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..

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.

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.

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.

Japanese Garden and Onsen

We did a bit of sightseeing today at Dazaifu and also visited a great hotel where we were greated by the president of the company as he is an aikidoka and has good relationship with our sensei Bjørn Eirik Olsen in Norway. This was a very special arrangement for us and we did our best to fit in while bathing in the steaming hot water. The hotel was a short distance outside Fukuoka and near to the airport. We checked the prices when we left and a double room was a bit more than 50000 yen per night including lunch and dinner! Japanese people are some of the most hospitable people I have ever encountered in my travels and I feel very lucky to experience Japan in this way. The home stay is working out great and we are learning more Japanese every day.

Dazaifu


Daimaru Besso Hotel


We also made plans to leave for Kyoto in a couple of days.

Home Stay

Today I am moving from Access-Tenjin to home stay at an aikido friends house. She has a "big" house and can have us all in there as my girlfriend and her two kids are coming down to Fukuoka for a couple of weeks. It will be less training, but more sightseeing in this period. I hope to get to go to a few classes during this time anyway. I will probably long for the aikido practice now that I have been at it almost every day for two weeks. I do think that my knees probably have a need of a few days off as well. When the mats are as hard as they are down here it is funny to notice that I now know where the little softer mats are. There is a couple of "softer" ones in Takasago near the middle of the dojo. In Fukuoka dojo the hardest ones are the ones close to the entrance.

There is said to be internet access at the home stay so I will be continuing with the blog posts and maybe I finally can get some pictures up too. A big thanks go out to Toshiro Nishida that managed to get posters out in all dojo's for home stay!

Awareness

Today I tried to focus on awareness in the dojo. I first got to say that awareness is difficult to train. At least it seems so to me, because it is so fast to forget the surrounding environment when doing a technique. During the class we were a lot of people so you always had to watch or sense around you when falling or enabling someone to fall. This is all good practice, but sometimes you just get so caught up in what you are trying to accomplish that you forget the world around you.

After the class it was a bit easier to keep track of everyone in the dojo without having to stop the technique because we where less people. Even then it is hard to have an awareness of both in front and behind you. If you bring in left and right as well it is even harder. At the same time that you are aware your surroundings you should also be aware of yourself. Are you relaxed. Is your stance good? Where is your center? I have a long way to go to accomplish this kind of awareness for any length of time. Seems like when you turn a corner and learn something new, you also see more of the landscape that you do not know. Meaning that what you just learned is even less of all than what you thought it was before. That is of course if learning something to the fullest can ever be done.

After Training

As with after work beer, we have after aikido beer. At least on some days and today was one of those great days. So after a couple of hours training we decide to go to a local bar. I was the only foreigner as usual. I love these evenings when everyone get together to enjoy food and good company. This time we went to a place that served meat. We had so much meat that we almost did not finish it. I think all of it was chicken in different forms. "Hambagu" was what I would call a small meat ball made from chicken. We had a lot of different meat from chicken on a stick that had been in the barbecue or at least on the coal. This time we also had some nice strong chili with the dish. We had the single chili in powder form and another in more fresh form. Like crushed green chili with a bit of lemon or at least some kind of citrus taste to it. This was just great. "Oyshi katta" - "It was delicious!". I can also tell you that we had no rice at all. Finally I was able to pay a little of the bill too.

Did I tell you about the time I tried some curry here? They have grades of how spicy you want it. I chose five on a scale of up to ten and it was super hot, just the way I like it. Looking forward to getting more taste of Japanese food in the future!

Learning Japanese

To learn something it often helps to play with the things you are trying to learn. Take language as an example. You can only learn to speak the language if you try to speak and practice speaking and listening to the words. When I travel I love to learn some of the language to where I am travelling. Sometimes I try beforehand to get a little knowledge of the language and then when I am there I practice as much as I can. When I say practice I mean it in a fun and active way.

I can tell you a secret. It is often in the bar that it is easy to learn new words. You do not have to drink much, but you have to be open and interested in connecting with new people. Take here in Japan for instance, I sometimes go down to the local bar and have a small beer. Every time I have done this I have met new people and I have learned a few new words or practiced the ones I already know. Often it ends with someone else paying my bill because they have enjoyed practicing their English or just had an interesting time.

Yesterday I did this and learned a few thing and today I have an appointment a little after eight o'clock to meet in the bar to taste some famous noodles. They will be specially prepared by one of the guests for me. See what I mean? It is all due the the attitude to play with the language and not be afraid to make a fool out of yourself. You will make a fool out of yourself, but you are just the first one and then others loose their fear of trying to speak English.

