Last days in Fukuoka

These last days in Fukuoka have been great as so many of them before! People ask me what I will take with me home from Japan and I must say that I have experienced so much happiness from people. That this is what I will take with me, a picture of great people in a great country with great food.

Thank you everyone that I have met! You have been wonderful and I look forward to come visit again! 2 month´s have been too short.

On the aikido side of things I have been practicing with so many different people and learned much about myself and my ukemi. I can only hope that it has improved my aikido as it has improved my life.

Thank you!

Fukuoka, demo doko des ka?

Ok. Many people have asked me where I live in Fukuoka and how much the prices are.

First of all Fukuoka is not the same as Fukushima and I am more or less as far away from Fukushima as you can get in Japan. Fukuoka is in the west of Japan. It is located north on the Kyushu island is considered the main city on this island by many. Furthermore I live in the tenjin area and this is where everyone goes shopping. The weekly hotel mansion I stay at is called Access Tenjin and you can see pictures and stuff here: http://www.access-tenjin.com and if you are using google chrome as your web browser you can just translate it into english and understand at least most of it. There also seems to be a discount for people that are here to do aikido as well because I pay less than what is on the web.

If you get high enough you have a view out to the south of the area.
The staff is very friendly and there is no problem if you only speak english. They will take so good care of you that there will be no problems anyway. A real clean and easy place to stay. It is very short to two of the dojo´s (Takasago and Tenjin) that is about 10 min bicycle ride.

Happy Birthday to Honbu Dojo, Fukuoka

A few days ago we had a big celebration starting morning practice with Suganuma Sensei followed by a great presentation of various techniques from all the dojo´s in Fukuoka area. The occasion was the 15. Anniversary of Honbu Dojo, Fukuoka. This was a day of entusiasm and happiness. Many people had practiced on their demonstations for weeks, for us to see. I feel grateful that I could be there to see what they have prepared and to participate in the celebration.

Later on that day we had a nice buffet with too much food and good company. We were only four foreigners attending, but we got the chance to honor Honbu dojo and Suganuma Sensei by singing "Happy Birthday To You" in 3 languages and in english.

And later that day I was invited to go to karaoke! Wich is by the way a great place to learn some hiragana. Why? Because you can hear what the person is singing and the hiragana is on the screen. This helps you know the sounds of a japanese word so later if you see the hiragana you will know what word it is. Hopefully you will finally know what the word means as well and not only how it sounds..

Ushiro Ryokatatori - Sankyo Omote

Yes, I know. It is hard to pronounce and even to remember. The technique is the one where uke grabs your shoulders from behind. So ushiro means behind and ryokatatori means grab with two hands. In practice this technique is done by uke coming from the front and "running around" you to grab your shoulder. It really feels wierd that uke would go for the shoulders when in front of me. One thing that we practiced tho was moving a bit off the line and then uke had to grab the shoulder because everything was gone and uke would be out of balance.

This is a video I found on Youtube that shows the technique:



Why would you go around and grab the shoulders?

Intention, Depth, Ikkyo

Yesterday I attended practice at Takasago dojo in the morning and later in Tenjin dojo. While Suganuma sensei is in Israel there is other sensei taking responsibility on the classes. What was different for me yesterday was that we were did one technique for quite a long time during practice. This got us to really in to depth on Ikkyo. I was able to focus on being a good uke with intention and when I was nage I got to correct or change my approach many times before changing technique. I tried to be an uke with intention and not giving up my attack and also to get up after being thrown and attack again. In 30+ degrees celsius this is hard and you get tired, but I noticed that the techniques for nage was getting better when I as uke had this approach.

After class as I have mentioned before there is often plenty of time to work on the techniques that were shown in class earlier. Yesterday I was lucky to be able to practice together with a dan graded (black belt). I thought I would be brave and try out different techniques on uke doing tsuki. The biggest issue I have when someone is doing tsuki is that I do not know what to do else than Iriminage. We went through the attack many times and I got really good tips on where to put my focus. I often put my focus on the hand and then suddenly I had attackers hand in my hands and did not know what to do.. My very helpful and patient uke helped me to see that I need to not focus on the hand and instead see what openings there were. Being so occupied with what technique I should do really left me with tension in my body and when the attack finally came I would be stressed out trying to find the right technique. This does not happen as often on other attack types like shomen uchi or yokomen uchi. After a while I sometimes managed to let go of my control freak tendencies and just do what felt right. Suddenly I was doing very different techniques on tsuki that I before did not thought possible. A really nice session! And I think I suddenly understand why Ikkyo is called that name. It is not because it is the first technique you learn, but it is often the first you find when someone is attacking you with whatever.

So my tip to others having trouble on some attack type: Have someone throw it on you for a while and try different focus and speed. It really helped my yesterday and I hope to do it more tonight after class.

PS: I hope you guys at the NAF summer camp are enjoying the classes with Bjørn Eirik Olsen Sensei and Hideki Takemura Sensei.

How to be uke on koshinage?

