a tough day

Kind of a rough day today, but a good one.

The Liu Jing Ru seminar is going great – but already half over, too fast as usual. He comes to Tokyo for a short two weeks each year. I had been focusing on ba gua zhang and xing yi quan but last year opted for my first taste of tang lang quan and was quite pleased.

This year I chose tang lang quan for the first two days (Saturday and Sunday). Days 3 and 4 (Tues-Wed), being in the middle of the week, have much lower attendance. Running the circuit through all three groups runs Liu Laoshi ragged, so today and tomorrow are BGZ / XYQ only, no tang lang quan.

OK, back to the ba gua zhang for me. 9:30 AM – opening remarks are short, we have all already stretched, so we are ready to circle by about 9:32. He starts with the ba gua zhang group (the XYQ people are told to review for a bit). He calls me out in front of all and has me start circling. By 9:33 I knew it was going to be a long morning. He totally reworked me on just the first main palm, completely kicked and fixed my ass.

Sure, I had sped up my ba gua zhang review in recent days, but especially after a new blast of tang lang quan to get on top of….

Anyway I survived the morning and learned a lot and all that. We are in the middle of the 64 palms which, when being learned, seem like about 647 palms but who is counting.

Good and bad news after that – I have work in Beijing (the first international “combat games”) on Friday and Saturday, fly back to Tokyo on Sunday. If I am lucky and there are no traffic jams, I will make it back just in time for the goodbye dinner on Sunday. But I will miss the last two days’ training, pian pian.

Well, I have my network set up and will pick up the BGZ and TLQ (and, in other classes, will slowly get the XYQ) that I miss on the final weekend. So I will get there in the end, but I really wish I could spend the last two days here in Tokyo with Mr. L.

More to come on his visit. And I am edging closer to FINALLY finishing my interview with him which has gone on over five sessions so far in various cities and languages.

Enough of this – time for some late night circling.

Liu Laoshi is coming! (2)

Or has arrived, but the seminars have not yet begun. Stay tuned for more.

xing yi quan's 12 animal forms (1) - the swallow

It started out as a very focused practice – just the 燕形, yan xing or swallow form, one of the 12 animal forms in xing yi quan. I got to feeling pretty good with the swallow, so I moved on to 鹞形, yao xing or sparrow hawk. That got me to thinking about 鸡形, the chicken, which had been my main theme for review a couple days back.

Then I realized how often birds figure in the 12 animal forms, so I moved on to the mysterious 骀形, or tai form. The form itself is simple. But the tai is one of the mythological creatures among the 12. After that, I moved into the eagle-bear combined form, 鹰熊合形.

Why the swallow? I have been focused on the 杂式捶 zashichui form for a couple days. I learned it on one rainy day just outside the tea house, under the overhanging roof, in tao ran ting park with Liu Jing Ru Laoshi. There was a sudden, massive rain storm as I rode across Beijing from my work at the Olympics to the park in the south of the city. By the time I arrived the rains had eased up but were still falling. It was the first and only time we took shelter under the roof during our lessons.

Zashichui incorporates motions from the swallow form – swooping low then rising high on one leg, soaring through the air and landing low again…running through those motions, I knew it was time to review the swallow form in its entirety.

My first practice of the new year, on the morning of January 1, focused on the nan quan form I will be demonstrating again in a week, and on the zashichui form. Tonight’s review session was the follow-up: the swallow, the sparrow hawk, and so on, through the five birds.

But why stop there? I had hot water in the thermos and a while before dinner. I worked on through all 12 animals, finishing with the monkey form (my namesake, having been born in the Year of the Monkey) just as dinner was served. The horse, snake, and the mythological tuo (鼍形)…and the tiger and dragon of course (the first ones we learned).

Tomorrow: more of the same but with more focus. But who knows – once you get started, it is hard to stop.

Photo: The bottle on the left is “Yanjing Pijiu” – Yanjing is an old / alternate name for Beijing and could be translated as swallow capital or swift capital. Beijing is (was) famous for the swallows / swifts which used to fly about everywhere before massive construction changed the landscape. The beer itself is a light lager and one of the best sellers in Asia.

Reading about the disappearing swifts (search for article at danwei.org) reminded me that Liu Laoshi told me a story about how he loved the swifts which used to be seen everywhere in Beijing. But their numbers have been so decimated that sightings of swifts sometimes make the news.

And another story. Two summers back, I met a friend for a long walk around the Forbidden City, there in the heart of Beijing. We admired a section of water (pond? moat?). She told me that when she was a young girl, people who lived in the neighborhood used to come ice skating when the water froze over. But, due to global warming, it has not frozen over for years. These stories got me thinking about why some martial arts traditions flourish and thrive, while others are lost. More on that at another time.

mantis

OK people, this is too strange.

