the fruits of practice

My daughter's school had open school for a few days. I was lucky enough to be able to go and observe for a short period each day. Mostly I was interested in how she interacted with other kids, whether or not she would raise her hand and volunteer answers, and so on.

Then I noticed something that made me very happy. Not only was she raising her hand on occasion (she used to be too shy); but the shape of her raised hand was just right.

All the other kids were raising their hands with the fingers slightly spread. Her four fingers were together and the thumb was bent in slightly -- if the thumb were bent in a bit more, it would be a perfect open hand from chang quan or long fist. We have recently been running through a section or two of one of her chang quan forms every morning before school - a very short amount of time, but the daily rhythm is now established.

And the results are not just showing in the practice hall!

essential training equipment (4)

Yes, brooms.

My daughter and I lucked out again, the only two in the upper class (this is the week before last, posts all out of order).

Good chance to work on the stick/ staff form of chang quan 初级棍术 instead of the usual empty-hands stuff.

We don't usually take our sticks to this Tuesday practice, but a quick look in the storage room revealed a reasonable substitute.

baseball and wushu

I had two long days of work in Yokohama this week (Japan’s second largest city, but really feels like part of Tokyo to me since it is all one connected urban mass) – until the second day (today) got cut short.

There is a lot of cost-cutting going on in Japan these days, some of it on short notice and quite annoying. I was pretty grumpy about suddenly losing 3 hours of work (on an already-shorter-than-usual intensive training course).

Then I realized the good side of things – I was suddenly free to go to Tuesday afternoon gong fu with my daughter. We have been regulars at the weekend class(es), but have missed several of these Tuesday classes lately due to my work schedule.

The loss hits especially hard since the class size is small and we get more attention than in the ususal weekend classes.

I ran from company XYZ’s industrial complex in Yokohama, found a taxi, raced to the station, fairly ran through all the transfer stations, conscious that every minute was valuable.

I made it to my daughter’s after-school activity club just in time and was ready to hurry home, change clothes, and make the 30-minute bicycle ride to practice.

But she was involved in a Very Important game of baseball with her friends. Sigh. The choice was clear and I had no regrets. It was a special opportunity to see her playing with her peers. And I snapped up the bat (still in pinstripe suit and tie) and belted a triple when one of the second-grade baseball stars suddenly decided he had tired of the game. My daughter (sort of) caught a pop fly and then was struck out at bat and I was glad to see every minute of it.

Once finished with baseball, though, we did hurry home and then on to the training hall. The class was smaller than usual – just the two of us in the higher level class, so she got good focus on the first stick / staff competition form (chang quan) and I got drilled on the nan gun or Southern style stick / staff.

Though I couldn’t bring myself to tell the teacher why we were a bit late, I was glad for every minute of my daughter’s baseball playing that I got to see.