s who can do what we do.  The grading panel is 6 stone-faced 8th dans, with 3 more observing from the side.  It is a bit intimidating.

I’m of course disappointed, and maybe more disappointed for Fujiwara Shihan and Seiwakai, but I have to look at it like the Japanese do.  For them, it is all about the doing, and failure is a part of the game.  They do not look at failure quite like we do in the west.  To have been there and made the effort is paramount on the path to perfection.  You won’t achieve perfection, but you keep striving.  There are many senior Japanese Sensei who have failed these grading numerous time and they seem totally unfazed and undeterred.  It is an honor to have been qualified to try.

My new friend, Sanny Yap Sensei, from Singapore helped me reframe it yesterday, even before I knew the results.  Sanny asked me how I felt about the  grading and I replied, “I think I did pretty well.”
He said, “No…how do you feel?”
I said that I felt good and he replied, “then hold on to that feeling because that is all you can control.  You never know how they see you and what they see.”
That was good advice.  I feel good about it all.

Vassie Naidoo, Desmond Tuck, John Dean, and I  went out to a Korean barbecue place last night with Jamie Duggan’s group from Brisbane.  This bunch of crazy Aussies are my adopted crew and they are so much fun.  Tough, funny, loud, and really strong karateka.  Definitely crazy as Texans.  Probably more so..  And they live life for today, so every experience is good and life is for living in the moment.  It was a great time and more than a little alcohol was consumed now that the pressure was off.  I can’t wait to see this bunch again.

Almost to Tokushima now.  I need a massage!!!  Over and out.

July 27, 2015.   2220
Omagari, Japan

Today was soooo hard.  Slept poorly.  Did yoga.  Walked the mile and a half to the dojo and my IT band and knee (the one that hasn’t been replaced) were already lighting me up.  And it was already hot!  Fujiwara Shihan always starts us out with many moving basics techniques…just about every combination of Goju-Ryu techniques imaginable…first few times smoothly and slow, and then many times at full speed and power.  Most days so far this starting phase has lasted about 50 minutes.  Today it was about 65 minutes.  Your gi is drenched within 10 minutes and soon the sweat is dripping from your eyebrows, nose, fingers.  Needless to say, I was finding it very difficult to hit the hard and fast reps because my knee was screaming at me whenever I would push off on it.  I was thinking, “Good God, I’m toast and we’re only one hour into the day.”

After that we ran Sanchin kata numerous times.  Sanchin requires attention to every body part simultaneously and much isometric tension.  It is one of Goju-Ryu karate’s kihon (primary) katas and you never perfect it.  You just drill down deeper into it.  There’s nothing difficult about it…no kicks…no crazy jumping moves.  It is so demandingly basic that it is extremely difficult.
Paradoxical.  Usually Sanchin can feel quite demanding, and it is, but after an hour of moving basics hell, it almost feels like a mini-vacation to me.  The added benefit is that men run it with their gi jacket off.  You sweat profusely, but at least your gi jacket is not chaffing you.  If you are not a karate practitioner you are no doubt asking why anyone would want to subject themselves to such training.  About that time of the morning I am often asking myself the same thing.   When you train so hard in the karate fashion, normal obstacles in life just don’t have much power over you by comparison.

In the afternoon, Akita television sent a team to do a feature on Mr. Fujiwara’s  juniors who will be competing in Oita this weekend, so Sensei arranged a kata (forms) competition followed by Kumite (sparring).  You would have to see these juniors to believe how good they are.  Their katas are technically very precise and they develop the power as they grow and mature into the techniques, usually in their teens.  The Kumite is very spirited, as Fujiwara Sensei and his Sensei, Mr. Tasaki, were both Kumite champions.  What really impressed me was their speed and timing.  It was very good to watch.  I’ve attached a video of part of a match.

Much to my surprise, when we went back to kata after the filming crew left, I switched my position from the tatami mats to the wood floor, and something must have shifted in my knee because I felt strong again and the pain subsided. So I was able to work hard for the last two hours, primarily on Seisan kata, one of the three katas I will be graded on in Oita.  By the end of the day, everyone was toast, not just “ the old guy with a bum knee!”  You really do find a zone to be in to make it each day.

