International Community

The most amazing thing about training in Japan is the extensive international community that exists here. AS I mentioned in a previous post: the martial arts in Japan are not inherently better than in other countries. Sensei are not better by virtue of being Japanese and, often times, the traditional teaching style is difficult for foreign students. Japan, however, is the world epicenter for the martial arts; it’s a gathering point where people come to share their knowledge and energy.

In the two years I’ve lived in Japan, I have had the opportunity to meet and train with an interesting variety of Budoka from around the world. In Kitakyushu, my mentor, Lyn Jehu, was a Welshman—NOT ENGLISH—who currently holds a ni-dan in Shotokan Karate, a san-dan in Shito-Ryu Karate and a san-dan in Goju-Ryu Karate. WE often practiced boxing and various striking and kicking drills in the park… much to the amusement of my middle school students who lived nearby.
Through Lyn, I was later introduced to the finest swordsman in all of France—or so I’ve heard—who also happened to be one of the finest Aikidoka I have ever met. Unfortunately, we did not meet until the end of my stay in Kitakyushu, but the two hour training session we shared before I left was better than six months of any normal training.


During the three months I spent at the
Kodokan
I was privileged enough to meet the Venezuelan Paraolympic team. This was my first chance to train with other blind judoka and I am not at all ashamed to say they kicked my ass squarely and soundly. I am proud to say the person who has most thoroughly tossed me around a judo mat was a blind man called Junior. I took the opportunity to arrive early one day and chatted with the team for a couple hours before training. Junior practices Judo full time; in Venezuela, he trains twice a day six days a week. Thanks to the governments strong support of the Paralympics, He has traveled around the world and, for the second time, taken three weeks to train in Tokyo.


Besides training with German, Russian, French and Egyptian national champions, I had wonderful opportunities to spar with sensei from Israel and Barbados. Every day brought new players from new places. One Italian Pilot chose to work flights to Narita so he could train at the Kodokan in his rest period.


Of course my discussion on the international community could not be complete without mentioning the budoka at the International Budo University. The judoka include three Americans from very different backgrounds, one Chinese man and one Peruvian. France, Holland, Turkey, Finland, Mexico, Korea and Chile are all represented by the Kendo members training In Katsuura. We are as mixed as the countries we represent, but we all share our passion for the martial arts.

Perhaps it is because we all share the common trait of being outsiders in this country… or perhaps it is simply our desire to improve ourselves and those around us, but the international community in Japan is one of the most supportive networks I have ever seen. I do not wish to undercut the amazing Japanese budoka I have also met and I hope to be posting frequently about the fantastic sensei at the Budo Daigaku when classes begin. I just wanted to take a moment during Golden Week while nothing is happening to remember the many foreigners I have met here in Japan.

Bow to your Sempai

During the first week of introductory Japanese classes, while the regular university students were sitting through hours of orientation, we were sitting through hours of lectures devoted to instilling in us one important idea: our place in the great hierarchy…

…The bottom.


Though the importance of status is well known, an outsider in the country may not notice the subtle shades of rank and file within the Japanese society. Once in a school or company, however, it becomes easier to observe who holds rank and who kisses ass. Our Japanese teacher—a term I use loosely here—found it extremely important that we understand how to act toward the other students at the Budo Daigaku. The degree to which you bow, the language you use, and the duties you perform are all dependent upon your relative rank. This system is known as the taiikukei [体育系] system; a word derived from the kanji for body and growth. The term, usually associated with the sports and military, has also been used to describe the manifestations of rank at an office or school.
Though there may be many levels by which people are divided, there are two important terms. Sempai [先輩] are those people who rank above you while kouhai [後輩] are those people who rank below you.



Within the Budo Daigaku, rank is determined in this order:
Your year (first year students-fourth year students),
Your rank within the martial art (shoudan, nidon…),
Your age.

So if you decided to take a few years off before starting college, prepare to have children treat you like you were… a child.

The bekkasei students, however, fall into a unique category. We are not officially first year students, yet we are older than many of the fourth year students. Since your year comes first in determining your status, we hold the very bottom rung of the social latter. Our Japanese teacher insisted upon this during three or four days of class, repeatedly forcing us to have pretend conversations with pretend people who pretended to be above us. “You are below even the first year students, everyone is above you! So you must learn how to speak very politely. Never say “Ohayou” [Good Morning]… you must always say “Ohayou Gozaimasu” [Good Morning… while bent double] and never say “たまきんに蹴るよ” [I’m going to kick you in the balls] always say “すみません、　金的に蹴りたいと思っています” [excuse me, I am thinking about kicking you in the testicles].”


I decided to put my newly acquired knowledge to the test. So, during morning practices, I bowed to the third-year student with whom I was running and called him sempai. He stopped and very quickly exclaimed, “I’m not your sempai!”

You see, one of the major problems is that the very same Japanese students do not know how to think of us. We are not Japanese, we are not students and we are older. This is partly the cause for our difficulties in finding acceptance. We do not fit into the machine!

Every Silver Lining Has Its Cloud

Today marks two full weeks of training here at the International Budo Daigaku. Apart from Sundays, when the dojo is closed, I have attended every possible practice including the running and weight-lifting at 7:00 in the morning. Half of my cuticles have been peeled back from grabbing stiff dogis with dry hands, the joint at the base of my right thumb feels jammed, my right eye is black and blue from someone kneeing me in the face and one toe is slightly swollen from where I kicked a man while attempting a leg-sweep. (For the record, he fell down.) All in all, I haven’t been overly impressed with the skill level of these judoka.



