Pardon the long absence--these days I haven't been Currently in Japan, I've been at Aikido camp in the good old Rocky Mountains, which I call home some of the days. Aikido camp is all I had anticipated for months and much more; it is filling me with the stuff I will reflect upon during this coming year.

I seem to have changed a whole lot as far as my Aikido technique, ukemi(the one who receives the techniques), and outlook. I've been consisently amazed that beginners, intermediate level, and advanced level people all seem to have something useful to teach me. And I've been surprised every time someone approachs me to train after class. Mostly they rank high above me or have much more experience than me, and I am grateful for everything I have been learning from them.

On a personal level, reuniting with friends has been overwhelming and has been melting my heart. There is a lot more that I could write about this, but I won't, because when one is in the middle of it all, it's not always the best time to reflect.

It's been over 100 degrees every day for about 3 or 4 days now... and exceedingly humid for about three weeks. I'm so hot I can barely post blogs. But I managed to get to Aikido tonight. Still learning a lot every time, always challenging. It was so hot that my arms were glistening during practice. I was surprised because I don't remember that happening before. Awesome Guy was showing me stuff again, and I'm getting more and more prepared for summer camp in Colorado. Maybe recently I've just started to feel like an actual shodan. I know I look goofy a lot when I'm trying new things, but learning is now more important than how I look.

Yakuza Encounter

I just got a report today that yakuza(organized gang) has recently been gathering in this area. I hadn't a clue yakuza members lived around here, but now I understand it is well known around town. I saw them last night.

My friend Kara will be leaving Japan in a few days, after three years living and teaching here. So, we decided to meet for dinner at Cafe Miami, near the Tamana train station. She took the main road there, but I took some back roads, since it was near my house. When we arrived, I told her that there was a group of 25 or so men in blue uniforms holding red light wands standing in the road. They moved when I pulled my car through, and I saw on my right, a desk with two shaven-head men in uniforms staring intensely at me through my car window. I felt alarmed and vulnerable for a moment, and then I saw two women dressed in black turn into the alley from the busier street near the restaurant.
I couldn't get a sense for what was going on: I thought it must have been a funeral.

We forgot about it and ate our pasta.

Today's report went like this: A friend of Tamana Girls' School has reported this afternoon that Yakuza gang members have been seen in the area behind the train station. Teachers are asked to stay clear of that area, and tell their students to stay clear. The police have a watch on the building where members have gathered, but as of yet, there is no further news.

I have nothing to do with yakuza, except we live in the same world, under the same universal laws. Their world affects mine and vice versa, to a lesser degree, I'm sure. But are they 'bad,' and the police 'good?' And couldn't one easily become the other, as easily a friend can become an enemy? I feel strange when the connections/interactions between people is broken and people get labeled off-limits or scary. On the other hand, maybe it's always good to stay away from negative influences. Or, as a superhero we could go straight into them without being affected. (Didn't I mention I have a t-shirt that says, "I wish I was supernaturally strong, so I could put right all that is wrong." But it's difficult to wear that shirt outside of Japan because it sounds so presumptuous. The idea is nice though.) The other answer is to get rid of the concepts of right and wrong all together. Which is more difficult?