Back at the ryokan after training for a soak in the onsen and another scrumptious dinner.  We ate in the banquet room so we would have enough places for a group of New Zealand Seiwakai members Sensei had invited.  Mr. Fujiwara goes out of his way to try and get to know members of each group.  At our party the other night he said we now have over 700 registered members internationally.  If that is the registered number, there are probably again that many who haven’t registered yet.  I don’t believe that number includes his Japan members either.  It is a large organization yet, because of Mr. Fujiwara and the senior Senseis around the world, it feels like a family.

Anyhow, the table talk was more subdued because everyone is pretty tired at this point of the training.  I sat in the lobby with several folks – Mumbai, Sidney, Oxford, London, Omagari, and of course Texas!  It was interesting and amusing to hear English spoken in so many beautiful accents.

Almost finished in Omagari and soon heading for Oita in far southern Japan.

JAPAN TRAINING 2015 - Day 8 Photos

Saturday, July 25, 2015.    2200
Omagari, Japan.

Here are a few photos from the party and the day.  Time to go to sleep. Enjoy!

JAPAN TRAINING 2015 Day 7

Friday, July 24, 2015.     0640
Omagari, Japan

If you weren't taxed to the max by yesterday’s training, you aren’t human.  It was raining outside all day, as it is again today, so the humidity was at least 90%.  Once your karate gi becomes saturated with sweat, it never evaporates.  The sensation is that you are doing karate with a wet canvas blanket around you.  It is no wonder the Okinawans used to train in shorts, jembai (spelling?), loin cloths…anything that allowed ventilation while training.  Yesterday after training, I actually weighed my karate gi and it weighed 3.2 kilos.  And it is the lightest KI Mugen gi I could find.

We started with 45 of the longest minutes of moving basic combinations.  I learned long ago to never look at the clock while training because that makes a time warp happen in which time seems to start moving backwards.  Unfortunately, there is a huge clock built into the wall of the Budokan, so it was unavoidable to not see it when you turned 180 degrees during these seemingly endless moving combinations.  Time stopped moving!  Trapped like a rat in the time warp.

We have been working hard on the timing and Kime (physical focus points) of our katas, and not just the power.  That beautiful off-timing and flow is what actually attracted me to Goju-Ryu karate many years ago.  It is very nuanced and very difficult to absorb into your movements, but once you do, it results in a beautifully lethal art.  At that point you begin to approach mastery.  Fujiwara Shihan has been stressing that those Kime points are similar to writers powerfully and artfully ending a scene before beginning a new one.  Beginners tend to do everything at the same power and pacing, which is understandable, but as you advance in rank, you begin to absorb that timing and those Kime points and your kata becomes more and more amazing, which usually means your ability to use that timing in fighting is an internal, intuitive thing.  Many practitioners of karate wrongly see kata and Kumite as two different mutually exclusive physical activities.  My experience is that the are part of the same whole.  I believe that in traditional karate the best fighters also do very strong kata.

The caveat is that getting the nuances right, you break down the moves and do them over and over and over and over again.  That is Fujiwara Shihan’s method, and that is what we do until you are absolutely certain you can’t do one more repetition, but then you do.  There is an old Zen saying that “You may talk about water, but the mouth will not become wet.”  It is only in the doing that we absorb the lessons.  In teaching, words often fail us, but actively watching a masterful kata, such as Fujiwara Shihan’s, is worth a thousand words.  Then comes the hard, sweaty work of a thousand reps to emulate  it until the correct way becomes internal.

Well, today is day three and tomorrow is our rest day.  I’m looking forward to resting the legs and doing some exploring of downtown shops.  Haven’t really had time to do that since arrival.
I just talked with my wife and son back home via Face Time and realize how much I miss them.  It’s been a week now since I departed and doesn’t seem like a day over six months…
Time to get ready to walk to the dojo.  Come on legs…do your thing.

JAPAN TRAINING 2015

2015 Japan Training
Omagari, Akita Precfecture
Weds.  July 22.   0615. Day 5

Up early as always, since the sun is up at 0400 and there are no curtains over my shoji screen windows.  I’ve been doing miserably at blogging on this IPad.  I’m such a Windows guy that the
Little things mean the difference between losing everything you’ve written on for two hours or not.  Grrrr.  It’s happened a number of  times and with limited time to write, it is maddening to lose it.

