Meaning and Freedom

I have not been going to Judo recently. After class ends I usually have a nap for an hour or so to catch up on sleep before I go to training. On a Wednesday a few weeks ago, I woke to my alarm; and had the same mental battle I always have. "It would be so easy to skip, and there is no reason why you have to go anyway..." This time; I lost this battle. I haven't gone to training very much since then. I keep having the same series of thoughts; and keep coming to the same conclusion. I came to Tokai because of my own desire to train. I am accountable only to my own desire to train. If I fail; I have failed only in that I didn't pursue this earlier desire. If what I want changes; there is no reason why I ought to give priority to my earlier goals.

I sat at my computer and surfed the internet as the starting time for Judo came by and went. I checked the feeling; I felt mildly guilty, but not guilty enough to do something about it. I have been struggling to motivate myself recently. For the past while, what usually happens is that I would bow on a training partner; they would refuse to train with me; then I would watch them agree to go on with someone else 30 seconds later. It has been getting to me. It's an inevitable consequence of doing Judo like a lunatic. I feel no embarrassment when I do what I do because I know that when I leave this place the amount of contact I'll have with the other judo students would be the same as if I had never met them in the first place. It's kind of a "what happens in Tokyo stays in Tokyo" kind of mentality. I justify my erratic Judo because I know that I have no other choice. There is no other available option for me if I want to throw anyone. I have been getting some successes. When I first came here; I couldn't move the heavyweight players at all. Since I started developing my own movements; I have been capable of shifting heavier players with "the corpse whip". I'll go back to my degree; and can put my back on these experiences if I decide that they are unpleasant. The other students don't have this option if they choose to be my training partner. They have to live with, and be accountable for the embarrassment I inflict on them.

Japanese players work hard to refine their techniques within the stringent boundaries set by their coaches. After hard and frequent training, they arrive at a small number of airtight; polished techniques. For reasons I have written about before I believe that this kind of approach to playing Judo can be manipulated by taking the game outside the boundaries of an opponents training. I have to adapt to function. I am trying to develop a radically different approach to Judo; because I think I must.

Learning Judo is a slow and methodical process. The ordinary approach to learning seems to look like this. If you take a teachers instruction on how some technique ought to be done; adopt it; and use it against another player, you can become quite successful in what you do. You get to learn from the experiences of your teachers; your teacher's teachers, and your peers. The collective experiences of many coalesce into one giant Venn diagram. You can cross the boundaries that separate your experience from someone elses'; gain access to approaches used by many other players, and then take them for your own use.

This approach can be limited too. All the other players have been using the same collectively available information. They have access to the same knowledge; and it is a presumption to rely on the hope that you refined your techniques more than your opponent. Whoever has trained the hardest and the longest will have the most diverse experience. Relying on having better technique than your opponent seems to me to be to be not that different to relying on being stronger than your opponent. It's just another presumption that you have expended more effort to get a particular quality than your opponent did. It is not "efficient" in the way I think Kano thought of it. In my current situation; I know that the amount I have trained pales in comparison to the other players here. Also; if collective experiences can be expressed as a Venn diagram, my circle sits in isolation outside of all the others. I can't utilize much of the instructions I have been given, due to my weird physique and other differences.

Following the experiences of others extends beyond Judo. If you follow what knowledge is offered to you; you will understand, and you can resolve problems using this knowledge. This is an enticing concept. You can receive gifts of understanding from another that encapsulates all possible ways to react. If it were true, you could structure your life, and your approach to resolving any problem around what people say you ought to do. You are offered meaning by training, study, or learning. If you continue to absorb this gift; you will encroach ever closer toward a complete understanding of how you ought to react to any given stimuli. You can take valuable experience, and use it in your own life. You will be given a sturdy foundation on which to anchor your life and your actions.

This only applies if you are exposed to the same problems. This requires a certain amount of homogeneity between a teacher and a student. I don't think I am similar enough to others to be able to adopt others approaches. I am not making the claim that everyone elses prior experiences have no value to me; but I do believe that an experiences' utility is limited to the circumstances it was applied in. You must presume that you are doing the same thing your teachers were doing, and have the same obstacles to overcome. Being different has given me the view that  one persons experience cannot extend universally to all.

I think there is a way around this problem. No one ever made the claim that all prior understandings of Judo were to be considered exhaustive. Nor did anyone say that all the possible approaches to Judo that could ever be done have been already done. "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Behaving differently; being creative in your approach can have its benefits. You don't have to reinvent the wheel; you can get a better view of how you can act by looking at the view from standing on the shoulders of giants. Consider what you have been taught; salvage from it what you can if you cannot adopt it wholesale, and then extend it into uncharted territory. If you can use a novel approach; it can only be rebutted if it fits within the prior conceptions your opponent has drilled. Ive recently learned how to sacrifice my own balance into getting an overhand grip on my opponent. I'm still rusty on how to use it; but that it works at all is more than I was capable of doing by trying a conventional approach.

I have started to view life in a different way to how I used to. I used to try and adopt the views of other people; of authority figures in my life; but it didn't apply to my circumstances; and so I could not use them to find any meaning in my life. For a long time this bothered me. I was forced to come to my own understanding of life; because I could not use anyone elses. My high school tried to teach me Christian values. I could not invoke to aid me what I felt was at best an absentee god; and more pessimistically a god that had authored, or at least permitted every suffering that I had ever felt and seen others suffer. I could not adopt the hopes and dreams of the other students; because the trajectory of their goals would lead them to places I could not follow. I had grown up hearing the word faggot used interchangeably with concepts like "inexcusably weak" "failure" and "social leper". No amount of money I could ever earn would detach that word from me. No amount of work would change the fact I was a subclass being. And so I felt that taking my high school teachers lessons and using them for my own benefit was pointless because nothing would lift me out of that. I saw no correlation between hard work and being welcomed in respected jobs, in society, with other people.

I believe there is nothing that any one person can do that can make others respect them and welcome them in their company. People choose to welcome others because it benefits them individually. I used to think that I could modify my behavior to be coherent with a group, and from there I would become friends with people inside that group. But there is no collective group understanding of what is and isn't acceptable. There is no memo sent out, that can be consulted to see if one person meets the description of what it requires. You cannot appeal to any solid conception of the "group", because in fact it is imaginary, it is just the shimmering consensus of like minded individuals who want the same thing for themselves personally . Individuals join groups because it benefits them personally, and those individuals uphold the viewpoints of their group because it benefits them personally. There is nothing reinforcing these individuals viewpoints except an imaginary bond . For instance, you might behave as you think an Australian should, because you get the same privileges and benefits that others you imagine to be like you do, by being of that identifiable group.  You may have never left your city, and have no personal experience of what the word "Australian" applies to, and yet be adamant about what the term means and excludes, and you will do so for no other reason than self interest. And so, with self interest as your foundation; you might share a stronger bond with people you will never meet, that live within the same country as you, than with people that live on your street but come from abroad.

This has led me to some opinions that I hold now. I believe there is no meaning in life beyond what people tether their identities to, to position themselves in an environment they have no personal understanding of. I will never go to space, see an atom or speak German, and yet I am convinced that I exist in a world; that it is round and suspended in a nothingness called space; in a world where nuclear bombs exist, in a world where Berlin is a place and that it was divided before the wall was torn down. I know these things because I was told so, and I believed them because it benefited me to do so. I chose not to believe in God, not because of any compelling proof one way or the other, but because it benefited me to not believe. Every word I am using now was first coined by someone else, and it benefits me to include them in my speech and writing. I will gain no benefit from trying to adapt Japanese judo into my judo vocabulary, I don't have the physical hardware to run it. Nor will I achieve anything by trying to fit in by doing judo normally. I cannot make myself to be like a group that doesn't exist beyond the individual desires of its members.

I believe that in the absence of any group I can attach my hopes and desires to, I am free to pursue my own meaning, and can use that as a foundation for my actions. I have begun to do so in Judo. I fail no one if I don't go to training tomorrow; because no one requires it of me. So long as I am not antagonistic or aiming to hurt anyone, I do not need to curb my behavior to fit anyones understanding of how I ought to do things. If I get ignored by someone during training here, it is because acknowledging my existence doesn't aid them pursue their own self interest. This won't change if I start doing judo conventionally, I will only get worse at throwing, be a worse training partner, and only get further away from offering anyone any personal incentives to train with me.

I have started skipping during my lunch break. I usually do around 15 minutes of skipping, 40 pushups, 60 leg situps, and 8 minutes of bridging every weekday. I do this because my Japanese classes can be monotonous and robotic, and I don't feel any perceivable improvement in my ability. When I work on my fitness, the improvements are more visible; possibly because I have yet to reach any kind of plateau like I have with Japanese. I feel motivated to do this, it helps me feel like I have achieved something worthwhile in the day. I skip in one of the empty judo rooms in the budokan and look at the 2 meter by 1 meter Hinomaru that is hung up as the centerpiece. I look at it and think about it every day. I have my own interpretation of what I want it to mean. I take it as meaning that human beings are free to call anything they want whatever they want.