Suganuma Sensei in Tenjin Dojo, Fukuoka

Went to Suganuma Shihan's dojo finally on Monday night. I'd been wanting to go for almost two years now, but the chance came when a guy from his dojo up in Fukuoka moved down here to ours in Kumamoto. Having a connection to someone from Suganuma Sensei's dojo made it much easier to just show up and train.
And boy, was it enjoyable. Sensei's stretches were refreshingly authentic. I was right in front of him, and I could hear him breathing through nearly every stretch. His stretches were full of extension. I really enjoyed being there right with him for that.
Training was morotedori kokyunage, ushiro katatedori kotegaeshi and shihonage, and so on--I heard someone once say that Suganuma Sensei trains mostly basic techniques, which sounds about right. We did morotedori ikkyo, which was good for me because I'm working on the pin. I'm trying to line up my hand with uke's and press my the base of my index finger knuckle into uke's to hold the pin without a lot of muscle.
Near the end, Sensei called out 'jiuwaza--dozo,' and I looked at my partner, and he says in English, 'Anything you want, come on!!' So we worked on koshinage, where I'm working to look at my leading hand all the way through the throw. My partner wanted me to crank his wrist really hard in nikyo, which I couldn't do so well, so he showed me how to hook my pinky around his wrist.
The people I got to work with seemed to reflect what I could see about Sensei--relatively loose and flexible, precise, and most noticeably, aware. I read that Sensei began to practice Zen seriously many years ago, which would explain the sense I got that he notices everything.
Sensei worked with me for kokyuho. He said I was holding my breath, and he was right. When I breathed it was much easier. I could feel the same thing in his wrists that I feel when I grab Honda Sensei's: it feels tight, but not strong. Ikeda Sensei's wrists felt the same, as far as I can remember. It's what I've been trying to emulate in tenkan practice. (BTW, it does help to extend my fingers.)
Afterwards, Bread, Bread's wife, my boyfriend(who came to watch!) and I had tea with Sensei. I was really happy, and wanted to talk with him for a long time, but unfortunately, a long time is something we didn't have. It took about 2 hours to get to the dojo, and it took 2 hours to get back. I was so glad to go that... I want to go again!!!

Last night we had some powerful thunderstorms. I was up from about 4-6 in the morning, listening to the thunder and sheets of rain, and watching flash after flash of lightning(and feeling it shake my bed). The lightning came very close to my home. It struck down what looked to be less than a half mile away.

When the sun came up around 5:30, I sat facing my small garden, watching the downpour continue for another half hour.

At 7, I was awakened by the phone, and a teacher reported to me that school was cancelled today due to flooding. Ten minutes later, he called back and said that teachers were to come to school, but no students would be there. The logic of that, I have to say, evaded me, but that doesn't really matter. Most teachers, like me, left school early. So I'm at home today, making up for lost sleep and cleaning house.

I've heard the storms will continue all week.

----
I'm really looking forward to my upcoming trip home, Aikido camp, visiting friends, family, etc. Recently, although I feel generally content, I've also felt in need of some stimulation. However, it is quite nice to be in anticipation of something too, so I guess all is well.

Having been said, I'm open to topics related to Japan or Japanese culture. If anyone has a suggestion for a topic or question, etc., please let me know.

Generosity

I noticed this article on the news today, which almost brought me to tears:

Warren Buffett donates $37 billion to Bill Gates Foundation

My dream is not to be as rich as this man, but as generous.

Awesome

"The US Episcopal Church has chosen a woman as its next leader - making it the first church anywhere in the Anglican denomination to do so..." : a change for Anglicans

and as long as we're on the subject of religion, the following is an interactive site created by zen monks in Kyoto : do-not-zzz

and as long as we're on that subject, now for something completely different...
The 2003 National Rock Paper Scissors Competition!

What is solid and charged with energy?

(insert your cleverest answer:___________)


Something I note recently about Aikido practice--while practicing tenkan(the changing-direction exercise), it 'works' with a variety of training partners.

I've been working on maintaining a solidness through the exercise from the arm, through the shoulder, and through the turn. Not a rigidness with force, but a solidness in the curve of my arm to my pinky. And, well, maintaining it through my wrist being grabbed.
And sort of charging my body with energy while doing this. I discovered that by extending my arms during rowing practice, I could up my energy with the extension. People always told me to 'extend, extend,' but I think I've been extending and sort of giving away whatever energy came from that extension. But now I want to work to understand what's happening and to build that energy and cultivate it.

I got a couple of 'mmm...'s from my partner at practice last night, instead of the usual 'no, do it this way,' and such. Similar thing happened with someone else.

I want to go into this deeper...

I have to say, it sucks for me when I have to teach classes by myself. Today, two of the teachers I team-teach with got called out of school for meetings, so they asked me to cover for them. It's not that I don't like teaching; I like that. But if I can't explain things clearly to the students, if I can't answer their questions clearly, and if sometimes I just can't find the words at all to convey what I need, it's very tough.

Ideally, I could conduct these classes mostly in English. However, most of the students come from a background without much skill in English listening comprehension, so mostly I just get blank stares, and the time blobs by as if we're living in a lava lamp.