The last two days have seen a marked improvement in the behavior of some of the Japanese students, however. I am averaging about five rounds of randori (sparring) out of a possible fifteen per day and, although Koshino Sensei still must order some of the students to go with me, a few of the boys have come of their own volition. It’s not perfect, but its four rounds of randori more than what I was getting last week.
It seems I have been relegated to a corner of the dojo, though, as I am not allowed to spar with anyone in the center of the room. The obvious answer for this is: “Oh, you can’t see the other groups sparring, so they put you in the corner where there are fewer people.” Unfortunately, this hypothesis is completely negated when you notice that the Japanese students seem totally unaware of their surroundings during randori. I could talk for hours about the importance of awareness in budo… one of the fundamental principals in my opinion. The fact that I have had three pairs of people slam into me while I stood against the wall at the edge of the tatami-mat leads me to wonder if maybe everyone here is blind.


Yesterday, I finally managed to communicate to one judoka that he should actually fight me if he didn’t want to end up on his back with my knee in his groin. I communicated this by throwing him on his back and putting my knee in his groin. It was like a light came on in his head. He jumped up, said, “Onegaishimasu!” and started sparring seriously and not just making half-hearted attempts to kick my ankles.
Since then, most of the judoka I’ve sparred with have made legitimate attempts to throw me. They might only be playing at 75%, but that is 75% better than before.



But every silver lining has its cloud. As the five of us foreigners stood to the side while the Japanese began class today, Koshino Sensei walked up to us and said “There’s a tournament coming up. Sorry. Try to make friends.”
This was meant to excuse the behavior of students who refused our requests to practice. They only want “serious” training now while preparing for the tournament. So, it’s not only me who has been having difficulties in finding acceptance. But I think the IBU will find it has a very stubborn group of gaikokujin—foreigners—this year.

First Days

The regular semester at the kokusai budo daigaku doesn’t officially commence until the 18th of April. The two weeks leading up to the beginning of the semester, however, are filled with such exciting activities as…


Orientation!
Ping-pong!
More orientation!
Ping pong!
Pornography!
[When you put a large group of martial Artists together—the majority of which are men—there are only two topics of conversation: fighting and…



Day one of orientation set the stage and dimmed the lighting for the general proceedings to come. The first hour and a half were dedicated to the explanation of the rules of conduct at the dormitory and the proper separation of garbage. If you have never been to Japan, you might find it interesting to note the extreme complexities of garbage. There are burnables, plastics, cans/glass, organic, small chunks of metal/glass and corpses. Each individual city/prefecture makes further classifications: sometimes combining plastics and burnables, sometimes dividing plastics based on material or shape. Perhaps, due to all this, it is damn near impossible to find a garbage can when you’re walking around and you’ve just finished eating an onigiri (rice ball) and are now looking for someplace to throw the wrapper.


The second hour and a half of orientation was dedicated to the fire drill. After a brief explanation of the extinguisher—pull the pin, hold at arms length, aim for the base of the flame not the outer edges—we were shown the fire doors and alarm. Then, the staff of the dormitory told us to go back to our rooms and wait for the alarm to ring. When the alarm rang, we all filed calmly down the stairs, through the doors and across the courtyard to a nearby hill. Meanwhile, the secretary of the international office shouted, “Hashite Hashite! (Run run!)” We were then scolded for not taking the fire drill seriously and running out of the building.



Days two and three of orientation followed in a like manner. We filled out paperwork and signed our names to documents we couldn’t understand. In the afternoons, we worked out in the weight room and in the evenings we walked around the city. (Note: there is one shop that specializes in budo-pornography.)


Of course, when you put a bunch of board budoka together in a confined space, they will eventually decide to test one another’s strength or fighting prowess. One simple wrestling match progressed quickly through friendly tussle to serious scuffle and ended by two more budoka pulling the combatants apart.
“He tried to break my arm!”
“He wouldn’t stop!”
“I said stop!”
“Then he just kept going!”


For the sake of us all, let training begin… soon.

Who Am I?

Tales of The Iron Goat

Let’s begin things with a brief introduction; get to know each other, so to speak.  Well, you’ll get to know me, anyway.  If you’re reading this than you’ve demonstrated yourself to be a classy individual and that’s all I need to know about you.

     I am from a small suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, called Comstock Park.  Until the age of seven, I had a very normal, middle-American life.  My Dad was the most exotic person I knew... since he had a suntan.

     When I was seven I began to suffer extreme migraines.  By the time doctor’s discovered the cause, it was too late and the brain tumor that had been developing began to put pressure on my optic nerves.  To make a long and complicated medical history short, two surgeries left me alive but completely blind.  This was, in a word, life-changing. 

     Such life-altering experiences can have one of two results: leave you depressed and defeated or drive you to seek out and overcome every challenge.  I chose the latter life-path and spent the following years devoted to school.

     After graduation from high school I attended the University of Michigan [go blue] where I got highest honors in psychology and fluent in Spanish.  During this time I studied abroad in Santiago de Chile and went to Spain to hike the Camino de Santiago. 

    After university, I spent two years teaching English in southern Spain.  Why I ever left the shores of the Mediterranean Sea I will never know, but my wanderlust eventually drove me to Kitakyushu, Japan, where I spent an additional two years teaching. 

     This brings us more or less up to the present.  I am now preparing myself for one final year in Japan at the International Budo University, where I will be studying Judo. 

     Along the way I have met a myriad of the most interesting characters.  It has been these people, perhaps most of all, which have kept me traveling.  You start to get attached to these sorts of people and that, my friends, is dangerous!  Many have been my various sensei and other roll-models and I will, occasionally, be forced to nod a cyber head in their direction.

Now join me as we talk Budo!  And whatever else takes my fancy.  Let’s enjoy blogging!

-Nick