one of those nights

It started off well – I got an early start for the 90-minute commute and arrived early. The teacher came a few minutes later – and sat down in the lobby of the 6th floor of the building we use for practice.

The room had been reserved well in advance but the paperwork had not arrived with the teacher. And without the paper forms in hand, they won’t let people use the room. There is absolutely no flexibility on this issue.

So we set up shop in the lobby and got to work. No uniforms – if we wore them, they would tell us to stop. But without a uniform – then it is OK to flail about with all manner of weapons, and flail we did.

No time to waste. Heavy nunchaku review, then bo, then something new: the sai vs. bo exercises. All of them. Nice partner drills, good contact, and the sai always “win” the encounter, always started by the bad guy with the bo. We had a nice sai vs. sai set in Nebraska, but I have never seen that over here, and this was my first chance to work sai vs. bo intensively.

So the frustration of not being able to get into the workout room – after a 90-minute trip – melted almost immediately. I had been given a chance, one chance only, to nail this set. Once it is ingrained, I can practice and review on my own, and with partners before/after the usual practice time, but getting it into the body is the hard part.

Rather than going through each of them once, one through ten, then repeating the whole cycle, and so on (the inefficient method so common in Japan), we did it like this: 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, repeat 1-2-3, then add one in, and so on.

In short, we spent over an hour doing the right kind of repetitions and I have a decent feeling for the set – and can now really begin to practice it. We probably wouldn’t have spent nearly as much time or done as many reps if we hadn’t been locked out, so all worked out quite well. The rest of practice went well and was disturbed only by the sudden mid-kata appearance of a rather noisy and confused stag beetle in the room. We maintained focus, he was caught and released, and all was well.

It was raining heavily after practice and I had left some notes behind in the lobby and both my trains were late and I just missed the bus for home and had to wait another 20 minutes in the rain and that bus shortens its route since it is late at night…..and none of it mattered. All because of forgotten paperwork and inflexible policy and an hour’s spontaneous drilling in the lobby. Who needs a special room for training?

100

Here they are and here we are at the 100-post mark. I was going to leave off the shoes pictures, but this couldn’t be missed.

15 years in the making, these guys have finally started to give in and are doing so just in time for the centenary post. I bought them back in the university karate days when I had nothing but time and energy.

I was going jogging late at night, pounding around the streets of Lincoln. Being a student and lacking any athletic sensibility, I bought a cheap pair of shoes with Velcro straps, no laces. I was so far removed from athletes and athletic equipment. But they served me well enough at the time, then languished in storage for several years.

I can still remember some of those late night runs. Houses with dogs that barked as I passed, tree roots to be nimbly jumped over in the park. Snow starting to fall under a shining moon. I might have had an afternoon practice followed by a night practice, but I don’t recall feeling especially winded during those runs. No, these shoes carried me along and moved me forward.

But the late night runs ended and I focused more on my regular training and review. This fine pair of shoes languished in the less accessible corners of closets, no longer tasting the fresh air or moving under the stars.

Somewhere along the line I brought them over to Japan as a spare pair. I wore them only occasionally (and always at night, when no one could see or smell them) until last year. Another old pair of running shoes (hightops with laces even) had fallen apart, yielding to the scraping and turning of ba gua footwork.

So this pair returned to glory for a short time. They tasted the caress of the concrete once again. I grew bold, not caring who might see or smell them. I sometimes wore them in daylight. But the years of alternate abuse and neglect had taken their toll and the grinding away accelerated. And the stink festering within their depths accumulated.

The Velcro straps don’t cling as tenaciously as they used to, but I still have a few sessions left with these old friends before holes are completely worn through the soles. Until then, let’s extend them the dignity – and distance – which they deserve.

Nebraska

Just a brief note to explain the flurry of posts tonight. Blame it all on Nebraska - or on not going to Nebraska.

8:30 PM. My daughter fell asleep a bit early and I faced a weighty moral dilemma. Go to Nebraska or stay home and blog. The answer was clear.