I started six harmonies praying mantis fist (liu he tang lang quan 六合螳螂拳) today with Liu Laoshi. I have had my eye on it at each year’s seminar (2006, 2007, 2008) but have kept a respectful distance. As you may have surmised, I have a few martial arts to work on and struggle with the breadth vs. depth question everyday. So I have focused entirely on bagua zhang and xingyi quan on all of Liu Laoshi’s visits to Tokyo (and on my visits to him in Beijing).

An email with a close gong fu and budo friend from Tokyo changed everything. He may visit some of Liu Laoshi’s seminar dates for the first time, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to work on something like this with a good friend. Turns out he might only be able to come for a day or two, but I have jumped in and committed myself all the way.

Actually I am getting some good xingyi quan review in along the way, in addition to as much ba gua zhang as I can swipe from the sidelines (I will catch it all later in the review classes, but it is nice to get a taste now).

Each year only a few people opt for mantis fist, so we get a lot of attention when he makes it over our way between the other two groups. And we are off to a good start, working at a fast pace through 藏花, the Hidden Flower form. I like it quite a bit and am looking very much forward to the next class.

After the day’s seminar, I took a long walk through one of my favorite areas of Tokyo, the Shin-Okubo / Okubo area, full of Chinese and Korean people and a few Japanese holdovers. I have always loved the area since moving to Tokyo and love to explore whenever I get the chance, even though it means walking the long way around.

I moved on to my favorite Chinese restaurant, a Chang’an place out west near my home. I ate and drank to excess and left in the finest of moods. A street cat outside, perched on a bicycle seat, caught my eye and suffered my attentions, lifting my spirits even higher as I snapped some photos and offered my hand and nose.

Then, at my home station, I got out of the station and was walking along in a wonderful mood when I spied a large praying mantis on the door of a bank. Captivated instantly, I got out my camera and got to work. But this was no place for a stray mantis, with cars and bicycles and twirpy kids who love to grab insects as overnight pets all around.

I set about trying to capture the mantis and had a hard time of it. His earlier motions, swaying back and forth in a nonchalant manner, betrayed a speed I had not imagined. About that time, a passerby stopped and offered support.

It was unusual in the best of ways. I have something of a complex about my spoken Japanese and get quickly and exceedingly grumpy when some Japanese people act as if I do not exist. No eye contact, speaking to any Japanese person next to me but never directly to me, staring blankly in response to my (gasp! Foreigner’s) Japanese (go read Laowiseass’ blog for his version of the same in China (Taiwan lately).

Anyway, this was really uplifting. A total stranger, she spoke to me like a normal human being, no hesitation whatsoever about my FOREIGNER status. It was the first time either of us had seen a mantis in years and we were both concerned for its safety.

I grabbed it one more time and was promptly bitten / scratched / somethinged and blood was drawn. Shit, that bugger could cause some pain. The woman grabbed him, showed me how to hold him without being bitten or somethinged, then handed him back.

I said I would take him to the nearby public area where I often practice. She did something very uncharacteristically Japanese and, under the circumstances, very natural and normal. She took out a package of bread items, took them out and put them into her purse (without a bag! Gasp! Utterly shocking concept in this over-clean and over-wrapped country) and gave me the bag to put the mantis in while carrying him to the park.

A totally natural gesture in most countries, but a complete and very welcome surprise in this country. Mantis in bag, I thanked her and headed off to the park. A few minutes later, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. She had returned to offer a band-aid for my thumb, still smarting from the mantis’ greeting.

The mantis crawled about and explored the bag as we made our way to the park. I let it go among some flowers and wished it well, then moved on, still gripped with wonder.

I have almost never seen mantises in Japan (maybe never in the US). Only once stands out to me – my family had joined the DaZaE crew (our budo/yoga/beer/everything friends from the neighboring station) for a day of frolicking in the park and a tiny brown mantis had jumped onto my arm. It wouldn’t go near anyone else. But I couldn’t get if off my arm. We looked at each other and rocked our bodies side to side and it was good.

Tonight’s mantis was much bigger, an adult, and vibrant green but for a pair of black eyes protruding slightly. Its green will help it hide in the park, I hope.

What timing brought us together, this day that I began my mantis fist career? That long walk through Okubo, just the right time spent over food and drink at the Chinese place, a chance glance at a brightly-lit door on a bank.

Good luck, my mantis friend.

Liu Laoshi is coming to Tokyo (2)

Tomorrow, tomorrow.

Back to practice for now.

(picture of Liu Laoshi in "The Professor" mode so loved by the students here in Tokyo)

Liu Laoshi is coming to Tokyo

...what more can be said? Nothing but review and preparation the next couple days, then it all starts. More to come...

(Photo one of the few leftovers from Tao Ran Ting in August 2008, working on ba gua jian)