When you play with the language you are trying to learn you can take the words you know or just read and put them in a sentence and use it as much as you can. Take the word "honto" in Japanese that means "really" and put it in a sentence. It can turn out that it works like in "This is really delicious" - "honto oyshi katta". Or like when I learned the word "hara-heta" that means "starving" which has the "hara" that means stomach. I earlier learned the word tall, but I do not know the word for big so I would use tall instead and say that my stomach is a little bit "big", "hara chotto takai", but now I checked and I think the word would be "ookii" for "big". For me the play makes the language more fun and a lot more easy to learn. Next time you are out travelling, try it. Another free tip today: Buy a small book where you can write the words you learn. It will make it so much easier to remember.

So to break the ice I have uses the phrase: "watashi wa totemo tõku kara kita no" - "I come from a place very far away" and we all laugh and have fun about it.

PS: Hopefully my Japanese friends will not be ashamed of seeing my Japanese writing, it is bound to have a lot of errors..

Rainy Season

In Fukuoka the rainy season has started and it runs for about 6 weeks from June in to July. This is usually no problem if you have a rain coat and a little patience. I have neither. I had both my aikido gi's out on the balcony for drying. I think you already have guessed it. They are still very wet. The rain got in on the balcony even when it has a roof. So I have no time to get them dry before the aikido class this morning. Instead I'm sitting here writing on this blog post. Currently I started reading a good book by Wendy Palmer, The Intuitive Body: Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido. Yeah I know a very long title, but the book is quite good. She writes about being aware of your own environment and your body. To forgive yourselves the mistakes that you do in the spirit of being positive. Getting rid of the negativity surrounding mistakes must be a good thing if we are to progress in aikido.



Making myself some tea and sitting down in this weird chair with no legs to read some more. Enjoy your own day where ever you are!

Tea Time

My day has been great. As you probably read earlier I took a day off from training and did some looking around the local tenjin area in Fukuoka. I just have to say that the Japanese are crazy for shopping centers. I have never seen so many shopping centers in one area and not only that but they are all connected with an underground passages that runs almost from my hotel to the Fukuoka Central Post office. For the people that does not know tenjin this is like 15 minutes on foot. All packed with stores selling clothes (or body dressing as one sign called it), food, tea and whatnot. This underground connects all the other shopping centers along the way and I would not be lying if I say that it's more than 10 of them. So in the millions of stores I suddenly crossed path with a nice little tea shop. I was lucky to still hang out with my language exchange friend and we checked out the different Japanese tea. During this stop I learned a lot about the variety of green tea in Japan. Here is a summary:

Gyokuro
This type of tea is regarded as one of the highest grade Japanese green tea's. Gyokuro has a sweeter, less bitter taste. This is because the bushes are shaded to avoid direct sunlight for a few weeks before being harvested. This is said to make the tea tastier. I am not even going to start describing the process of making this tea correctly in the tea pot. Use water on about 50C.

Kabusecha
To make the Kabusecha tastier, the tea bushes are shaded from direct sunlight for about one week before harvest. Kabusecha has both the rich taste of Gyokuro and the refreshing taste of Sencha. A subtle flavor is Kabusecha's typical feature.

Sencha
Sencha is the most popular green tea in Japan. Sencha can be classified into many grades in terms of quality. While average grade Sencha is enjoyed at home and served with meals at restaurants, high grade Sencha is often served on special occasions in Japan. Use water about 70C.

Fukamushicha (Deep steamed Sencha)
The steaming time for Fukamushicha is more than twice longer than that of regular Sencha. The liquid of Fukamshicha tea is deep green and rich in taste. As it contains small tea flakes and particles, the steeping time (in the pot) for this kind of tea can be shorter than for Sencha.

Kariganecha
Karigane or Kukicha is made of stems and leaves of Gyokuro and Sencha. Karigane has less caffein. The water for this kind of tea is to be hotter than for the Sencha (70C+)

Houjicha
Houjicha means roasted green tea. It is golden-brown, less astringent, and has a toasty flavor (burned?). This tea is often served after meals at restaurants, served before going to bed and given to infants instead of water (?!).

Genmaicha
This tea is a mixture of green tea leaves and roasted rice. It is popular among tea lovers because of the combination of its grassy flavor of green tea and nutty flavor of roasted rice.

Matcha
Macha is powdered green tea mainly used in tea ceremonies. It is made by grinding fine green tea leaves on a stone mill. Recently, Matcha is also used as a key ingredient for making cakes, ice cream, cappuccino and other food and drinks. (?!)