I first visited Nebraska bar in the musicians' nexus of Koenji/Nakano in Tokyo about 13 years back. I had come to live in Tokyo just a few months before and all was still new and fresh to me. Two respected long-time martial artists were heading back to the US for a month and were apparently desperate, for they asked me to house-sit for them.
If I knew then what I know now...I would have quit all work and spent 24 hours a day in their vast library of budo-related books and videos.
Well, I did soak in a bit. And one night went out for drinks and more drinks and somewhere along the way stumbled into a now-defunct okonomiyaki eatery where somebody's grandmother regaled me with drunken tales of hardship in the post-War years (the area around Nakano station was completely flattened in one bombing raid, thus accounting for the unusual presence of straight streets in Tokyo) as I scribbled notes inside the cover of a Milan Kundera novel. And somewhere else along the way I stumbled into a tiny bar with about 7 stools called Nebraska. A haven for rock musicians after their live performances, it grabbed me right away and I had a wonderful night in that smoky den named after my home state.

And couldn't find it the next night. Or for the next year or so. But one night, on a lark, I determined to wander that area until I found it. I started out at the apartment where I had house-sat, and walked an ever-larger circle, backing up whenever I hit a dead end but leaving no street unwalked. It took a while, but I did manage to rediscover it, and have been back many times since. But I didn't make it tonight, and that's why I have been blogging like I haven't blogged since I was in Beijing.

yuan and zen

Work finished early this morning and I have spent a fortuitous afternoon wandering through Beijing – it is really the first day I have had (almost) to myself, with almost no work, and no practice with others.

I needed this day. No time worries, nothing pressing in upon me. First I track down a wushu supply store I visited last year. It seems to serve multiple duty as showroom, warehouse, and apartment and I feel like the proverbial kid in a candy shop each visit. All manner of uniforms, weapons, and VCDs cram the walls and litter the floors.

I can’t afford to buy anything while living in Japan, so I always save up for these chances in China. My eyes are a bit bigger than my wallet, but nothing can be put back. Most important - and most expensive - are a pair of yuanyang yue (鸳鸯钺, the crazy Klingon – bagua weapon). I am gambling with them, don’t know if I can get them into Japan but if asked, they are wall decorations, certainly not implements of destruction.

Also important is a two-meter carrying case for the pair of staves (棍子) I was given last night. A cool shirt, a tai ji fan, VCDs for the tai ji fan form. So much more calls to me, but I am too aware of how little Chinese money remains in my wallet, 600 and some change. I clock in well over 750 yuan. Ouch. I ask for and receive a small discount, though the friendly worker reminds me how cheap the VCDs already are compared to those sold outside the store (true enough).

I point out a major scratch on the back side of the case for the yue and manage another 50 yuan discount, putting me in range of the 600+ small change remaining. I start counting it out, getting down to the smallest bills, and joke (honestly) about needing taxi fare. He smiles, hands me back some small bills, refuses my attempts to return them. All the hard-faced, frowning bargaining is gone. I am all smiles after this kindness. But there is more – as I stuff the folding fan into my backpack, he sends an employee in the back to get a bag. Just as I mention that I don’t need a plastic bag, I realize my mistake – he is throwing in a nice cloth bag with drawstring, made just for the fan.

Back on the street, I nab a taxi with those remaining small bills and get to Qian Men, from where I can take the buses, and they are free for those of us here with the Olympics. Still flush with time, I get out at Gu Lou, near the famous Drum Tower. Crowds are down in the wake of the bizarre stabbing murder of a tourist some weeks back.

I stop to use a pay phone in one of the street stalls and have good luck – I reach both of my friends in Wenzhou, China by phone and we share good talk and laughs. By fate or whatever, it turns out my name was just in the Wenzhou newspaper.

At the Olympic wrestling venue, I spent much time getting to know the staff there, being uncharacteristically chatty and outgoing. I got along well with the head of the venue, whom it turns out is from none other than Wenzhou, and his father is even from the smaller city of PingYang. I stayed about a month in the wushu school in that town (read about it in Kendo World magazine or later in this blog) and he knew that school. I gave him a copy of the Kendo World article I had written on kendo in Wenzhou, and he referred to that in a piece written in the Wenzhou paper.

