late night xing yi quan

I have never been much of a morning person. My natural body rhythm would have me going to bed about 1 or 2 AM and getting up about 9 AM. That worked very well during my 8 years at university but had to be modified slightly upon coming to Japan. And then modified significantly as I made the painful transition from a practice-first, work-second lifestyle to a work-first, practice-second lifestyle (and added a family, just for good measure).

I am known to return home at 1 or 2 after a few nutritious health drinks, but now that reality has sunk in, getting up early is unavoidable.

But that reality changes once in a great while. Like last year in Beijing. I was heading back to my hotel about 2 AM in the morning when I stumbled across a fellow practicing xing yi quan in the street. Well, on the sidewalk anyway.

We got to exchanging words and then exchanging techniques and it was quite nice. Two guys who had each been doing xing yi quan for awhile comparing notes on their styles in a friendly, non-threatening way. It was really a strange and fortuitous meeting. We study different strands of xing yi quan, but the roots were clearly the same.

He declined my parting offer of a beer and I declined his of a cigarette. He continued his practice and I ambled on my way.

xing yi quan form of the month: bear

We have been working on the bear form for several weeks now. In the short / simplified version of the 12 animals, the bear form is combined with the eagle form. But in the set of longer, more complicated forms, the bear and eagle are separated. There are still motions where the bear blocks upward while looking up at an eagle overhead, but they remain separated.

To be honest, I wasn’t very sure about the practicality of the bear form – there seemed to be a lot of motions without much combative usefulness, which is very much unlike most xing yi quan.

But that was while just doing the form, whether reps of isolated motions are going through the whole thing. This week we basically “played” with the form, exploring how each motion could be used. And suddenly I gained a lot of respect for the bear form! The form is nice by itself, but by moving off at an angle for most defenses and attacks, instead of moving directly forward / back as in the form, everything was much more useful.

This was one of my best xing yi quan practices in a long time, and I hope we’ll spend more time like this, actively exploring applications. And not just focusing on one application (yes, that is important too) but freely mixing motions from different parts of the form.

This is part of my long-term situation. I came to Japan after 7 years’ hard training in the US, with free fighting a regular part of most practices in karate. After some years of transition here, Japanese arts to Chinese arts, I am in a wonderful training situation and am satisfied with most practices. But we don’t do any free fighting.

Someday, back in the US, I will be teaching this stuff and one of my long-term challenges will be how to convey the things I have learned here in Japan within a different country / culture, and how to add in much more fighting practice to the basics and forms I have learned.

This week’s practice was a good wake-up call to me. Forms are all fine and good but I need to be doing much more application work, and moving in the direction of training with un-cooperative partners. I have been away from that for too long. Maybe I have been sleeping like a bear and am now ready to wake up after the long winter of hibernation?

more shoes

OK, I really wasn't going to put up any more cheeseball photos of worn-out shoes, but these were hard to pass up. Besides, I was enjoying ohanami cherry blossom viewing with a friend and he complained about the prior post having been up so long.

sigh.

No thoughtful reflections on the meaning of practice tonight, then. Actually the loss of much work lately has meant a great increase in practice time. But for now, just a shoe for you.

adjusting to your environment (4)

Factory floor

It has been over a week now since the earthquake struck and the tsunami followed. Small aftershocks continue throughout the day but everyone’s attention remains focused on the danger of nuclear meltdown / fallout.

I was teaching in a beer company’s factory in Yokohama when it struck. I had been out two days earlier and joked about it feeling like a small earthquake each time one of the heavily loaded beer trucks passed by.

It was immediately clear last Friday that the shaking was much more than that caused by a beer truck. It didn’t stop and didn’t stop, just kept on shaking. We took cover under a sturdy table and listened to the voices outside.

When it finally subsided, I packed my gear in a flash (computer etc.) and we went to the main office, donned helmets, watched the news a moment…and then it all started again. Under the desks this time for another long rumbling and shaking.

Once it stopped, we all went outside, several hundred employees, everything amazingly neat and orderly, lining up by work unit. I watched the weird clouds in the sky and waited until the all-clear.