Most of the students have no clue how difficult it is for me when they won't say if they understand or not. I have no idea what to do in that case. I don't know if they understand, but won't say, don't understand the assignment, or just don't understand my Japanese.

Sigh... for the first time in, well, maybe the first time this year, I almost lost it today--wanted to explode or just sit down and give up. And so it goes...

A Night at the Opera!

I went to see a performance of 'The Magic Flute' by Mozart tonight.
The performance was in Japanese (with a Japanese cast), so I brought a little libretto so I could follow what they were saying in English.

I know the tendency to become sleepy at long performances, so my expectation for myself was that I might get sleepy for the first half, and then have patience through the second, but I found instead that I was totally drawn in from the beginning. I found that Mozart's story was so creative. It began with a giant serpent chasing a prince. The prince almost gets killed, but then 3 ladies appear with silver spears and slay the serpent.
A guy dressed in feathers(Papageno) appears and finds the prince almost dead. When the prince wakes up Papageno lies and tells the prince that he was the one who killed the serpent. The 3 ladies overhear and get angry and put a magical lock on Papageno's mouth so that he cannot speak, and therefore cannot lie.
But soon, the ladies come back again and remove the lock, saying that their master, the Queen of the Night, has told them to have mercy on him.
Papageno and the ladies sing back and forth to each other:

Papageno: "I will never lie again!"

Ladies: "Let the lock be a warning to you!"

Papageno: "Let the lock be a warning to me!"

All: "If only every liar had a lock like this upon hir mouth: then would hate, calumny(slander), and rancour(ill will) be replaced by love and brotherhood!"

Again and again, I found similarly simple stories with equally universal messages.

I was profoundly affected by the symbolism of the magic flute itself, which I saw as the power of music to bring joy to life. I thought the Queen of the Night's struggle for power over Sarastro(the lord of the temple of the sun?), showed how disharmony in one's self throws the entire world off balance.

My favorite part is when the prince, Tamino, and Pamino, the daughter of the Queen of the Night, finally get to be together.
How did Mozart present this beautiful moment? He had them enter 'the gates of fear' together, and walk through fire and floods. Tamino holds the flute out in front of them both; he leads the way through the fire, and she leads through the flood. I believe this symbolized the trials of marriage, and how each must protect and support the other at different times through life. The flute was the power of joy, and especially the joy of music, which was always leading them safely through fear.

Actually, it's not too much my interpretation. Just as they begin to walk, they sing together, "We walk, by the power of music, in joy through death's dark night." Afterwards, they are allowed to enter the temple of the sun, which I think might be the heavens.

Anyway, I'm amazed, enlighted, surprised, changed and maybe most importantly, totally convinced of the power of music to bring joy and illumination to life. For the first time in my life, I feel that I witnessed Mozart's true genius personally.

I should say that the person I went with did fall asleep and certainly wasn't crying during the second act(like me) to my knowledge. So the musical training I've had to this point probably made it easier for me to have this kind of experience with this opera. Just shows the benefit that may be possible from training oneself in any way.

I don't know how I expect anyone to respond to this post, but I really, really wanted to write about my experience and my thoughts on tonight's performance.

The one that got away

Last night, at about 3:45am, something hit me on the head and woke me up. I thought it was a beetle that fell off the ceiling, because it kind of bounced. But inside, I remembered my neighbor telling me to watch out--lo and behold, when I searched to find whatever it was, I was confronted with a squirming body with hundreds of legs, and my own great big fear--a mukade!!!! On my pillow!!!!!!!

I was freaked out, it's body was thin, but it was very long. I don't know that it was one of the killer centipedes, but I've heard that's the only kind of giant centipede you see around here. I went to get a container to catch it in. Unfortunately, when I started moving it into the container, it made a dart for my clothes drawer, which I had conveniently left cracked open. I panicked, shooed it the other direction, and it fell under my bed. After that I couldn't find it at all. And I couldn't sleep. At all.

I wish I hadn't panicked, because I think I would have safely caught it otherwise, plus, I'm in training(not my dojo, but you get the point) not to panic in the face of my fear. Because of that, it's surely still somewhere in my house. What am I gonna do??!!