Training begins today at 0930.  Yesterday was 90f and the heat index was about 100f, so we will be sweating profusely.  No air conditioning in the Omagari Budokan.  Just a big cavernous hot place.  Today will have us all doubting our conditioning.  Since my knees are far from 100% it is just one more thing in the balancing act when you train.  I am going to try and moderate myself over the next week before Oita and the JKF grading.  That’s not an easy thing to do when you have always been exhorted to give 110%.  I’ll know better by end of training today.  The good thing about arriving early is you get rid of the jet lag over several days, but you also eat and drink too much and start to feel that you are losing your physical edge.  It’s all a balancing act, isn’t it?

Dinner last night at the ryokan was fantastic as always.  I found out that Fujiwara Shihan has spent over 10 years as a sashimi apprentice.  I was watching him cut fish yesterday and know he could work at any top flight sushi bar if that was his calling.  He and his wife are such hard workers.  He is a top tier karate instructor and coach, travels the world, they run the ryokan and have parties and banquets here almost every night because their food is so well regarded.  And in the midst of all that, here come 25 foreigners to also stay and another 50 staying in the local hotels who have shown up to train.  I have so much respect for them and their family.  I am pleased to say that Fujiwara Shihan looks very well.

Dinner last night also filled the dining room with karateka.  So nice to meet up with old friends.  Last night we had Americans, Russians, Australians, Portuguese, Polish, British, and Japanese at the tables.  I have no idea how many will actually show up for training.  I’m missing a few I thought would be here and am surprised to see some I didn’t expect.  Shihan gave us orders to be at the Budokan and get warmed up as he is going to start straight-away.

Okay, I’d better get some food in me.  More later.


LATER:  Thursday morning 0600

Sitting by the wifi in the ryokan lobby, watching the outside, drinking a can of Boss coffee, and waiting for people to start showing up downstairs so I can Face Time with my sweetie back in Texas without disturbing anyone.  I’d stay in my room but I’m at the end of the hall and the wifi is spotty.

The training yesterday was very good and very hot.  There are probably 60 karateka here right now and we are joined by several Seiwakai senior Senseis who will also be grading in Oita.  In the afternoon we are also joined by several Japanese high school kids who will be competing in the All Japan Gojukai Tournament.  The largest international contingent is the Australians.

We started off straightaway with many moving basics and then  Sanchin kata, which has you sweating profusely after the first one.  This year, Fujiwara Shihan had us get to the Budokan early and warm ourselves up so we could start right in on karate, which was most brilliant.  All our  time was spent on karate that way and I wasn’t nearly as taxed as when we spend the first hour on hard calisthenics.  Most of the morning was taken up with moving basics and Sanchin.  I felt as good about my Sanchin as I ever have, and it seems that the recent tweaks by the Gojukai is moving more in the direction I am most comfortable with: a bit more circular and the emphasis on timing and power…not just the power.

The afternoon was spent on Tensho kata, Kumite (sparring) combinations with partners, and fast, continual attack/defense drills in which one after another attacks the person at the front of each line and eventually, Mr. Fujiwara will yell “Switch!” And you relinquish the hot seat to another karateka.  Good stuff!  I don’t know how much water and Pocari Sweat (a Japanese style GatorAid) I consumed, but it was a lot.  I’m so glad I’m from Texas because some of the people from Russia and England were pretty taxed by the heat.  I believe the heat index yesterday was right at 100F.

We finished the last hour in groups of like rank, working our proscribed grading kata.  Black belts grade on Sanchin, Tensho, and a proscribed kata.  For my 6th Dan level, my kata is Seisan, a very difficult leg kata with many turns on one leg and kensetsu Geri kicks.  My knee replacement seems to be taking it all in stride, but sometimes my balance is off from knee issues and that will be disaster if I don’t fix it in the coming week.  Lots of work needed on Seisan kata – an effect of not having any of my Senseis regularly available to correct things.  We ALL need that second set of eyes or we become complacent, or blind to our mistakes.  When you do have the chance to be graded or evaluated, it is very humbling to find you need to fix many things in the kata you thought was pretty good.   In grading in the JKF Gojukai and in Seiwakai, you are required up through 5th Dan to also do Kumite in your grading.  It can be very “spirited” to say the least.  I’m quite happy not to do grading Kumite any longer, even though I like sparring.

By the end of the day, everyone was ridden hard and put up wet, but it was a very good first day.  My knees feel pretty good and my conditioning is fine.  That’s  it from Omagari.

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