There is a burning presence in the world, people call this both a sun and a star. Japanese people have taken the concept, and applied it as they wanted to. It is thought to be an "Eastern" concept, in that the sun comes from the East. If the world is round, East points in the opposite direction on the other side of the world. Does that contradiction benefit anyone by acknowledging it? No, and so people don't when they use this flag.  The sun appears to move across the sky in this direction; but actually the inverse is true. The earth rotates in a West to East direction. Does acknowledging this benefit anyone? No, and so for the purposes of this flag, no one does. You can take any arbitrary space anywhere on the planet; call it the source of the sun, call that direction "East", and then position it as a way to identify any country. Japanese people have chosen a symbol they believe to represent the sun to represent their country, because it benefits them  to assert that the sun rises in the East, and that East is a relevant direction on a round planet. This was not a collective decision, I don't believe there was a "Japanese" reason to choose this flag over any other. Everyone consented to it as individuals because it benefited them personally to anchor their identity to it. I too can assert that the sun and its relevance to me is whatever I want it to be. As a concept, I am free to adapt it to my own use, because it won't make any tangible physical difference in how I apply it in my life. The sun could be 100 kilometers up, or it could be 8 light minutes. Neither distance is one that is relevant to me; because I cannot travel it, nor do I need to know it. Either will result in the same personal benefit to me if I choose to believe one over the other. In the absence of any proof to the contrary; I have the freedom to construct my reality in any way I choose to.

I am getting better at standing on the yoga ball. Currently, I can stand on it, lean backwards at maybe 45 or 50 degrees, and catch a tennis ball behind my head. I am aiming to be able to do this 5 times at 90 degrees without breaking the position. I have an idea. I think it is theoretically possible to counter O Soto Gari, if I can learn to become comfortable in my balance while my head is bent backwards. This position is normal for tori to try to push me into as an attempt to unbalance me. If I can learn to be stable in this situation; then I may be able to develop a future technique to counter it. It is an interesting exercise. You feel your center of balance leave your hips and travel behind your back into the air. It is an imaginary concept, a center of balance that is formed in thin air; and yet I can use it to pivot my weight around it. I fell off the ball once and fell onto the ground; and landed on my feet. I used nothing but air as my center of balance, recovered my position, and landed unhurt. There are nuances of this position that exist. Only with bent knees and just enough of my back and neck protruding backward as a counterweight can I stand like this. I choose not to acknowledge them; because I cannot find a way for it to benefit me by doing so. It is simpler and tidier to call the vacant air behind me my "center of balance". I wonder if I can attack a judo player by fortifying my balance over an imaginary pivot.

Not Loose Enough.

I was pretty flat this week. I think there was a major competition on for the Judo team on the weekend; and so there was no training between last Saturday and this Thursday. I had no way to release my stress. The time that I normally spent training I spent playing Super Metroid in my room. Learning Japanese is hard; it burns me out mentally. I can't get anywhere on the limited vocabulary I have, and I can barely understand others when they speak. This creates more incentives to hide in my room. Without judo, I question my desire to come here and learn the language. I feel it will take more time than I have to be at a level where I can communicate. When I feel like this; I begin to think that studying Japanese is pointless; as I'm only going to forget everything I learned once I go back home. Without judo as a constantly present goal I figuratively fall on the floor like I don't have a spine.

I bought a bicycle on the Monday; it was stolen on the Friday. It was pretty cheap. It was only a second hand mama-chari, it cost me maybe around $80. Still, it stung to lose it. The bikes had keys which I could use to lock it; like an idiot I left the keys dangling in the keyhole. The most irritating thing about it was that it disappeared after I parked it outside the budokan. I think there is a 95% probability that a judo student took it. I usually spend about 15/30 minutes after each training doing my yoga ball thing; and so it probably got taken then. It is a pretty unremarkable grey machine that looks identical to all the other student bicycles. Because the bike is too small for me, I only ever ride standing. It hurts for me to sit on the seat. I figured if i don't use the seat; i may as well turn it backwards it so i can identify it as mine. It isn't really plausible that it would have been taken by accident. Whoever took it would have seen that the seat was backward and would have had to have turned it back around to ride it away.

There is a guy, he gives me trouble sometimes. I'm not really sure why. Maybe its because I'm his kohai; or maybe its just because he is a splinter in my neck. He asked me once what the English word was for counting gunshots; I tried to explain in Japanese that in English there aren't really many counter words. I was standing on the yoga ball after training last night, and this guy walks up behind me. He kicked the yoga ball twice. Not hard, but not softly either. Only recently did I regain the ability to stand on the ball; and so it made me considerably nervous. I was facing the wall, away from him, because I was throwing a medicine ball against it. I had to stop while he did this. It was an stressful, but interesting experience. I felt his force leave his foot, radiate up the ball and into my feet. I knew if I fought it, the force would shock my feet into unbalance, and I would fly off and land on my back. A few weeks ago I fell off  onto the wooden floor; it hurt like hell. I couldn't sleep because of the pain that night. I let his force wave through my feet, my knees, my hips, my back, my neck, and out through the top of my head. The movement probably looked a little bit like those inflatable plastic people that they have outside of car dealerships. He kicked it again; I did it again. He gave me a sardonic compliment; I recognized the word "circus". I raised the medicine ball above my head, held it like a javelin, and looked at him behind me. It was only 3 kilos; and wouldn't really do much to him. Still, i think he got the message and moved on. An experience that has tainted my otherwise awesome time here has been repeatedly hearing people choke out the word "senpai" through a strangle applied by another student.

I don't, and will never be able to do judo like the other students in the club. So I cannot hope to use normal techniques. I had to adapt what I had learned to my own strange physique. This has its advantages. Moving the way I do, I can give better players than me the weirds. It gives me a small, but noticeable mental advantage. But it also makes me conspicuous, and so I'm pretty much inviting this kind of treatment. Most people do not give me any trouble. Pretty much everyone has been very welcoming. And If some people speak about me in Japanese either behind my back or in front of me; I feel that it doesn't really matter. I feel that my life experiences are so different from most others, that any negative comparison is contextless. Apples and oranges. And anyway; I wont be here much longer. I have to train as hard as I can to get the most that I can out of this place; and experiences like this help me progress. I want to extend my mental and physical boundaries; if others help me in that then we are cooperating.

I'm starting to figure out how my judo could work, and more frequently how it fails. I cannot enter the blast radius within a Japanese's players (usually) shorter arm span. If I do; I cannot hope to leave it standing. They are almost invariably stronger than me and better at grip fighting. My arm span is longer than the average Japanese, and longer than the average westerners for that matter. If I can stay outside of their range, but within mine; I have a chance at success. There was a Venezuelan player I used to train with who was quite good at this. He would keep you at a distance that only he could cross with his length; and so when I was against him I spent most of the time at a disadvantage; unable to bring him in into a distance I could do something with. The rest of the time I spent picking myself up from an untidy heap on the floor. I couldn't bring the game to him because he could always push off it or otherwise avoid it. My "corpse whip" technique works a bit like this. Im getting a surprising amount of use out of it. Its surprising in that it has any utility at all. It has its limitations. I rattle players with it that are lighter than me. It doesn't work so well against players that are my own weight. It takes me just as long to recover my own balance after doing it it as it takes them, and so all it does really is provide a temporary stalemate. I tried it on a maybe 120>kg player and couldn't move him. I tried something else pretty experimental; all I ended up doing was accidentally punching him in the mouth. His tongue was bleeding and he wasn't happy about it. He threw me on my head. I figured I kind of deserved it for trying techniques that I wasn't completely sure were safe to use. If the players here are willing to bear the consequences of my weirdness I have to be grateful.

What usually happens is that me and my partner will grip battle; and then I will go for the overhand grip; because that will be all that will be left to me. Then they launch me. If I try to use my strength to evade the throw; they use their grips in such a way that my body gets contorted into awkward positions; then I cannot use any force. If i try and throw them from a short range; they slip underneath it and throw me from behind; usually in ura nage or some other backward technique. The only times that i get any success is when I fire an attack in from outside their range; unbalance them from a distance, and while they recover their balance drop in for a sacrifice. I can only do this by being as loose as I possibly can. Any amount of strength I use; they can exceed. Any amount of speed I use; they can outrun. But i think I have one advantage; I can slide around the mat like junkfood sliding down a wall. Its ugly and ungraceful; but using gravity automatically leads you to the spot of least resistance.  I think standing on the yoga ball has taught me some things about balance. You cannot use strength or force to balance; if you lock up your muscles in a reaction against a direction of unbalance; you end up pivoting off your base like a ruler balancing vertically on one corner. It just doesn't work. if you want to stand, you have to slop and flow with the movement of the ball; or it will slip from beneath you. Gravity seems to me to be the great leveller in judo. You can't do judo without it. I think judo is basically a set of preliminary techniques to the final and most important factor; to make a uke fall. A players skill and condition will benefit them when moving in any horizontal direction. Everyone here is more skilled than me, so I have to concede that I will always be outmaneuvered when moving horizontally. When moving down; everyones speed seems to be capped by gravity. You cannot move yourself any faster downwards than you can fall, unless you tape your feet to the mat, or use uke as an point to push off. When I shut my body down and only use enough force to stand; I have less between myself and gravity than my opponent. If people try to push up on me to position themselves under me; I can sometimes slop off their force, and so I can deny them any anchor for them to push off of. By keeping my balance as loose as i can, i can sometimes fall into position for a throw if I time it right, and get in first. Pretty much the only (limited amount of) throws i have gotten here so far i have gotten by moving like this punching bag.

http://i.imgur.com/Lipwcyr.gifv




The problem is; when I get sucked into the nosebleed section of grip battling; I have to move and react like my opponent to counter them. I can't do this as skilfully as them; and so I only leave this position after they ippon me. But I am beginning to see that another way is possible. Today; I went against a 100kg player. I tried gripping him; I couldn't get anything.  I tried everything I could think of. He didn't need any grip breaking techniques to rip my hands off his lapel; he could do it with a simple push. So I gambled; and abandoned my arms to his grips. I let him grip me; and let my upper body hang off me like it was paralysed. I twisted in for ko uchi gari and dropped into it. I felt his balance cupped in my right foot. I had swung my bodyweight into him using my right shoulder, and had him going backwards. The problem was; I barely ever get footsweeps, and so when I am in the position for them I never react properly. Every time I try I usually just make the movement without actually committing to the completion of the throw. This time I did the same thing and paused for a slight second. He recovered enough to take the movement and smash me into the mat backward with ura nage. It was a pretty awesome throw. It was also a good learning experience. I had the advantage; and lost it because of a moment of doubt. Unbalancing a heavier player at all without strength is an achievement in itself.  I need to pursue this further by committing to being completely relaxed. I did something similar to another player by shaping sukui nage. The head judo body changed the rules sometime ago so that leg grips are no longer legit, so I tried to do it using only my shoulder and the back of my elbow. I got his balance, but didn't commit enough to get the throw, and so he stood off it and watched as I stumbled and fell.