The Kindness of Countryfolk

People give me vegetables all the time. I've heard that receiving vegetables on a weekly basis in Japan is a tell-tale sign that you live in the countryside. The other sign is needing to drive less than 1 minute outside your house to find the closest rice field.

It's quiet out here a lot of the time, so it's really nice having fresh, homegrown vegetables around. They make me feel like cooking, which gives me something to do.

Sometimes, I don't even know the name of what I've been given. In that case, I now take it along to my cooking lesson, and ask my instructor to explain what the vegetable is and how to use it.
Today I received a bag of potatos from the girl who I tutor's uncle, who grew them in his garden. He's never even met me! Such is the kindness of countryfolk, I suppose : )

Some of the things I've received in the past six months: homegrown cucumbers, squash, eggplant, lettuce, asparagus, leeks, tomatos, persimmons, mandarin oranges, pearl oranges, asian pears, fresh eggs, freshly harvested rice--and the list goes on.

Things I've received in the past two weeks: onions, green onions, garlic, peas, cabbage, carrots, daikon radishes, honeydew, watermelon, and some pickled plums(those were also given to me today, by the girl's grandmother, who pickled them herself).

I consider myself fortunate--it's a wonder I ever have to buy food!

The Great Trash ...Solution??

Trash piles up in landfills every day. It piles up and just sits there, doing nothing, just sort of hidden from human sight. As if somewhere along the way, we humans took a strange turn and ended up with all this useless or used-up stuff that we have to 'throw away.' Of course, I contribute to this growing pile. Like probably everyone, I haven't known any other possibilities, aside from recycling and such. I don't know what got me thinking, but for a couple of weeks now, I've been thinking about how not to make trash.

But after all, I think it's not possible. Trash is a byproduct of living as a human today. Well, where is my trash coming from and why do I make it?

All this trash is coming from companies which produce it. Wrappers for candy, bags for vegetables, packages for TV dinners, packages for basketballs, packages for everything!! These companies could take responsibility for the waste that they are actually creating. But how?

I think it can be done in this way: trash could be returned the companies.
Customers return the waste to the store (or people) from which they purchased the original product. The company would be responsible for picking up it's own created trash whenever it deliver goods to the store (or people).

To use an example, if someone buys a bag of potato chips, it comes in, of all things, a bag. And after the chips are gone, we have the bag. This is what would become landfill material, but instead it is returned to the store from which it was bought to be picked up. If all trash could be sent back to the source which created it, and the source then had to deal with it, I imagine companies or individuals might be faced with alternatives to creating their particular waste products, and might start to think up easier to deal with, less troublesome waste. Or just plain less waste.

If this is a good idea, I think it might catch on if it was made in to a movie, 'Super Size Me' style. The person in the movie would collect trash from their life, or 100 people could do this, and after a month, send it all back to the companies where they bought it, to show the companies the impact of it's waste on the world.

Anyway, it's good to finally get it all down on paper, I mean... on a screen, or you know. Feedback, opinions, additions, sponsorship, or bidding for the movie rights welcome. (Just kidding, it's just an idea!!)

The Annual Tamana Iris Festival is this coming Sunday. I was in Yamazaki Convenience Store(the 'Y' shop) today buying lunch and the owner told me that the first 100 women who show up to the festival in a yukata(summer kimono) will get some sort of prize. I'm lucky, because I got a yukata as a gift from my landlord's wife as a welcome present when I moved to Tamana. So, looks like I may be all dressed up with someplace to go this weekend.

Wow. I just did a Google search to try to find a pic of the iris festival, and my own blog entry from last year's other festival in Tamana ('Tawara') came up first. Weird, I've never had that happen before, my own blog coming up first in a Google search.

I'm off again. More later

Sharing time

Hello. There are three things I would like to share tonight.


The first is this new stationery, which also reminds us all of the importance of creaning our teeth daily.