We went inside, found out that all the trains were stopped, no way to get home that night. All the hotels filled very quickly. Streams of employees from the three large companies based near that train station began long walks home (those who lived in the Yokohama area). We Tokyo people settled in for the night. At that point, we knew nothing about the nuclear reactor situation. True, another quake might come at any moment, but that is everyday life in Japan for 16 years for me.

First things first. No email of course (I don’t have wireless on my laptop and couldn’t use company computers for security reasons). After an hour or so, there was very sporadic text messaging available on my mobile phone, but no phone calls were possible.

By lucky chance, there had been a PTA meeting that day and most of the moms were at school with the kids when it happened. So my wife and daughter (and all her friends) made it home quickly and safely, and we exchanged text messages intermittently.

Next important things. I went out to the local convenience store which, though busy, was not in a panic. After withdrawing cash in small bills from an ATM machine, I leisurely walked about and picked out snacks, beer, instant noodles, and more beer. Like many people, I naively thought “what the hell, let’s make the best of a bad situation”.

I got back to the factory with two bags full of food and beer. I was quickly told the bad news. “Um Bryan we are very sorry but we cannot drink tonight.”
“Oh, sorry to hear that. I’ll drink quietly by myself in this room”
“Um, very sorry but ‘we’ includes you. We have to think of safety and be able to evacuate safely if there is another big quake”.

I was quite disappointed but had to admit their point. Moreover, I was a guest in their premises and presumably they would have legal liability for anything that went wrong. So I underwent a quick attitude adjustment and settled in to eat instant noodles and drink alcohol-free beer-like substances.

Let me be very clear: I have no complaints whatsoever toward the company. In fact, I have nothing but praise for them. They took excellent care of me and let me --- a non-company person -- stay overnight on their premises. I shall be forever grateful for that.

Also, once I got all Buddha-like and threw away my earthly desires for beer, I felt liberation (as opposed to libation). No alcohol. Several hours of free time. My teacher’s tang lang quan (mantis fist) book in hand. You know what happened next. And seeing as we had recently run through the sixth of the seven forms in Liu He Tang Lang Quan, what a perfect opportunity.

Many of the TLQ routines are quite short and can be done in a small space, and the longer ones (duan chui, shuang feng) can be easily adjusted.

Also, as it turned out, my student happened to teach a style of karate there in the factory so we got to talking and comparing a few notes on my old Shotokan karate kata. Further distraction came when I found buried treasure – a giant tome on “research into Okinawan karate kata” by old guys at Todai. The section on Gankaku took me back several years and good memories. But the focus for me was TLQ.

Anyway, next morning we decided to continue the previously-scheduled 8-hour training (language and communication skills, not MA) there in the factory since no trains were running and we could not get to the intended location in Tokyo.

By the time we finished in the late afternoon, there was limited train service and I made my way slowly back to Tokyo and home, glad to be with family. We watched the news and learned more and more about the increasingly bad situation. It was the beginning of a very long week here in Japan.

essential training equipment (7)

Oh yes, the chopstick swords.

These can be found after many kendo practices have dissolved into drink and further into drunk. Great secrets of swordsmanship derived from centuries of practice and actual combat, amazing pearls of wisdom, bestowed upon young neophytes....and too often forgotten the next day.

Once in a while the chopstick swords come out at gatherings of Chinese martial artists as well.

after a tough demo....

Yes, after a tough day at the gongfu demo / exhibition, what better way to relax than reading Japanese manga!

November and December passed in a blur of demos, then a couple in January....February has been quiet, time to focus on regular practice. one more demo coming in March....

worst technique (3)

Continuing the series…here is another motion that I just can’t seem to nail.

It should be simple, really. This is a chest-level block, swinging into the center line from the outside. The forearm is kept vertical and the block is against an opponent’s weapon – probably a bo staff – thrusting in at your own body.

I do it well in solo forms. But in the sai vs. bo set, where some amount of real pressure comes on, I get hurried and the metal of the sai separates from my arm, a definite no-no. The problem is even worse when blocking from the centerline outward…