I woke up for training this morning feeling sore and unenthusiastic . I couldn't read Japanese well enough to know that today was going to be a technical class. It turned out that one of the teachers who had arrived to instruct the class was Yasuhiro Yamashita. I was pretty stoked. Its amazing that I even get to see him at all; let alone participate in a class that he was teaching. He spend about 30 minutes talking about o soto gari. He's pretty much the the ultimate authority on that throw. I wish my Japanese was good enough to understand his explanations. I got like the vaguest gist of what was going on. I drilled his approach on someone in uchikomi. It felt good; I would have to drill it a lot; but notwithstanding the language barrier I could see it was good advice. Later, I had a round of randoori with a russian player. I tried Yamashita's skipping o soto gari, he kept flinging me backwards.

I have had this problem troubleshooted a thousand times before by a thousand different people, and they all say the same thing. It happens because I neglect to do anything with my lapel grip. It sucks knowing why you are failing, and yet still not be capable of uprooting the bad habit and fixing it. I knew if I hadn't got o soto gari in my 7 years of training; i wasn't going to magically get it because I listened in to a famous judoka's opinion on it. So I tried my idea. I went in again for the outside o soto gari; my opponent went to counter with a backward throw. I dropped my hips like I had just been shot with a tranquillizer dart. Gravity vacuumed me onto the side of his hip. From there i got my foot behind his left leg; and threw him backward in the momentum of his counter. It was pretty cool. My glory was also very short lived. He threw me at least 5 times more before the round was over. If I walk out of the club having thrown anyone once; no matter how dirty; I leave happy.

I am trying to focus all of my training to manipulate and harness gravity. I can't catch up with the physical training that everyone has done here. Gravity is the only plausible area I think I can expect to be competitive in. Having said this; I don't really want to stick to sacrifice throws. It makes me too predictable.They are high risk and usually low return. I think there are plausible avenues i can take to use my falling body weight and remain standing after a throw. I don't have the skill to do it yet. But I want to develop it.

The Corpse Whip

I was well enough to go back to training this week. I feel good. I haven't had an alcoholic drink in maybe 2 weeks. I feel much better mentally. If I tape my knee up tightly and put some deep heat on it, I don't feel any pain in it at all. For about a month; I had to sit out and watch the other players train. It was boring and demoralizing; but it was a good way to learn. I watched the other students throw each other in randoori. It gave me ideas; it was a good learning experience to see how skilled players use their techniques; how they fail in using them; and how they adapt them to their own purposes. For the most part; Japanese people have low slung hips and short arms. They have upper bodies like crabs and hips like bulldozers. This kind of physique is perfect for Judo. I am not built this way; I have the physique of a newborn giraffe. I'm all knobbly knees; wobbly balance, and kneck.

One night, I watched a 70, or maybe 80 kg player throw another in right ko-uchi gari. He got his left foot into position behind uke's, and tried to break his balance over it. Uke jigotai-ed his balance back into stability. Then I watched the attacking player do something cool. He pushed off the mat with his right foot; and let that force roll through his own body toward his head. Like a wave in a bath; this force bounced back off the top of his skull and sloshed back down his body into his left foot. Then he transferred this force into Uke's foot and swept it out from underneath him.  Uke tried jigotai-ing again; but this force was too low to try and block with his hips; and so he fell. I watched a player use his own body like it was a whip, he diverted energy through his body like he was a jelly that had been slapped. I thought it was awesome; and it gave me an idea.

For about two weeks or so; instead of training with the other players I have been doing my own thing off to the side. A lot of the exercises I do make me look like a lunatic. I'm trying to develop a style of judo so unusual that the other players won't have a context to place it in when I use it against them. People look at me wierdly; but divert their gaze when i am looking in their direction. In a way it is liberating. I get that kind of look regardless of what I do. I have blond eyebrows; a weird bent posture, and ghost white skin. I look radically different to the standard Japanese person; I may as well be a martian. If I sat quietly off to the side; I would get these looks. If I started pigging out on horse manure; I would get the exact same looks. Once I accepted that these looks were a natural and inevitable concomitant of coming and training in this place; then all my fear of embarrassment evaporated. There is no point for me to try and avoid it; I must embrace it as an ordinary part of life. And so I feel completely free of any kind of social pressure; because anything I might do would result in the same outcome.

Recently I became capable of standing on a yoga ball while catching medicine balls. During training one night I saw Nobuyuki Sato talking to someone else. I was watching them out of the corner of my eye. He had his arms out in front of him; as if balancing on something; and looking in my direction. I think I heard the word "ii barance". No idea if he was talking about what I hope he was talking about; but I'm willing to delude myself that he was.

Ive been drilling one particular exercise. I kneel in seiza on the yoga ball; and throw my balance forward. I fall over my base and extend my body over the ball. Then I recover my balance by slamming my hands into the yoga ball, and regain control on all fours. If you miss the right spot; you fall over, head first. I like the feel of this exercise; it feels almost exactly like being thrown in tai-otoshi. If you fight the momentum of your unbalance; you fall on the floor and it hurts like hell. If you slosh your body, as if it were a garbage bag filled with water, and cooperate with the momentum of the movement; you can guide it and re balance yourself.

I had a teacher in Australia show me a way to unbalance opponents by relaxing your arms. He would get his grip on me, then he would loosen his arms until they were floppy. Then he would use his hips to whip them against you. He would use his arms too; but not in a way I was used to. When I grappled with people, my muscles would tense up as if trying to lift something heavy. This made me strong, but also made my balance very brittle, and my teacher often unbalanced me with ease. He would not use raw force. Instead he would use a quick burst of power, like he was throwing a light ball. This power would traverse the lengths of his relaxed arms and unbalance me. It took me a few years to understand how it worked. It felt really powerful, and so I tried to emulate it by using my strength. It never worked. I couldn't understand how someone nearly double my age could be twice as strong as me. It took a long time for me to understand that what he was doing was shutting down all resistance in his arms so that a small force could travel unimpeded from him into me. 

Most of the Japanese people I train with that look to be around my weight are shorter, stockier, and stronger than me. They have a strict gym regime, they have guns. Because they have short arms, they can use their elbows like can openers. They concentrate a lot of power into their grips. Every time I try grip battling with them; I may as well be grip battling with a crab. It's just not a good idea; it doesn't end well for me if I try. So I think I have come up with a way to get around this. I call it "the corpse whip".

I am trying to adapt my teachers balance breaking technique into something I can use to transfer power throughout my whole body. When I start a round of randoori with someone; I start stumbling, and making a show of being unstable. I cross my feet; I lean sideways. My opponent gets wierded out. I grab my opponents lapel. Before my opponent can start methodically prying my grip apart; I shift my feet, and push off the mat. I let this force wave through my legs, hips, then body. Then it arrives into my hands. Then I pitch my balance into them deliberately. Doing this; I gain the power of my body weight and the strength in my arms. Like this, I can force heavier players to adjust their balance to react to me. The key is to shut your body down so that you are only using barely enough muscle to stand. If you are completely loose, any force you or your opponent uses will wave through you like ripples on water. People laugh when they watch me do this. I look insane. But it seems to work.

On Wednesday; I was standing off to the side waiting to get a round of randoori. The other students kept choosing other players. It feels a lot like being back in school, being the last kid to be chosen to join the team for the mandatory PE class exercise. When a team from the UK was here; their coach would yell to the visiting players to run onto the other players and bow them on if they weren't being chosen. I have started doing this; it works. I ran up to Varlam Liparteliani, a visiting judoka from Georgia; and bowed him on. He let me do the round with him. I'm not entirely sure what it is about judo that I love so much; but this has to be one part of it. I love that it is possible for me to train one on one with a European Judo Championship gold medalist. I went against him armed with an idea and the experience of having watched my favorite Jackie Chan movie twice.

Going against such a skilled player was a good opportunity to explore the justification behind my training goals. There is no throw that I know that he wouldn't have trained at least 10 times more than me. I cannot outrun him, I cannot outmaneuver him. My only chance against him would be if I derailed the thread of the round and took him to a place where his experience would not help him. If I try and play the game that he is employed to play, I will certainly lose. My only chance to succeed would be to make him play my game.