The second is that it's firefly season now. Japan has 12 varieties of fireflies, two of which live right here in Tamana, or so I'm told. I went for a stroll to see them tonight, just when they were at their blinkiest, around 8pm.
I recall from my younger days that the chemicals that light the firefly's tailend are also the same chemicals in those stick thingys you break and they light up and you can wave them around, and attract other stick thingys, but not matchstick or broomstick thingys.

The Japanese have an interesting word for something that the fireflies do. The word sounds like 'Sinko-suru'('suru' meaning 'do something') Nobody knows why they do this. Can you guess what it is that they do?


Lastly, but not leastly, the third thing was an announcement at around 3 o'clock this afternoon through the city loudspeakers. Apparently there is a wild boar（'いぬしし,' I think）on the loose in town.

'G String' offers solution to troubled musician

Tonight in preparation for the orchestra concert on Sunday, we got a look at the encore piece. It is Bach's Air for the G String.The arrangement isn't on the G string(sorry to disappoint the G string fans out there ; ) ), it's on the A, which created stress for me.
I said before that I'd like to upgrade my instrument, but I still have to play on the one I've got in the meantime. And the problem it has is that it's got scoliosis, a very slight bend in the neck which throws the instrument out of alignment. And that seems to disturb the tone of the instrument, which over time has become more important to me. So tonight, while playing the Air, I suddenly knew what I had to do. I have to take out a loan or borrow money to make this upgrade. There's no point in waiting for years--if I do, my ability to play will just decline.
I got the address of one of the violin shops in Fukuoka City, and as soon as I have the chance, I'll head there to start my search for the violin of my dreams. It won't be a Strad, but it will be just right for where I need to go with music.
You might be able to help me get closer by sending infomation about taking out loans for instruments or how to find the right violin(/bow), or someplace you really think I ought to go to test some out.
Meanwhile, enjoy the cheesy midi version of Bach, and the cheesy but true story about the violin of all our dreams.

Daikon Brings Peace to Troubled Women

For a couple of months, I've been giving private weekly English conversation lessons to my landlord's daughter. These lessons have been somewhat unexciting, seeing as I hadn't really had experience doing this sort of thing and she didn't really know what she was interested to learn. Each week I'd wonder what we ought to do, or talk about, without any real sense of what was appropriate, and recently I gave up trying to do anything with too much structure.

So Saturday, on a whim, I brought a big daikon radish to her house, thinking that since she enjoys cooking she could show me how to cook it, and we could speak English during that time.

To my surprise, our lesson came alive as we spoke English and cooked together. She discovered that I wanted to learn how to cook Japanese food, and we both could see that holding our English conversations while cooking together was fun.

At the end of the hour, I suggested I drop the fee for the lessons if she would teach me Japanese cooking each week. She agreed, and harmony was restored.

This week's lesson was 'kinpira'(n.b., this recipe is different from the one we used--traditionally, gobo, or burdock, is used, but we used daikon instead).

You can see a picture of a big daikon here if you're not sure what they look like, along with a very interesting site on Japanese health and nutrition.

It's another huntsman spider... but this time it was in my kitchen. I was sitting at the table and heard a rustling amongst the packaged seaweed... man, it was shockingly big! But fairly harmless, or so I hear, so I took out a straw fly swatter, and gently sang a little song as I moved everything off the shelf and the spider into this bin...sigh...

Sand bath

Saturday morning, I took a hot sand bath in Southern Japan(a preasantly Japanese site)

Thank goodness for hot sand,
shoveled on the body by a chiseled young man and a crooked old woman

at 3 minutes, warm

at 5, the blood pulses

at 7, a first trickle of sweat

at 10, heaviness relaxes everything

at 13, ding! perfectly baked body, sweat drenched, cleansed throughout

Aikido in Everything

We ended up going to a place in the south of Kyushu, a place called Ebino, for the weekend camping trip. There were 9 of us: 5 Japanese, 2 Canadians, and 2 Americans(including me). Interesting mix; one of the Canadians was just in visiting, and the other 2 I mentioned are finishing their 4th and 5th year as special hire-ons for the JET program. One is my good friend 'Bread', who practiced in Bozeman, MT, before he came here.

