So, I am hanging in there OK. The first surprise at the beginning of this last week was the appearance of Bjorn, a new Senshusei from Germany (he's half Swedish). I'm not sure why he missed the first week but now he is "in it to win it" with the rest of us. He's a fascinating character who is working on a PhD in robotics from the University of Tokyo. He is wry and cheerful, and has the kind of physique you might expect of someone who is working on a PhD in robotics from the University of Tokyo. I give this guy a lot of credit - he knows absolutely nothing about Aikido and he has a lot of catching up to do physically, but he doesn't quit. He becomes uncomfortable sitting in seiza almost immediately and he gets yelled at constantly because he can't get his ass off the floor fast enough when he's been thrown down, but as soon as we get back to the locker room, the jokes start again right from where he left off. Bryn and I like him a lot, and it's comforting to have someone who's worse off than us.
Chino has quickly asserted himself as the most demanding teacher, but probably also the one who is getting the most results out of us. His classes have basically consisted of us assuming each of the various kihon dosa poses and then holding them, as he walks around aggressively adjusting posture and barking, "Lower!" People grunt and groan as he forces their bodies into better position, and sometimes they cannot hold the position he's pushing for at all and simply collapse to the ground. This happened to poor Bryn at one point when Chino was adjusting his seiza. Bryn's feet are covered in nasty cuts and blisters and he just couldn't stand the pain in his toes. I'm lucky because my feet are unscathed, protected as they have been from the callouses already formed by the previous year at David Fryberger Sensei's dojo in Los Angeles. I wish I could say the same about my back, which continues to bleed into my dogi jacket whenever we start doing koho ukemi.
When Chino forces us to hold these deep stances and walks around yelling at everyone, I try to trick my mind into forgetting where I am and the physical sensations I am experiencing, even if only for a second at a time. I imagine a picture in my mind and I say to myself, "I am the billy goat staring into the wind upon the highest peak. I am the porcupine with rigid quills. I am the dolphin leaping toward the sky. I am the bald eagle fiercely surging toward his prey." Putting my attention into these images and words helps pass the time while my body is being transformed. I try to imagine that I am not my body, but a noble spirit that is trying to conquer the beast that is my body. I muse that in fact I am the spirit of all my ancestors existing in a timeless continuum, and that I am no longer encased inside this one rude shell. These are the ways in which Aikido surprises you. There is something profound to be discovered in even the most tiresome drills. The tiresomeness itself is profound. At any rate, it's a great gift Chino is giving us by being such a taskmaster. After having to hold a pose deeply for minutes on end, it's quite easy to do it for shorter intervals. Already I feel my kihon dosa have improved a lot.
The other day I got to see the great legends Takeno and Ando, who came to the Honbu Dojo for some sort of meeting. They didn't stay too long, but it was interesting to see the men whom I have read about and seen videos of. The shihan who actually taught us last week included Kancho, Ito, Sonoda, Kimura, Oyamada, Noriki, and Romeo Shihan. Romeo Shihan's class is terrific because he speaks almost entirely in English. The rest of the week we have to struggle and guess what's going on by looking at gestures, but on Saturdays, it's the cops' turn to scratch their heads. It's fun to be the first one to respond to commands instead of the last!
In other news I completed one marathon 4-hour English conversation lesson with the inexhaustible Yutaka-san, and I have two new pupils lined up for this week. One I met at a bar, and one responded to an ad I put up at "my-sensei.com". I don't have a working visa yet (the dojo helps with that once they've decided you're definitely in it for the long haul) so I have to work under the table as a private tutor for the time being. I went to a print shop today and made up some fliers, and then Bryn and I proceeded to stroll around handing them out. Hopefully we will be able to wrangle enough students to avoid starvation!
Here's a nice little video about Aikido:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sud8bsZyn84&feature=related
After the shots of nature the first thing you see is a line of guys performing the kihon dosa that I keep mentioning. We will spend the first three months of the course learning how to do the drills you see them demonstrate. As I think I mentioned previously, one of the great insights of Shioda (the little old man you see in the end of the video) and some of the other early Yoshinkan membership was to distill Aikido's essence into these six basic movements that can be repeated until the body begins to grasp what is known as the riai, or the internal logic of Aikido.
It's also interesting to note that Aikido demonstrations are not necessarily meant to resemble what Aikido would look like in real combat. The techniques that you see are a relatively safe way of practicing the art of unbalancing an opponent, and then exploiting that unbalance. This is something that requires perfect timing. Shioda himself estimated that in real combat situations, the moment of unbalance achieved against an opponent would usually be exploited by means of a strike rather than a throw. Even with relatively little force, because of the momentary vulnerability of his opponent and his impeccable timing, Shioda's strikes (which he would apply with any part of his body including his back) were devastating.
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