The round started; and I started staggering like a black out drunk. He had been watching me while I did this for a few weeks, and so he knew what it was. He smirked through his breathlessness. He was exhausted from many rounds of randoori with the heavy weight players.  I got the first grip; and started repetitively corpse whipping him. It was like the inverse of jigotai; I was deliberately throwing my balance into him to destabilize his stance. He had to move to avoid me; it was working. The corpse whipping itself wasn't all that difficult; but recovering my balance afterward required a lot of speed and maneuvering. I felt exhausted after a few minutes of this. Once my lungs started to shut down; my movements lagged; and he got the overhand grip on me. Once that happened; I was playing his game and had no chance of escaping his throws. He threw me maybe 3 or 4 times in some variant of hip throw.

We stood again; and I corpse whipped him; and moved into a deliberately sloppy seoinage. He stepped off it to his right to avoid it. As he did this; I let my momentum carry me behind him. I stuck my right foot behind his left foot and did some kind of sloppy yoko gake. I fell onto the ground before my momentum had actually traveled though my arms and into him. He had his back to the direction of the throw; and so I unbalanced and threw him. I'm still patting myself on the back over it. It was ugly as hell. I am not sure if he let me do it or not. But you don't get to throw a internationally famous athlete every day. We stood again and he continued to methodicaly wipe the mat with my back. After we finished; he said half to his coach; half to me, "he is strong".

I am not delusional; it is not possible for me to be half as strong as a judo athlete. But I think I am beginning to see how you can get strength, body weight and balance to cooperate with one another. If you can guide them into one unified force; it becomes more powerful than anything you can do with strength alone. It is not easy. But i think it is possible.

I am working on another variant of this technique; if I can get it to work I will call it "the back handed apology". I tried a grip breaking technique in randoori last night; I call it 'the crab hammer". It works but is too unsafe to use yet; but i think it has potential to develop into a good opening for sode tsukuri komi goshi. The yoga ball keeps giving me ideas; so I will keep using it. I want to see where it can take me.

Being Crazy; Experience as a brittle presumption

I went to Hakone as part of a school trip yesterday. It was a lot of fun. We ate black eggs; apparently its a tradition of the area to boil eggs in the hot springs. They tasted just like normal eggs I guess. They sold wasabi and egg flavored ice cream. The hot springs smelt like shit after eating cheap pizza. I am familiar with this smell; its comes from the sulfur underground; my family use bore water for livestock. Its apparently very therapeutic to bathe in, but not very pleasant.

The hot springs were some way up a mountain. I walked up with a large crowd of students from Tokai ; and other tourists. I'm not entirely sure why; but when I use tall and unstable looking stairs; I get exited. The feeling of danger is euphoric. I ran about half the way up; and the whole way down where I could, when the way was free. I felt frustrated with people blocking the way, I had to wait sometimes to be able to get around them safely. My knee was good; I wanted to see what it would do for me. It answered my request well. If I can sprint down uneven stairs; I can do randoori against lightweight players. I'm going back to training on Monday.

I took this week off judo. The last few weeks I had been going but instead of participating in the main class i did my own exercises separately. This week; I couldn't summon the energy. I felt really flat, mentally exhausted, unmotivated. On monday after an afternoon nap, my alarm clock woke me up at 4.30 to go to training. I went "fuck it" and slept through it. So i proceeded to sleep through the rest of the weeks training too. I slept well; at the cost of my drive and resolve. I will leave this place capable of ordering food in Japanese and making simple conversation. I will swiftly forget how to do this after a few weeks back in Australia. Not doing judo robbed my life of purpose; I had no real reason to be here beyond achieving a small temporary goal.

My life has taught me I am unlike other people. I cannot follow others peoples advice because it is founded on their experience; which doesn't compare with my own. Their advice can only apply to others who move; think and react to their world as they do. I cannot do this. I have tried doing judo like this and failed. Every time I try to emulate how others say judo ought to be done; I fail. In a few days i will turn 26, it has been 7 years since I started training. If i haven't learned judo using a conventional approach in 7 years, I don't think I ever will.

Twice in my life my understanding of life has been completely upended. The first time was when I was sent to boarding school.When I was 12 years old, I used to live with my family on a remote farm. Most of the conversations I had had were with imaginary caricatures, 2 dimensional characters from cartoons that I reanimated with my mind. I wasn't quite like Will Smith in "I am Legend", but I remember being able to quote every line in "The Lion King" accurately while the TV was muted. I spoke more with myself than I ever did with real people. My imaginary friends were always stunned at my genius, their sole reason to exist was to be a receptacle of my opinions. Before I went to study in my states capital city, I could count the amount of actual people I had daily interactions with on two hands. On two hands I could enumerate all the existing points of view; every possible argument that could ever be had; every possible way of viewing the world.

Then I went to school. My voice was too big to fit in the room. My opinions were too brash to fit into conversation. I was too different to fit into boarding life. I knew nothing of suburban society; I had seen it on TV, but had no idea how it worked or why. I quickly became an outsider. I didn't understand people; TV shows did nothing to teach how to navigate social interaction. I spoke my mind and people saw that it was top-heavy, and vulnerable to attack. I learned that I was an available stepping stone for other marginalised people to climb up the social hierarchy. I learned that it was never the strong that bullied the weak; it was always one tier of weakness above those bullied who persecuted others the most. The strong had no reason to want to become stronger. It was those who had been persecuted who had the most reason to want to distance themselves from the weak. In time; I too started to persecute the weak; because I wanted to distance myself from them. I did not want to be seen as weak. I started viewing morality as a tool to prevent the weak from upsetting social order. I did not believe in innocence. Living and taking from others were synonymous. If one person upsets another with words its bullying; if many upset one person with words it was just and fair criticism.

I got very sad. I thought of killing myself. I dealt with my introduction to society badly; I didn't understand what would happen if I made these feelings known. I was taken to the school councilor. I had been sent to school; and I had broken. There was something wrong with me; and maybe the school councilor could fix it. I was sent to some professionals. I had my head x rayed. I took personality profiling tests. Later, I was told that during this time it was suspected that I had schizophrenia. They didn't find anything that they could attach a diagnosis to. They tried to find my malfunction. They only found, with a slightly disappointed and indignant tone; "low self esteem". I wouldn't make anyone PHD.

I learned to distrust humanity. Straight out of high school; I remember reading "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky and identifying with it too closely to be comfortable with. In my high school days; I started walking aimlessly around the school campus. I came to learn its layout like it was the back of my hand. I became better friends with the school campus than i ever did with any of the students in the boarding school. I used to get chased and have rubbish thrown at me. I started looking at all the choke points on the school campus; started identifying where were the best places to force groups to follow you in single file. Groups cannot be outsmarted; individuals can. I learned how to hide; I learned how to sneak. I learned to run in a visibly straight line in front of my pursuers; then the second I got out of view, turn 180 degrees; crouch behind a garden wall, and run back the other way, to get behind them. I learned that being unpredictable was better than being fast; if they were a disciplined group they would cooperate and ambush you in the one possible escape route. No amount of speed can help you against three or four opponents armed with rubbish and a euphoric relief that it wasn't them being chased.

By pure accident; I realized during this time of my life I learned a few parkour tricks. I want to make sure that the reader understands that I do not consider myself athletic or acrobatic. "Parkour" is a separate word to "free-running". Parkour was a military training exercise that the French army used to get their soldiers to do, in order to get from A to B in the most efficient way possible. This has a much less artistic and showy look than free-running; it is all about efficiency. The key is to know your environment better than your pursuer does. If you know at what point the railings on a balcony are far enough apart to slide between; you can pretend to run away along a walkway; and then eject your body through the railings with a flick of the hips; onto a nearby roof, and then down a floor in a second or so. If your pursuer doesn't see how you did it; it will take them 15 or more seconds to catch up with you. The problem is; you are running from a group. You are not competing with one person's experience; you are competing against all of them at once. If one person in that group has seen you use that trick before; they will yell out to whoever is closest to you in the chase to be mindful of this. They will tell them how you did it; you will be outmaneuvered and caught. You must only use your skills when you cannot be seen. If you use them in plain view, you will be preempted next time you are put in the situation you need to use them.

The second time my world upended was when I came out to myself as gay. Before I understood this I played rugby; trying to erase a feeling of inferiority that I didn't understand and couldn't put a name to. I started training desperately; I wanted to destroy this feeling; I wanted to sleep at night feeling like how I presumed others did. I wanted to feel like the world had a place for me. I was not skilled, but I put all my effort into getting better at the game. I won the most improved award. I wouldn't show up to the awards ceremony because i didn't want to face the burning shame of my team, calling out a name they used to call me. I didn't want to be reminded that I wasn't like them. They collectively chose the name they used; an innocuous name; a name that their collective experience led them to understand that I was vulnerable to. The name reminded me that I was different, I would never be part of the team.

One day, I went to bed at night, confident that the world was beneath me; the sky above me; and that I was between. I had my place somewhere between them. The next night, I came to an understanding. I learned the name of the splinter in my mind. It was "homosexual". In one day my whole life changed. I lost all ability to place myself in reality as I understood it. Pursuing rugby as a means of bettering myself was pointless; it could not teach me how to feel like others. There was no longer any point to to try and follow the example of what it was that people thought men ought to do. It didn't apply to me, I was outside of its purview. I had been sent to a christian boarding school; the school authorities did not have a place for people like me. I learned to lie. I learned to emulate others and accept loneliness and despair as ordinary feelings. My opinions became inutile, my prior experiences were relevant to a lie of a person that I wasn't. I started to drink and smoke, and wag class. I was good at hiding on campus; so I could conceal it fairly easily. I was suspended only once; and it was for climbing into a second story window to retrieve an assignment that I would fail if I didn't hand it in within that hour. The time limit made me rash; I was more careful when I drank. Once; when I showed some people a good place to drink in privacy; I waited for the traffic on a road to pass ; and jumped a fence in about 2 seconds. It was a game of frogger I had played at least 40 times before; the timing was crucial. The people that I showed; it took them around 15. 15 seconds of which a car could pass at any time and see them. I began to see that I had been living a life in shadow; I had become used to darting away from peoples attention.