Bread's a good friend, maybe my best friend here besides my boyfriend. He's totally absorbed in the Aikido realm, and he's always thinking about it. And he does a lot of research about martial arts, so I really like to talk to him and hear all about what he's currently excited about in the martial arts world.

There's another guy, who we'll just call 'Awesome Guy'(that's what we call him behind his back anyway) who also came this weekend. Awesome Guy is awesome because he is a living-breathing Aikido DUDE. He just seems to have done his Aikido homework and he has it down. He's a well-balanced, quirky guy--like the Science Guy, who was like my generation's Mr.Wizard on TV. But something very great about him, I think, is that he is an awesome teacher--super patient too. He just keeps on encouraging and exemplifying Aikido awesomeness.

So this weekend, Bread and Awesome Guy and Bread's wife all had an Aikido bonding session, while I was on the other side of the camp stove talking with some of the other people there.

I wasn't expecting to practice Aikido skills that night(and no, I wasn't attacked by anyone). But then, Repeat Sensei, who was really drunk, came and sat next to me. He told me he was really disturbed by our practice together the other night. He was trying to show me how to do the wrist-turning, fingers-curling-over part of the shihonage(four-directional) throw. But I completely tuned him out. I knew exactly what he was refering to, because I remembered shutting off when we trained. He told me he thought about it a lot afterward, and felt bad that somehow he'd been a bad teacher and all he wanted to do was help me to understand Aikido better.

I was really impressed. It took a lot of feeling and understanding to come out and tell me that he was upset by my actions. And really, I hadn't overtly done anything. Just sort of stared off into space and not really followed his instructions.
So I told him what was going on with me, which was that it can be very hard for me to understand when he instructs me using words as a means. I mean, I can't follow the meanings in Japanese sometimes, and when I ask, it always seems to stop practice, which somehow seems anti-practice. I just think I need examples; I want to be shown by feeling the other person's technique working on me, or through feeling something myself. The words sometimes drive me nuts--I just want to train and learn, so I wonder why there needs to be language involved. And that particular night, Repeat Sensei was talking a lot, just talking and not showing. So I disconnected and retreated into myself. And it was not an appropriate response, in this case.

So I told Repeat Sensei these things and also that I felt sorry for disconnecting. And we seemed to share a real moment. It felt like we understood each other, and he shook my hand warmly.

But Repeat Sensei has a funny habit, which earned him his nickname a long time again. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, he came to me and started to tell me that he felt very sad the other night when he thought he hadn't been a good teacher to me. He went on to repeat much of the earlier conversation, pre-'shared moment'. I felt weird. So I sort of shortened my earlier response, and then he shook my hand again. I went to the bathroom again. I came back, and he came to me again, this time with the 5-year Canadian JET there to translate his words, which meaning had already been conveyed 2 times. So I understood quite fully, and was getting tired of getting what seemed like no where. After we'd shared a drink, and he started again, I finally just said "I hate words." And when I said that it seemed to really offend him deeply, and he became sad. I think maybe we just differed greatly on that particular point, and I was back to my original problem of feeling misunderstood. He seemed to have finally emptied himself of any words. We sat there in silence next to each other until Koba-chan, sensing our state, kneeled between us and gently patted our knees. She reassured us that everything was just fine, and not to be thinking too much about anything.

I saw Repeat Sensei today, and fortunately or unfortunately, we still didn't have much to say to each other. I was really impressed by his sensitivity earlier, but I think it would've been best to hold my own opinion back, and just bear my own confusion during practice. After all, he's very senior to me and he does have a good practice. But I went outside of the realm of Aikido philosophy when I couldn't let it go. I know I was the one in error. I hope Repeat Sensei and I can come to terms over time and effort. In the meanwhile, I'm going to engage myself in practice with him whether I agree with his teaching methods or not.

So even though it was a short trip, I suppose a lot happened, or came out, or something. I think I'm becoming more and more socially aloof and uncomfortable in Japanese society, and it really does effect my whole life in many ways. And I a lot of it's for fear of being misunderstood. The experience Repeat Sensei really challenged my pride, and has gotten me to look at how much more I have to give of myself to other people. That is, if I don't want to spend my life alone. I guess the first step, towards that end, as always, is to get back on the mat and try again.