So, back to the Drum Tower. I wander around a bit and find a neat little café/bar type of place and would reallllly like a cold beer but lack the funds. I typically avoid tourist-oriented places like the plague, but this shop had a good feeling. I walk about 50 meters down the road and plunk myself down in front of an empty store. After a while, I figure what the hell. I walk in and explain my situation, ask if I can have a free drink today and promise to send money in the mail tomorrow. Just in the time I was sitting down the road, the owner had come in. She said OK and I got my free coffee (better for writing at the moment).

Turns out to have been quite good fortune once again. She also runs a low-price hotel near the park where I practice with Liu Laoshi, so that could work out well in the future. And her employee is from Kunming in Yunnan Province and knows of my other teachers in China, Sha and Li Laoshis.

That’s almost as good as the night I was at my favorite chuar stall in an unkempt alley munching on skewers and sipping beer and babbling in Chinese with the cook when the guy next to me asks where I am from and actually knows where Nebraska is without being told, knows the capital city, and so on. What a city this is.

Chance and fate. They have been operating in my life a lot lately. Or maybe they always do, and I am just more tuned into them these days. Living in Wenzhou ten year ago, I heard several times about fate or yuan, 缘. I also heard about a special kind of fate which draws martial artists together, wuyuan, 武缘.

Perhaps this is what drew best friend and then-student Wei Li and I together in Wenzhou (next time we meet, though, he will be the kendo teacher, not I). Or Mr. Wu, my teacher of the 42-motion style of tai ji quan every morning in Wenzhou. Or the staff fighting / jingju performance group I have been training with late nights here in Beijing, having discovered them by the chance taking of a different road than usual.

Or, biggest fate of all, living ten minutes away from my main teacher of Chinese Stuff for the past how many years, Mr. T. He offered a one-time only, three-week intro tai ji quan course at the small public area near my home. I think we both knew the first day that something special had begun. And through him, I am fortunate enough to have received direct training with three of his teachers here in China, Liu JingRu Laoshi here in Beijing, and Sha and Li Laoshis over in Kunming.

Was it also fate that he offered that class exactly at a time when I was winding down my karate and naginata training in Tokyo, and thus had available time to start with something/ someone new? It was also about the time I changed kendo dojos, so there was much upheaval in my life and training, and all these little parts fit together. Had the timing been slightly off in any one of these areas…

So now I sit in Zen café, just across from the Bell Tower or Drum Tower, tapping away on my laptop after having been granted sanctuary and an unpaid cup of coffee. [Beijing travelers contact me for their location]All feels right in the world, but I must admit this entire month of work and training in Beijing has also been the result of a chance encounter.

Last year while working at a translation company, I was one of two foreigners employed full or semi-full time. Given that much of their business is translating into English, the logic of not using native English speakers to translate into their mother tongue eludes me. That’s a story for another time and place.

Over the prior year or two, the other foreigner, Zou San from China, and I had spoken with each other occasionally in the office, usually just exchanging pleasantries in Japanese. One night I met him in the hallway. I had had a very long day at the desk and the J-to-E translation course I taught had not gone well that night.

For whatever reason, I spoke to Zou San for the first time in Chinese that night. We spoke a few minutes, then he suddenly realized. He switched into Japanese and asked me to sit down until he came back. Fair enough; I was knackered and collapsed into a chair to await his return.

Long story short, our company had, just that morning, been awarded the contract from the major Japanese TV station to handle media support work at the Olympics. And they needed a native English speaker with good Japanese and, well, not so terrible Chinese. And there I was.

Was it simple chance that I spoke to him in Chinese for the first time on that very night? I don’t know, but I can say I will be going back to Japan tomorrow with new eyes and ears, keeping them more open for opportunities and chances. My life has been too passive, always waiting for the chances that come. These days I feel it is not enough to make good use of those opportunities which present themselves – it is time to take more active control over my life and work to create opportunities and chances.

But even so, I sense that the most valuable or rewarding opportunities will remain those which are not sought after, but those which are presented to us by whatever force it is. And we can welcome them and revel in them or let them pass by…