I hid in plain view. No one persecuted me for being gay; because they didn't know what to look for. They had their own understandings of what it meant, and I did not match them. I stopped turning up to rugby trainings. It had no appeal to me anymore; it couldn't give me a feeling of belonging. The head coach chastised me; I didn't care. I thought that all it would take would be the truth and he would agree with my decision. So i made his mind up for him, but denied him the opportunity to make the decision himself. I limped over the finish line of graduation. I couldn't wait to get out of the place. I cant think of my highschool days without feeling bitter. I started drinking; I hated my life. Sometimes in my darker moments i wanted it to end. I started judo; it helped me get over this period.

Recently, one of the other exchange students; he was drinking with two Brazilian judo players a few weeks ago. He asked them if they knew of me. They said they did, and that I was crazy. I took it as a compliment. I do judo like I am mad. I stagger as if drunk; I experiment with the methodology of grip fighting. In a lot of ways; I am mad. I am not crazy because I do judo differently; I am crazy because I have my level of skill and have the temerity to come and train in this place.

I have outran people faster than me. I have convinced shrewder people than me of falsities. I have an idea of how I might learn how to do judo like this. It is strange; it is an extension of my approach to living in a hostile social environment. I have yet to chart how or if it could apply to judo, but I am in the perfect place to learn.

Twice in my life i have put weight on my prior experiences, and it has made my fall all the more harder when my foundations were ripped out from beneath me. Every time I have tried to use my prior understanding to found how I ought to act in the future; it has lead to hardship and suffering. This is because I am different, and because my understanding of myself and my life keeps changing. I cannot use prior experiences and presume that they will apply in the future. My understanding of life as it is; it will change in the future; I will go through this process again. I see it as a difficult but inevitable challenge to overcome. I am beginning to imagine a way to project this feeling as an attack on another judo player.

I was doing randoori against a 60-ish kilo player maybe a month ago. I threw him maybe three or four times. He kept coming in and taking a bread and butter right handed grip. I kept slumping into him and attacking him with my hips before taking a grip on him. He'd shift his arms to defend his balance; I'd slip my arms inside his grip. I would lean against him like I was leaning on a stranger at a drunken party; in order to vomit on his shoes. I would use a double grip on his left shoulder, but lean in the direction of a right handed throw. He'd anticipate a tai-otoshi, I would slip onto his left side and foot sweep him. Like this; I would rob him of his understanding. Without his conception of judo, we were both the same; novices wrestling with one another. The only difference between us was that i was taller and had the advantage of leg reach.

The way Japanese players train; it gives them airtight understandings of how their throws work, and when to use them. What it does not offer is what to do when your opponent ignores convention and starts behaving erratically. When you ignore a standard approach; then they become terrified; their foundations for their training have collapsed underneath them. Training gives experience; it gives a strong foundation. These foundations are sturdy but brittle; they cannot adapt to change easily. They took years to develop, are set very solidly, and do not bend easily. In Japanese class; I may have found what I think is the most Japanese sentence I have ever read. I looked up a word (おたおた) in my electronic translator; it gave me an example with a English translation.

"I was flustered when a foreigner asked me directions in English"

Japanese people study the English language with a desire to know it perfectly. And they go about achieving this. I am always impressed with Japanese peoples' English vocabulary. But there is a difference between knowing and understanding, a difference between how meaning is created and being capable of using it to express yourself. Their weakness is that they see language as a set of exhaustively understood situations. They learn by rote memorisation; they revise phrases and words. But langauge is organic; it is not as predictable as an exam or an assignment. Language flows, it changes; it adapts to what it required of it.

I feel judo is approached in a similar way here. Japanese players train for years; they become very experienced in the throws they use. By so doing; they make a presumption. They presume that all the judo they will do will fit their experience, that their training will be relevant to how they use it. I tried founding my life in things I thought were representative of life. I tried preparing myself for a future I anticipated. All it did was unbalance me when my life differed from what i expected. Change is inevitable. The foundations on which you build meaning and understanding can be ripped out from underneath you at any time. If you know how; you can take years of training away from a judo player simply by acting outside of what they train to do. I have flustered a few players like this. When this happens; I usually get around 5 or 6 seconds of disorganized wrestling, I have stripped them of their skill and dragged them down to my level. Usually I fail to do anything in this time; they recover their composure; and bury me. Occasionally I get them in this mindset and take advantage of it. I want to develop this approach.

I am working on something; I preliminarily call it "the yoga ball shuffle". I have been balancing on a yoga ball for about two weeks every training; up until this past week. I sit in seiza; and then deliberately unbalance myself forwards, and recover my balance with my hands. I can stand on it and pass a 10 kg sack of sand from my left and right hand. I am not sure if this will apply to judo; but it can't hurt to try. I don't have the time to drill uchikomi like all the other players did to get here. This is the only plausible way that i can see that it is possible for me to throw other players. I am looking forward to next weeks training; I have ideas I want to try.

Mental and Physical Limits.

Training is hard. Sometimes i don't get many rounds of randoori; other times I'm continually on for 45 minutes or so. The engineers in my Australian Judo club; they talk about a triangle of priorities when studying. Each corner of the triangle is; Sleep; Study;  and Social life. You can only pick two.

I chose Study and Social life. The other night i was out drinking until 3am or so, i woke up at 6.30 for Judo training the next day. I rationalize this by telling myself that i must speak Japanese with the other students in order to learn it. Alcohol helps. Textbook study gets you literate; but it cannot teach you how to speak amongst friends. In my mind, it's the difference between  being capable of having a conversation, or choosing the best answer out of four multiple choice examples.

Most days i have judo in the morning. Then i use an an hour before classes to cram for tests. Then comes Japanese class; then 1.5 hours in the afternoon that i use to sleep. Then 2.5 hours of judo; then I'm free after 7.30. In this time i drink and smoke with the other exchange students. My contempt for my body doesn't help all that much.This is not how you ought to prepare yourself for hard training; but i feel these sufferings are contextless compared to judo.  During training i have come close to throwing up several times. Occasionally i see stars from oxygen deprivation. I look at the exits to make sure i could make it to the garden in time if i need to puke. A British judo player kept training after his shoulder popped out and sucked itself back into his joint. Luckily that hasn't happened to me yet.

I'm driving my immune system into the ground. I have noticed that quite a lot of the other judo students are too. Daily hard training doesn't really allow anyone to recover from colds or other illnesses. A lot of students have loud sniffles. Every time i drink i ask for cigarettes; this isn't helping me much. Ive started drinking the vitamin drinks that they sell in vending machines here. It smacks of snake oil to me, but i have been drinking them anyway. I am always craving vegetables, fruits, fresh food. On my budget i can only afford carbohydrate. i want to put on weight, gain some strength; but i don't know how to eat protein rich foods in this country. I eat rice, natto and a raw egg for breakfast every morning. In Australia, my friends would get offended at the standard i would subject my stomach to, and asked me not to eat around them. Ive been eating kimchi spaghetti for dinner most nights; kimchi is the only thing that i understand contains vegetables.

I am failing my Japanese tests. After judo, my mind dies like clockwork at around 10am. I lose my abillity to pay attention and can only focus on staying awake. When my teacher speaks; it all washes over me like water over a stone in a stream. It almost sounds articulate to me; but i can't identify words within it, its too fast and flows constantly. I can nod and pretend to understand;which puts me at about the level of a trained parrot. I may have to drop the level i am in and go to a lower one; i will do this if i have to but would prefer not to. I am gambling on the hope that in the future i will be conditioned to the judo training; and will have energy to spare for Japanese study. The level of Japanese i am currently studying is not too far beyond my level. My problem is, after habitually destroying my mind basic mental tasks are beyond me.

For my kanji tests i drink strong coffee; it helps with my motivation but not with my ailing attention span. Ive started getting cramps in Judo class; I had to sit out all of Saturdays training because my left butt cheek refused to let me use my leg. I have been getting some limited successes out of right ko uchi gari, but my body refused to cooperate from about 2 days ago. I cant load any force into it because i cant use my loading left leg properly. Drinking; smoking; and coffee has left me badly dehydrated. I cramped up badly after a particularly tough training. To try and troubleshoot my cramping problem; i walked to the pachinko parlor to use their urinal game. An animated cupid on a television screen above the urinal tells you how much you have peed; and offers it to you in the format of a high score. In 1 hour after the training, I drank maybe 4.5 liters of water and peed out 1. So my body was operating on a deficit of 3.5 liters.

Waking up every morning is a battle. I have dreams of being ordered around by policemen in imperious Japanese. Every morning, I have to remind myself that i am doing what I want to do; I am where i want to be. I am trying to surpass myself and become someone better. Lack of sleep messes with my mental chemistry a bit; i get elatedly happy at some intervals and bitter and sour in others.

People in the judo club are starting to open up to me; it is an enormous relief. I was worried that it would be as it is now for the rest of my six months here; cold and distant. I guess first I have to focus on getting through each training before i can start worrying about something that distant in the future. Before my cramping problem prevented my from training any more; I went for a randoori with a Japanese player. I had just watched him make short work of two British players. He looked around 70ish kgs, and had the perfect judo physique. He doesn't have much of a neck, has short arms and low hips. His hip throws looked unanswerable. I wanted to try out an idea.

