After 6 days in a row of Judo I was of the belief I had survived to finally enjoy my rest day - Sunday. Unfortunatley the universe had other plans in motion, after training on Saturday I rushed back to my place to prepare my lesson for Aoki San as I was due to teach him an hour long English class in an hour. I allowed myself 10 minutes to zone out on my bed before I dived into the English text books to plan out a lesson.
After 45 minutes of this I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I would ramble on about and had some activities planned to break up the monotomy of the lesson, the lesson went relatively well with a small hiccup when I was asked what sarcasm meant, it is really difficult to explain the whole concept of it to someone who has no comparable concept in their own language/culture.
After the lesson Aoki San took me to dinner around the corner, to a restaurant that unsurprisingly his firm owns...I'm seriously starting to wonder what they don't own, on the way to dinner he pointed out numerous buildings his company owns. The dinner was nice, the food was Onikawa style (A Nihon island where Karate comes from) they have lots of pigs on the island so lots of the food is tong (pork) but it was really good, Aoki also treated me to a couple of Onikawa native cocktails which were like tequila & lime in taste but are made up of something else mixed with Sake - of course.
Before I continue I'm going to rewind around 12 hours.
Aoki had spoken to me in the morning of this day to tell me that he may have a place for the other Judo guys from Kiwi land to stay when they arrived in the next week and that I should get Rick Sensei to contact him soon about this. I passed on the message and went to Judo, which was really the hardest training yet as all my accumulated pains from the week were now in full force and I was really mentally at the end of the bridge, but the thought of chilling out tomorow (Sunday) reading my book and generally recovering gave me the strength to persevere and go 110%, Saturday is also tougher because a few alumni of Kyoto University come to train as its their day off, they are generally in their late 20's/early 30's and have a whole week of work ready to vent out on you. One of them came and asked me for a fight during Randori time, I was interested to see what he had. I found out somewhere between 10-20 seconds later when I was suddenly staring at the roof as he threw me with Seoi-Nage (A shoulder throw, where you literally throw someone over your shoulder) Heres a link to a video of a Seo-Nage - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcZENFhcNtQ
I risked a hasty glance at the clock and saw that I have another 8 minutes with this guy so I decided to try and catch him off guard with something unconventional, so when we engaged next I kept my distance until he came after me, when he did I caught his arm and went for a rolling armbar, it didnt quite work out because I lost his arm as I rolled but He was now on his back so I pinned him untill he eventually gave up and tapped out. The next 6 minutes were mostly his but I was happy that I had caught him once and started to figure out his a game by the end of the round.
Ok, only another 9 to go...
9 Randoris(fullcontact sparring) later and I'm barely standing but now theres only 30 minutes of various drills left and I can jump on my flash silver bike and wizz home. The drills mostly concentrated on being on the offensive when someone has turtled up on the ground or has pulled guard on the ground while you are still standing. Learnt some interesting new things here that I'm looking forward to trying to apply. Maybe on my arch-nemisis Wailou, maybe.
Anyway after training I got a call from Rick Sensei who had some news regarding his chat with Aoki, it was big news. The place that they have offered us to stay in is actually a School, or was a School to be more correct, Japan has an aging population so quite a few schools are closing down as theres just no kids around to fill the classrooms. Taking advantage of this, the Company decided to purchase one in Town when it closed down recently. It's a 3 story building with about 4 classrooms on the bottom floor, a large kitchen, huge chill out living room furnished with couches & computer, a big formal dinning room and a Piano. On the second floor theres a big rec room which will be used for storage, a enormous room floored with tatami mats so we will use this for sleeping, another kitchen and a bathroom. The top floor was the school hall.
So to come back forward to after dinner, As we were walking away from the restaurant Aoki San advised me one of the houses in the locale they had recently purchased was to be demolished in a couple of days and that tomorow we are wellcome to take any furnishings from the place for our new pad at the school. I went to bed early and the next day (his day off) he helped Rick and I move chests of drawers, a fridge, microwave, hutch dressers, futon beds etc with a company truck to the school to furnish the place.
Some pictures and a article corresponding to this can soon be found on www.Judokong.com - also if your into Judo or grappling in general this is a good site to follow, courtesy of the Auckland University Judo Club.
Theres an idea floating around that we can use this place as a base for Kiwi Judoka in Japan, its a great place to base out of right in the centre of around 4 tough Judo universities, plus the Police Judo Club. As things can change in the blink of an eye I feel this will be on a play by ear approach so watch this space anyway.
After providing us this this place, furtiture and company truck it was only polite that the President of the company Nakakura treat US to an extensive lunch, this was contrary to Rick & I's plan to take Them out to lunch. But when the boss has made his mind up you do what he says. The food was great and he ordered me around 5 dishes while everyone else had 1 or 2, it was like a challenge to see just how much a young westerner can eat. I ate everything in front of me, so he decided to order me some more...Which I eventually managed to get through, so he ordered me some desert, which I managed to get through (with some timely help from Sensei Rick) Fortunatley everyone had other plans for the day so it was time to move out, with my stomach straining not to explode I slowely shambled along back home. As we walked back we passed a place called MOOSE BURGER which is like Japanese Burger Fuel, Shatcho Nakakura (Shatcho means the big boss) then queried if I could handle some of this. I finally gave in and conceded a defeat, I actually was having some pains in my stomach and trouble walking at this point. Japan 1, NZ 0.
Today I went to Starbucks, a sin in itself. Once there I purchased a 500 Yen Venti sized Coffee smothered in cream and caramel and everything else they could chuck in it to make the most wimpy, unmanly coffee imaginable. Whatever, I dont care I really needed that even though I'm skipping lunch to cover the cost of it. Totally worth it.
I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before or not, but Nihon-Jin (Japanese People) make TERRIBLE coffee, but they LOVE coffee, they charge you an arm and a leg for a cuppa because its that popular, yet they still make these bubbly, frothy, weak excuses for coffee. If I was a smart man & a rich man I would be in here with a couple of skilled Kiwi Barristers opening a good Cafe turning out the real deal, you would really make a huge killing and probably grab the whole market share for Kyoto within a week. Now for a reminder that this blog and all ideas expressed within it are the intellectual property of Jordan Reynolds and any use of such are criminal.
Some advise for anyone planning on coming over here: Do your shopping at the Supermarket after 1930, reason: All perishable foods are 50% cheaper. You can grab a 500 Yen Bento box of food for 250 or even less, fish for 50 yen etc. The only risk you run is rocking up all exited about the feast you can now have with your loose change and theres nothing left. This happened to me the other day after I finished training around 9. I wearily rode my bike round to the Supermarket, really looking forward to a decent, nourishing meal and what do I find? Nothing. The damn Japs had eaten everything. I had to settle on the only remaining item which consisted of raw squid flesh and a few tentacles. Didnt even fill me up either.
I have training in a couple of hours so I had best take a power nap to mildy compensate for not doing lunch today.
J
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