holiday in Japan

No, this is not a spin on an old DK’s song some of you may be familiar with, just a quick year-end wrap-up.

Christmas is celebrated as a marketing activity here in Japan – buy some decorations, buy some gifts. And buy some chicken. I used to think it quite unusual that people here have made a tradition of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner, even more so that long lines will form in front of every KFC joint on 12/25. Then someone reminded me that there are no turkeys in Japan. And I don’t suppose tofu turkey will catch on any time soon.

Like most people over here, I had to work on Christmas. And, unlike most, I got an urgent message on Christmas morning, asking me to help a client finish a year-end project that night. nnnnnnn. So that was Christmas, as the song (almost) goes.

Dec. 24 was much better for me – ba gua in the morning, xing yi and tai ji in the afternoon, tai ji sword at night. My teacher didn’t say a word to me for an hour during the night practice, then made one body adjustment to me mid-form, and that was the perfect wrap-up to a year of practice. That one adjustment touches on all my forms and was both valuable and embarrassing to receive. I have many extra hours of solo practice at the end of each year, so this has been a key point in my daily review, something to carry into next year.

Dec 31 and Jan 1 are much bigger holidays here, and most people have a stretch of several days with little or no work. It functions, in fact, a bit more like Christmas as known back home – no work, families get together and share meals and lie about.

Visiting shrines is also important. They have worked out a system where Shrine A is quite busy on 12/31 night and throngs wait an hour and more in line to approach. Meanwhile, Shrine B is almost empty. Then, on Jan. 1, Shrine B is packed and Shrine A is, well, much less busy. We chose Shrine B on New Year’s Eve. The other part of our yearly ritual is watching the K-1 fights on New Year’s Eve, many of which were quite disappointing this year. Drawing upon my years of experience outside the ring, I offer snippets of advice to each fighter while sipping my beers.

Martial artists often visit important shrines connected to martial traditions at this time of year, and many dojo have year-end cleanings and first-of-the-year practices. All of which got me thinking of how different that is from Chinese martial arts and their relative lack of emphasis on external appearance/ uniform (except on demo day) and cleanliness inside the training area (zokin gake, anyone?). And certainly no temple or shrine visits, at least for the majority. Should look much more deeply into this topic later…

I have done my share of year-end and year-beginning practices but recently I prefer to stay home with family. And, when they go out, I conduct my own first-of-the-year practice, working on iaido techniques. The cats got used to my living room workouts long ago, (iai is the one art I can’t practice outside our house) though they still run off each time I started moving all the furniture out of the way.

The seated techniques of shoden, chuuden, and okuden are better suited to the confines of a living room than are the standing techniques of okuden, but adjustments can be made. Besides, Jan. 1 is the best day to go back to the basics, to look again at everything you thought you had learned long before, to scrutinize each tiny detail and find new places to work on. And to hear – and feel – again the corrections of a few days before, in the year’s final iaido class.

One more good point to all this in Japan – mail is delivered on both Christmas day and New Years Eve, and I found a long-awaited copy of the newest Kendo World magazine in my box on the night of 12/31. Happy New Year.