I bowed him on, and started staggering loosely. I couldn't grip him, his grip game was too good for me to get an opening. He got his grip and launched my arms into sode tsukuri komi goshi. I threw my hips at his ankles against the rotation of his throw, and arrived there just in time. I got underneath his hips; and he couldn't use them as a fulcrum for the throw. It was incredibly ungraceful; it looked like i had thrown myself into him like i was a dead fish; but it worked. Then he started attacking the lower part of my body. I couldn't stop it. He threw me 3 times in maybe 15 seconds. The last time i landed on my left butt cheek. It hurt too much to continue; so i apologized to him and bowed off.

There was a lesson that i was repeatedly given by a Serbian teacher in Australia. It kinda looks like aggressive swing dancing; you bump someones hips off you; and it breaks the momentum of their throw. He could prevent me from throwing him by blocking it with his hips. I have never thrown him in anything other than maybe one or two ugly, wrenching sort of throws; his hip blocks are too tight to get through. It took me a long time to understand what it was he was doing; it felt incredibly forceful; but actually required much less effort than trying to block a throw with your arms. By racing your opponent; and getting your hips in position before they can; you deny them the opportunity to throw you. It can be countered easily with a well timed backward throw; but so long as you are loose and move quickly you can evade the danger. Yesterday, a Brazilian judo player, who weighs maybe 100 kg's and looks really tough; told me over a few beers that he likes doing uchikomi with me because i can block his o soto gari like this. It was a massive ego boost. I told him i like doing uchikomi with him because his o soto gari is so powerful, it is a real challenge to block. In class yesterday; one of the head guys was giving a speech on a technique. He got his opponent to try throwing him in o soto gari, but denied him the throw by hip bumping him. It looked very familiar to me; i realized i was watching my Serbian teachers lesson. I think i only recognized one word in the entire speech he gave. "Australian". If it meant what i thought it meant; it makes all this hardship worth it.

After resting up today and taking it easy; i feel much more positive about training. I want to get better. I think i am willing to endure the hardships to do this. I can't know of anything the future will bring. But i know, from my understanding of my struggles now, i have the will to continue.

The Judo Laboratory, and Cultural Bitterness.

Training has been really hard. It has also been really rewarding. Maybe three days ago i did the longest consecutive randoori i have ever done; at maybe 45 minutes or so. I was completely slaughtered afterwards. Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I have Kanji tests. I have been sleeping on average around 5 hours a night. My body feels like it has gone through a mincer. My mind gives out in class around 10am every day. But i think i am through the worst of it; I survived two weeks of the training schedule. I have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off judo; I desperately needed it.

The format for the night trainings is usually the same; 30 min warm up, 90-115 minute randoori, and the rest are things like newaza drills and warm downs. I went to a shiai two days ago; it was held in the Nippon Budokan. That place looks completely metal from the outside; I wish I could have taken photos but my camera battery died before i could. Think of ninja, and samurai catching arrows on rooftops. A guy from Tokai won his division with some snappy throws, I think he would have been in the under 73's or so.I would have gone to the heavier divisions the next day, but had to study kanji, so i couldn't.

The approach to learning here seems to be quite simple; you learn by doing. I have been to one technical class; where a teacher explained something i couldn't follow to the class, but for the most part it has just been randoori. All of the players here were trained at Tokai highschools in various locations, so they would have already learned and be quite solid with their fundamentals. By comparison, i have been making a lot of noob errors. People help me out where they can; usually by holding my foot or arm and guiding it to where it needs to be. 

I cannot compete with the Japanese hips; for me it can't be done. Its like trying to win a land war in Russia; a supercilious belief that you can will only lead you in the direction Napoleon and Hitler took. I am starting to understand the limits and advantages of my body. I can't drop under people; too giraffe-y. But at the same time, my arms are so long that when other players take their normal grips on me, they cannot break my balance the way that they could if i were a Japanese player. Sometimes, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, I can use my length to my advantage and surf their throws into a position for a counter. I'm doing more randoori in a day than i would probably do in a week back in Australia. This is gruelling, but awesome for my judo. By a process of trial and error i am starting to see what works. Since a training last week, after drinking a lot of gin the night before, i have deliberately been trying to move as if drunk. It is bizarre; but it seems to work. I have been throwing a small number of people like this. On the day that i trained hungover, i nearly landed my first hip throw in japan; a left handed o-goshi with a right handed grip; on a player that would have weighed maybe 65ks or so. He blocked it with his left hand, so evidently i didn't have the control part of the throw down, but for me even getting my hips into the position to hip throw a Japanese player is like trying to flip a coin, flat on the ground with a dog chew toy. Its just not the right tool for the job.

I concentrate hard on staggering and flowing as if drunk; and my body relaxes. Because i have lanky arms, i can flow through peoples grips this way. My problem is; the second i am in position for a throw; i recognize it, see the opportunity, and lock up in my body again in preparation for the throw. My opponent can easily feel what i intend, and steps off my technique. This problem is frustrating; but at the same time quite comforting, because it isolates my issue as a mental issue; to an area I can approach and work on. I have trained for years, felt i was getting worse, and not understood why. I asked my teacher; he said i asked too many questions, and looked too far into it. I felt i did not ask enough questions. I couldn't understand anything; how could you understand if you did not ask questions?  I kept looking for intricate explanations behind simple language like "relax", or "don't lock up". It got really demoralizing investing more time into something i was going backwards in. As i didn't know why i was doing badly, it was only identifiable as incompetence. I was doing badly because i was shit at Judo.

Alcohol gives me mental advantages in judo, (or at least removes disadvantages)  because it strips my mind of pretty much all ability except basic motor function. I often freeze in competition, because i try to analyze which of 6 throws is optimal in the situation i am in. I take too much time, and then that situation is gone. When i am too hungover to do this; I do better. My issue is learning to replicate this approach without alcohol. By staggering around, and not using linear strength, I can usually get through grips so far without issue. As of yet i cannot throw, as i spend too much time in indecision once i have actually broken my opponents balance. But even something as small as feeling my opponents balance is a massive improvement for me. A year ago, i would not have been able to do this; i was too tight in my muscle to be capable of it. Recently  I saw on the sidelines, when i was between rounds, one guy talking to two others during training. i saw him take a standard grip on the guy he was talking to. Then he took another grip; with his head swaying while using a shifting stance. He was imitating me. I have no idea what he was saying. It could have been anything, it may have not been complimentary. But it did inflate my ego. Another guy came up to me, and asked what i had trained in, what my ranking was in Australia, and who taught me.

I feel that trying to learn Japanese Judo would be an implausible goal. I have only half a year, and don't have the time to drill uchikomi to the extent that all the other players have. If i did it 18 hours a day every day i still wouldn't catch up with the other students by Feburary. Instead; i feel my only option is to improvise something unconventional. This place is awesome; you get to try out any and every technique you can; so long as it is legal and safe. You can be statistically rigorous in your research; by a process of trial and error it is possible to identify the weakness and strengths of any chosen throw. This place is a judo laboratory; if i stick out the training i will gain a empirical understanding of what i can and cannot ask of my body. Using my current approach, i am starting to feel ko-uchi-gari. 6 months ago i thought i was too uncoordinated to land the timing of it. Now, i have found out that it wasn't that i was uncoordinated, it was that i was too tense.

I cannot catch a ball. I roll my ankles when i get out of bed in the morning. I am uniquely ungraceful. I tried learning judo the way i saw it, spent a lot of time trying to get my feet and hands doing the same thing that other people did. I couldn't do it, i still can't. I don't think i am built the same way others are. But at the same time, being different has its advantages. I have learned that i can roll my shoulders in such a way as to offer me a risky, but volitional escape from ude-hisigi-juji-katame. I have met one other person who could do this; she trained at Glasgow uni. Probably the best i have ever felt in Judo was for 3 months when i was training there: it was also a period where i was continuously hungover on Guinness; Tennetts, or whatever else was going in the hostel. I used to use cross grips quite a lot then. The bread and butter right handed ball-room grip doesn't work for me; the angles of my arms don't work when i try. A few days ago, by shutting down my upper body as if it were paralysed; i broke my opponents balance without taking a grip on him. A Vietnamese player in Australia once threw me like this; i thought it was completely amazing. I want to explore this kind of judo; and i am in the perfect place to do it.

There are guests from all over the world training in the club here. There is one guy from France; there were a few from Denmark; yesterday 2 guys from Brazil arrived. Ive been talking with a team from the UK. Everyone agrees that the standard of Judo here is quite good; and they all complain of the frigid reception they receive here. People avoid eye contact with foreigners; you have to Clint-Eastwood-In-Dirty-Harry-Style approach players for a go in randoori sometimes. One guy i was talking to was quite vociferous. He said he had been sent by the judo hierarchy in his country, and would not follow a request to return again unless it was for less than 10 days. He was bitter about how cold and unwelcoming he found the class to be. People here take their judo very seriously. I make a point of trying out my Japanese whenever someone skillfully throws me (which is pretty much continually). About 1 in 5 people I speak to smile and respond; the other 4 barely respond or ignore that i spoke. I am beginning to learn that Japanese culture is riddled with invisible fault lines underneath the surface. If a kouhai thinks that by agreeing to randoori with you, he would prevent a sempai from being able to train; he will deny you the randoori out of fear of causing unnecessary embarrassment or disrespect to superiors. In my opinion, if someone wont give another the time of day in Australia for a few short minutes of randoori; it usually stems from arrogance or a superiority complex. Here; in Japan; it seems to stem from embarrassment; no one wants to trod on a superior's toes by denying them something they might be entitled to.  This is invisible to most of the guests here; they dismiss it as racism. And definitely; there are racist sentiments here. I walked out of the change room; someone shouted "Gaijin!", and so i turned expecting a conversation, but it was a statement and not a greeting. But my opinion is, if I; some stranger who has just walked in off the street, can ask the head teacher to train, at one of Japan's more prestigious judo clubs, and be welcome to do so, then surely something must be said for that.