Yesterday we did koshinage in class and it is a good looking technique, but I have one big issue with being uke and how to do the ukemi. If you have not heard me before I can tell you again that the mats here in Japan tend to be quite hard. How can I protect myself as uke in this technique? The obvious would of course be to not fall at all and stop the technique on the back of nage, but this does not enable us to practice the technique to the end.

The fall kind of looks like a high fall, but it also seems to me that uke is turning a bit before landing. Have a look at the video.

Writings

Yesterday I got these writings and I would love help to translate it !

Additional tools for learning

It is always much talk about learning by doing and not letting the head get in the way of learning a new technique or practice. This being said I find it inspiring to see both videos and read about aikido.
Today I bought the Aikido 3D tool for my computer and are looking forward to see what it can offer me in ways of inspiration and information on the various techniques.

There is some videos on youtube showing off the main functionality.

Sensei, Uke or You?

I have since I came to Japan been lucky enough to train with many different people and also the class has been with several different sensei. Everyone that I have trained with has had their own perspective. Sometimes we talk during the technique and other times we do not say much just communicating through the body movements. There is always someone doing the technique differently, because there is no one technique. The basic technique is there yes, but there is so many variables to this if you are to be able to do the technique together with uke. The obvious one is when uke´s height is higher or lower than yours, but also the small things like where is uke´s feet. You can even go deeper than that I think and see how strong is the intentions of uke. Does uke concentrate on the attack or is uke going in another direction than what you would expect. All these things is only noticeable when you look for them.

I remember one training in Norway where Bjørn Eirik Olsen sensei showed us morote-dori kokyu-ho and told us to think about where we had our focus. Do you focus on the first or the second hand of the attacker or something else when doing the technique? This showed me how much of aikido is actually in our mind and not only technique. Thus being here in Japan and training with many people in classes with different sensei makes me search inside my self for the aikido that I can do. Everyone is telling me something new or something that often is different than the last person i did the same technique with did. Who can you listen to? The obvious answer would be sensei. I also think that you have to listen to your body and doing what works for you in the given situation. At the same time we are practicing the basic technique and it has a pattern to follow.

I have decided to take all tips and help I can get and listen to it and try to adapt at the same time learning what feels right in the technique. I am willing to try what people are telling me of course, but I will reflect on it after doing the technique and then try it again with moving my focus to some other part of my body.

Anyways I hope my ramblings can make sense to someone.

Google Trends: Aikido

I was curious about how many people are searching for Aikido related information on google.com. Maybe you are too?
It seems to me that the trend is going down so less people are searching for the word aikido, but at the same time we have more coverage in the news. Here is the link: http://www.google.com/trends?q=aikido



You can of course make many assumptions on this topic, but the numbers are still there. I did also try to the a trend check on Twitter, but it seems to be too few tweets containing "aikido" to give a real trend report.

Hospitality

This Sunday we spent together with Toshiro Nishida and his family. First we visited Space World, a big amusement park located east of Fukuoka. We did a great variety of rides and compared with the universal studio park in Osaka this was a joy because of the few queues we had to go through. I am also very happy that the scariest ones were closed so I did not have push myself in to one of those. Later in the day we were invited to have dinner in the Nishida family's house for dinner. The invitation could have mentioned the great entertainment we had there as well. I think the Japanese are excellent hosts. We had both pizza and sushi with beer, wine and soda. The entertainment started when the kids brought out the Nintendo Wii ( A japanese invention as it was mentioned) and all the kids (all 8 of them!) went crazy playing various games. The last game being hide and seek with the wii remotes. As proper adults we helped the ones that was hiding the Wii-remotes with various suggestions and often offered ourselves as hiding place. All great fun for both adult and child.

Once again we have experienced japanese culture at its best. We feel very lucky to have been able to see a japanese home and to be invited in to such a friendly family.

Hiroshima and Miyajima

Today we did a few sights that we felt was important here in Hiroshima area. We had to visit the Peace Memorial Park and the A-Bomb Dome. The last serving as a reminder of the awful event that happened here in 1945 when the USA dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and killed more than 200 000 people. We hope that the visit will give the kids a perspective on nuclear weapons.

Miyajima on the other hand was a nice place to do some sightseeing. We had close encounters with the local "wild" life as we began walking towards the floating torii, local shrines and temples. There were lots of signs warning us to not touch the deer. We thought that _if_ we did see any we would not go after it and touch it. We ended up seeing at least 10 of them and they were more interested in what we might have in our pockets than we were of touching them. They seemed to be very used to people and had no problems with following you around during your trip to the shrines.

When walking around in the unfinished building of Hokoku Shrine, also known as Senjokaku (hall of thousand tatami mats) I could not stop thinking of how it would be to train aikido in a building like this. It would be a great experience and the atmosphere it would create would really inspire people to enjoy practicing aikido. Imagine that this building was intended for buddhist chanting every month to console the souls of the dead in the war. It was ordered built in 1587 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but was not finished due to his death.

Tomorrow we travel back to Fukuoka and I can finally get back to some aikido practice! I really miss the training and I feel that all I have done the last two weeks have been eating and walking between looking at shrines and animals. And by the way if you wanted to know the japanese word for training it is "keiko" 稽古