Body Condition

Today I am listening to my body condition and taking a day off training. I have been training every day since 3. June so today I felt stiff and tired in my body. My blisters are getting better already. More than one person have earlier told me that it is important to listen to your body. On my day off I will meet someone from Fukuoka for language exchange. That should be fun! And I will try to find this famous underground shopping center. It has mysteriously avoided my attention until now. I was told that if I found some stairs going down, that is probably it. I will probably end up on the subway or something. Tomorrow it is morning practice with Suganuma sensei at the Takasago Dojo again. Looking forward to it!

Children's class

Today I was a bit early at the Fukuoka Dojo and thus joined in on the children's class. This was just so fun. The kids from like 3 years and up was really great and they had great fun doing some of the aikido techniques. They seem to get their coordination trained really well by doing different fun movements and they had to time it as the stick went from side to side or up and down. They could choose if they ran under it or jumped over it, but they had to time it right or else the did not get passed the stick. For some it took some time, but they all got to the other side in the end. And after the children's class we had a very nice normal class and I was very lucky to get to work on my kokyu ho. Several of the attendees knew enough English to also verbally guide me if I did something very wrong. As I often do. I was so tired after this training that I had to stop on my way back to drink whatever I could find in the vending machine (Jidou hanbaiki).



Prices are about 150 yen for a coca-cola and little less for the juice.
After the bicycle ride that took about 45 minutes I went for dinner at my local restaurant and had a big meal of Karage.

Takasago: Class with Takemura

Takemura sensei is coming to Norway for the annual summer camp The class today was super. We did a few sitting techniques that i found quite difficult, but fun. We seem to be doing morote dori (two hands grip one hand) a lot here and it is fun to learn how to deal with the extra hand that is also gripping you. If you are going to do aikido in Japan, please remember to bring some kind of protection for your knees. Sitting Iriminage was just great. What I have noticed that many people here is very good at is pushing without using force. They use their tanden("belly") to push from. This really makes a huge difference when sitting and doing kokyu ho.

Inside Takasago Dojo


Later today there is a class with Suganuma sensei at Fukuoka Dojo

When are you learning?

The classes here in Fukuoka is 1 hour. That includes a small warmup of about 15 minutes. So the next 45 minutes we rush through the techniques and have a little taste of each. We do the technique and if we do it wrong the sensei guides us to doing it more correct. Suddenly the class is over. Do not mistake me, it is hard and everyone is sweating and breathing hard after this hour. The thing is that it now after the class that people take the time to go in to depth of the techniques. In Norway i never felt that need as strong as here because we had 2 hour classes and used more time on each technique, but here it is necessary if you want to learn the technique.

Takasago: Class with Nishida

Just got back from a class with Nishida that was great. We focused on contact and being close. It was very direct and I had great fun training in this class as well. Got some nice blisters that opened up during my training, but at least they are now open so it can get better under my feet. I was the only low grade in the room, as far as I could see everyone else had a black belt and a hakama.

I tried the curriculum for 4th kyu here and I was surprised by the small amount of techniques that were required. They are having a test for all grades i think the 26th of June. I hope I will be able to watch the people going for some of the higher grades and see what they need to do.

Still working on getting some photos up on the blog..

First: The Dojo's in Fukuoka

To start off this blog I want to give a quick summary of the Dojo's in Fukuoka, Japan. This is not a full list, but it is the ones I know of. So if you are in Fukuoka and want to do Aikido please check them out.

The list:
1. Takasago Dojo
2. Tenjin Dojo
3. Gokoku Dojo
4. Honbu Dojo
5. Ijiri Dojo
6. Fukuoka Dojo

So far I have been training at 3 of these dojo's and I must say that I already have a favorite, Takasago Dojo. There is so much atmosphere in Takasago Dojo and it has a great display of pictures of O'Sensei and other important sensei after the Founder. There is also a set of nametag's that contains all of the students that is connected to this dojo. It is said that the dojo is more than 30 years old. One of the biggest differences in a japanese dojo is the mat or tatami. The tatami at Takasago is hard as opposed to the mats we have back in Norway. I thought I had a good base for sitting in seiza, but I was wrong. It is getting better for each day are passing.

Tenjin Dojo is much bigger than Takasago Dojo and is located in the center of Tenjin area. The Dojo is about seven years old I was told.

Gokoku Dojo is located a bit out of town towards the west part of town. This Dojo is special in that it is shared with practitioners of Kendo. So two thirds of the space in the dojo is for Kendo and the last third is tatami mats for Aikido. The building is a rather old wooden building and looks to be taken out from a movie about the samurai. The dojo is well hidden behind a park.


I will upload pictures as fast as I can get this net connection to enable me to upload anything bigger than 1kb..