I have friends who have just graduated in law. I have met many others. I keep hearing the same story; that after finishing the degree; they struggle to bear the pressure of working as a subordinate in a law firm. Some law firms have a culture of working their fresh entrants over 50 or 60 hours a week. This scares me; but not as much as the concept of graduating; working, and then finding out that i am not cut out for the lifestyle. I would lose my direction in life and drift aimlessly. I get stressed ordering my coffee in the morning; once in judo training; the day after an exam i sat in the corner in the fetal position until someone commented on it. I'm pretty highly strung; often it takes me several alcoholic drinks to relax and speak sincerely to friends. I know and understand law is stressful; i did not choose it with the intention of being comfortable. The same applies of Judo. Feelings of alienation, stress, loneliness, frustration and hopelessness are common for me in both a judo and legal classroom. I do not want to avoid these challenges; I want to overcome them. Even if i make no friends; suffer through bitter trials and leave having learned little; this experience will be valuable for me if i want to work as a lawyer. I would like to learn and understand how to interact within Japanese culture; but even if i cannot I will leave here with a better understanding of my own psychological limits. Framing my difficulties in this way helps, as i can see that continuing the training is a win-win scenario regardless of how jaded a lens i view it through.

Tokai's training regime; an old stinking highschool gym mat as a analogy, or why i love doing judo hungover.

So i ran today. I thought i was going to the gym; but apparently if you are over 77kgs you are supposed to alternate between running exercises and gym work every second day or so. it usually goes for an hour and starts at 7am. I found the place we were starting the run from; the judo students have their own dormitory relatively near to the supermarket and train station. The place is pretty easily recognizable, because of all the judo suits hanging out of the window. We all lined up, and bowed. Without a dyed bit of cloth around your waist it gets very unclear where you are supposed to position yourself for an organized bow, so i just tried to blend in the back as unobtrusively as possible.

We ran for maybe 40 minutes or so at a moderate pace. The scenery was kinda nice; we got out of town for a bit. There were what looked like rice fields; or some kind of grain anyway. Everyone doing the run was over 77kg, some maybe 40ks over. I found out that not being absolutely stacked like everyone else meant that i can run for longer than the average player seemed to be able to. People seemed to struggle to drag their guns around; i didn't have that problem. It turns out a Australian student diet has given me some physical advantages after all. It's a shame that being light and scrawny is useless in judo. Then we started doing some hill sprints. All the other students started kata garuma-ing each other up the hill. I didn't get a partner, so i sprinted up the hill instead maybe 5 or so times.

For the weights session; they turn you loose in the Tokai University gym. I was hoping for some kind of program; and maybe there was one, but it was properly beyond my level of Japanese to understand what it was. They have old suits you can chuck over chin up bars so you can work your arms and grips at the same time. Rocky montage! I just did some random things i could think of; i had no real idea what i was doing. Back in the day i was a member of Jetts. Jetts gyms are very sanitary; no risk. Here, no one seemed to bother using a towel for the equipment. There was a fair bit of sweat on everything. You could just walk up to a barbell; whack 100kgs on it, and lift it over your head if you could, or if you wanted to. I neither could or wanted to; I have no idea how honest my insurance policy is. I asked a friend back in Australia what i ought to do; he does judo; used to hammerthrow for Scotland at a highly competitive level, and is now a physiotherapist. His seems like the opinion to ask for if you want to learn how to throw people like they were metal projectiles.

I used to date a Singaporean; I asked him what the draft was like. He said it was really indulgent; he got to switch his brain off for a year. Everything he did for that time was decided by someone else, and he had no responsibility or mental burden for his actions; so long as they were the right ones. To me, training in a strict regimen, enforced by a large group seems much easier than doing it on your lonesome. I had some friends from judo ask if we could start doing some exercises in the park; i never got around to committing to it. With only two others, and no social pressure, there was no way i was going to get out of bed for it. Conversely, here i can drag myself out of bed after a heavy night of gin and tonics, and 3 hours sleep, for running drills (this is terrible for Japanese class; i do not recommend it).

Last week on the Friday; there was a bomb threat at my uni. All our classes were cancelled so we got to go back to the dormitory and begin the weekend. I turned up for judo but no one else was there. I asked the one guy that was there if classes were on; he said no; and that they were probably not on the next day either. I took this as my get-out-of-jail-free card. Me and a few friends from the dormitory went to Honatsugi for a nomihoudai. I thought it was going to be like a sizzler salad bar; except with beer taps. I was wrong, it was table service, not a "buffet" as i imagined. They kept serving us drinks after we payed the entrance charge. We proceeded to get nicely inebriated. I learnt that the korean word for "cheers" is "ganbe" (said like "gun bear" but without the A or the R). We ended up around our uni, drank some more. Went to a jazz bar; i asked them if they had Miles Davis; they did. Filthy jazz, cigarettes and Guiness; good for your soul. I asked them to play "Tempus Fugit" but they didn't have it; I really wish someone would cover it as a metal song. Went to bed around 5.

In the dormitory is a Canadian exchange student, with very tidy judo technique. He woke me up at 8 by putting a set of earphones next to my head. Took me a while to reboot into consciousness. Didn't really get what he said; must've been something along the lines of "get up you lazy bastard; Judo's on!" Had a somewhat delayed mental calculation.

1. Oh shit; Judo is on today.
2. Do i want to go?
3. There is no possible way i can get out of this.
4. Alright.

Chucked my shoes into the shoe box, and stumbled onto the mat. We started our rolls. I did the one where your head goes directly underneath you and you roll over it like a gymnast; my brain seemed to slosh around in my skull. There seemed to be a .5 second lag between what was going on and my mental recognition of it. I cracked a grin. This training was going to be interesting. One of the best competitions i have ever done, i was in this state after drinking vodka the night before. I wanted to forget how horrible my criminal assignment was.

They started randoori; the head teacher gave me a colored belt. I was a marked man; this meant that i was up for each randoori until it was time to take it off; you didn't get the option of resting after each round. Each belt change was usually around 25 minutes or so of consecutive randoori, with maybe 5 minute rounds. Out of sympathy; they put me into the area where the players with lower body weights were training. Everyone was bullet fast. Some of the really good players had landed their second attack on me by the time i had recognized the first. I had one advantage though; I got completely hammered the night before.

For years; at judo training, in one way or another, all the teachers have been telling me to relax while doing judo. I have never got the concept; i still don't. Why would i relax? I came here to learn how to throw people, and someone might throw me. Relaxation was something you did on the beach with a beer in your hand; you didn't relax in a dojo. I might land on my kneck. No one wants that. I wanted to train as hard as i could until it stopped being so hard.

In my experience if you can't chill out and take throws as a learning experience, you lock up in your mind. You can't face the possibility of being thrown; you avoid it at all costs. You do everything you can in training to prevent being thrown; because that's what judo is, right? Throwing someone else and not being thrown yourself? This attitude has led me to the most demoralizing low in judo i have ever been to.  Because I was afraid of a beating; my body locked up. I became stiff and rigid. Moving like this for even a few minutes is completely exhausting. And its also how you get injured. You get tired; do something stupid and end up paying for it. My shoulder still clicks on demand because i tried to break a fall from soto makikomi with a flat arm. And because I got this mental connection between pain and being thrown; it only spiraled downward and got worse; i locked up even tighter as i became more afraid of being thrown.

Indulge me, let me use some convoluted analogies. I'm sorry, but i'm having fun here. Imagine a nice, decent quality hardwood door. Its polished, its gleaming, it looks the part. You throw it off a 2 storey building; it shatters into matchsticks. Now imagine a filthy high school gym mat that's been used since the 80's in an underfunded institution. It stinks like urine; you get the impression that rats have eaten out the padding in the middle and started a nest inside it. You throw it off a 2 storey building; its fine, or at least you can't say that it is any worse than it was before. When i drink too much the night before; i am too worried about my stomach and sore head to really mind being thrown all that much. My body becomes floppy; and i bounce back up after throws.

Here's my second analogy. Imagine that same hardwood door. Imagine driving your shoulder through it; lets say you're a Tekken character or something. It lands in pieces on the floor. Now imagine the gym mat. It bends around your force, and wraps you up inside it. Whatever oily residue was staining the outside of it, now its all over you. You lose balance in it because it somehow tangled into your legs. Its a real pain in the arse getting out of it too; because the way the rats have eaten the inside of it; it  has too much give in it to be a gym mat anymore. It feels like being eaten by old carpet. Recently, i had two judo competitions. The first  was much better than the second one. My teacher graded me because of them. The first time; i drank 700 mls or so of vodka the night before, the 2nd time, i did the same thing to chase the same physical reaction. I moved like an animated sack full of dirty socks. Its not pretty to look at; but i can feel people trying to unbalance me when i am in this state. When i sleep well, don't drink and wake up fresh, i care so much about doing well that i end up mentally blocking myself from performing, lock up, and am so tense in my body i cannot feel my opponents intentions until after i have been thrown. After a hard nights drinking; my body doesn't seem to offer much resistance, and i can squish myself into positions i couldn't otherwise. Half jokingly, but not without sincerity; i asked my teacher if i ought to only wear my belt if i was hungover. He laughed, apparently it doesn't work that way. But without any hyperbole, i can truthfully tell you the quickest ippon i have ever done was when i was so hungover i was struggling to speak. I have never done anything comparable without alcohol.

So anyways; Tokai judo training. I have an uneven stumbling flow to my movements. One round i had, i managed to throw a guy maybe 6 or 7 times. Of course, he threw me many more times than that, and was at least 10kgs under me. But it was easily the best randoori i had done yet in japan. Another guy, i got him in a gravity surfing O soto gari. Ok, one last analogy, then i'm done. So i've heard that when NASA fling machinery to distant worlds; they have to calculate complicated trajectories to get them there. Its going to become painfully obvious that i know nothing of physics, but oh well. To get a probe from A to B, NASA uses the gravity of nearby planets to slingshot their probes around the outside orbit. When the probe arrives at its destination planet, it must enter at the right angle. The curve has to enter the atmosphere at an angle gentle enough for its heat shields to deal with the pressure. If the angle's too gentle however, it just ends up burning up because its cutting through more atmosphere than it needs to.

Back to reality. I got a swinging O soto gari on a pretty skilled player. I warped my body around the gravity of his attacks. When i saw the opening for my attack, i curved myself around and chased into him, at an angle gentle enough to avoid exploding on impact with his grip, but not so gentle as to end up with my back foot exposed and being dropped in tanae otoshi or something. I got him it. It wasn't pretty or anything, but I'm still patting myself on the back over it. Needless to say after that i probably didn't remain standing in that round for 5 consecutive seconds. But i feel that i can add to the number i can count on one hand; the number of times i have actually done judo in my life as opposed to some cheap imitation.

We finished up, and i struggled to find my shoes. I forgot where i put them; it took me some time to realize that i had brought different ones that i normally do. Today I went to judo, freshly rested, and probably did less than half as well. It sucks; i don't really want to become an alcoholic but at the same time it gets really tempting when i feel that a decent throw is just a night out away. One day i will figure out what this elusive "relax" means, but in the meantime i have other substitutes.

4th training... getting the stones to have a go.

I couldn't sleep again last night. I had told some people from Judo that i would come to their weights session at 6.45 in the morning. I went to bed at 11, but probably didn't sleep until 5. I woke for my alarm at 6 and chickened out. Since i started doing Judo here, i feel like i have the flu. I have experienced this before, its what happens when your body adjusts to a radically different physical regimen. My joints hurt, my neck hurts from bridging. I nearly fell asleep in the computer login introduction class at my uni. All you would need to do is attach a stuffy nose to my condition, and any doctor would prescribe bed rest to it. So 6am came, after i had slept one hour, and i chickened out. I slept from then until 10, i cant remember what i dreamed about, but i remember that the common theme amongst all the dreams i had was failure.

I had the day off. We had had our orientation classes for Japanese the day before. I understood the nouns spoken in class, that was about it. Today was all free time, at least until i had the 5pm randoori. I used the time to go buy some things i needed, surfed the internet; wasted time. Nothing exiting.

I went to judo. I think that the quality of their judo in randoori is better than most competitions i have seen at home. That being said, i have not been to many of the more skilled matches, but i saw some awesome combination and counter techniques tonight. Textbook drop seoi nages, precisely timed o soto garis to sasae tsuri komi goshis. Again i stood off to the side, waiting to be called onto the mat by someone sympathetic. The call never came.

I did not work for a homophobe who refused to pay me minimum wage, trying to save money for this, finally scraping enough money together to make it happen; so i could stand by nervous and withdrawn, watching the opportunity of my life pass me by. After about 1 1/2 hours of this, I asked someone next to me if they wanted to go with me for the next randoori. He looked kinda embarrased, but said yes. I couldn't throw him, he had been thrashed around like laundry in the dryer for 1 1/2 hours, I was lacking in technique. Those things considered, it was a pretty even pairing, and we finished without really gaining an advantage over each other. I asked the same question of another guy, again he looked embarrassed but said yes. I threw him in a dirty sumigaeshi, he threw me in a pretty tidy tai otoshi. Leaving training, i was left with the impression that this place would be what i made of it. I needed to take responsibility and ownership over my own learning. The worst someone could say if i asked them to go for randoori was no. It made me decide that i must commit to sincerely communicate to others that i want to learn, even if i could not do it correctly or grammatically.

This train of thought led me to decide that i must also commit to who i am. I have lived too long in indecision. I am gay. I was drawn to judo because i wanted to prove to others that i was worthy, that with training i could be capable of doing what anyone else could do. Since then, my opinion has changed. I no longer believe that there is anything that any one person can do that will make another respect them. People respect others for the sole reason that they want to. People do not attach their respect to qualities that exist in other people. In my opinion, person A respects person B because in person B; person A sees an invitation to recognize something that they want, and gain from, by respecting person B. Its an inherently self interested process. Trying to win respect essentially is like trying to control anothers mind. You cannot intervene in what people want to respect in others.

I will never be capable, and never want to, compel respect from anyone. There was a point in my life where i did think i wanted this, but this was before i understood what the word meant. I may have started judo to prove myself to others; but i am at Tokai University for me. I continued at judo for me. I have had arguments with a guy i was dating about outing myself to my judo club. I explained to him that i didn't want to fix something that wasn't broken. He argued back that i was living under a false identity. I didn't want to create problems for myself or my club. He asked me why did i want to continue meeting people that might reject me if i told them the truth, I couldn't really explain to him that what i have already gained from judo justified it all.

Once i learned to cast off others opinions as unhelpful as a yardstick for my own personal development, i was faced with a rather daunting question. Do you want to train like this, for yourself? At the pace you are learning at; being capable of doing one half respectable throw every 6 months, is it worth it to put up with the pain, the loneliness, the deceit? I struggle to answer that question. Every few months or so i seriously consider quitting. But i have the will now, and so i want to continue. And i want to stop omitting details about my life. I hope these two sentences are not contradictory. I have committed to the possibility that they might be. I have made many friends at judo, known them all for years, and yet feel a stranger to all of them. I am tired of being a stranger.

First training.

I couldn't sleep last night. I was too nervous. I had a interview to do with my teachers in the morning, and my first training in the afternoon. I kept getting up to get water, afraid that i would be dehydrated the next day. I might have slept maybe an hour or so. I got breakfast at a ramen place i hadn't been into before. I walked in and said...

"Good night!"

(shopkeeper).....

"Excuse me, wrong word. Good morning"

The food was quite good. I got some gyoza too. I remember thinking that i had better start judo soon because i would get hideously fat if i didn't. I paid and walked out. On the way from the store to my uni, i found a pachinko ball in the gutter. I took it as a good omen.  My favorite martial arts book (Angry White Pyjamas) starts with the author finding pachinko balls in the street. I found only one, he found several. Maybe thats significant....? anyway.

So i went to the meeting spot, and had to wait around for maybe a hour or so before i got called in for my interview. Think of the panel of judges in Flashdance. They asked me questions, i answered what i could, and said "sorry, once more please" a lot. They asked me why i wanted to learn Japanese;

"In my situation, major is law. However, marks are evil. If i learn foreign language, easy to look for job"

It was beyond my vocabulary to explain that i didn't expect job handouts to fall at my feet if i could order my own lunch at a restaurant. They got me to read aloud from a textbook, and decided it was the right fit for me. The classes are split into 10, 1 being the highest. I got allocated the 6th class.

After all this i was feeling pretty wiped out, so i went to bed. I wanted to rest up for training. I woke up, got ready, and got out of the dormitory. I left maybe an hour early, even though my dorm is probably 150 metres away from the judo training hall. I was freaking out about being late, or not performing some sort of courtesy gesture like sweeping the tatami mats. I had seen students sweeping the mats for maybe 30 mins before and after the trainings i had watched. I paced around uni, listened to music, felt stressed, and wondered why i had chosen to do this. And my training song came on over my ipod.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4cLmbw6q0

I really like the patient optimism in this song. It feels like working towards something you want; knowing that the end result is worth it. It helped me focus on the goal over the immediate challenge. It got me calm enough to walk into the dojo. I asked someone if it was ok if i trained (or at least i tried to ask and they figured out what i meant.) One guy seemed to get me and said it should be ok, but when the teacher arrived i would need to ask him. Sweet! I went and got changed and went on.

Their warm up is maybe 30 mins long. It looks pretty standard; rolling ukemi, uchikomi, ect. There were a few extra things that they did as well though. Everyone started walking on their hands in a handstand across the mat. I couldn't do it, as much as i tried. Then they got thin ropes out, and divided the room into two, splitting the training into higher and lower weight divisions.

Then they started randoori (kinda like sparring.). 2 hours of it. It was very hard for me, but not as hard as i thought it would be. For most of the time, i was standing off to the side looking like the new kid on his first day at school. I didn't have all that many rounds. Each one was for 5 minutes, then they would whack this big drum, and you would change to another person. There wasn't enough room on the tatami for everyone to train, so it was quite easy to take a break if you wanted or needed it. I looked around a lot, and definetly appeared confused. One of the students i had asked questions before, he came and grabbed me; apparently the head teacher had arrived. I went up to him, drenched in sweat, and sheepishly asked if it would be alright if i trained. I didn't really get what he said, but it was probably something along the lines of "Yeah? Your asking me now? You sure well thought it was ok when you came on an hour ago." We spoke for a bit, he asked me how long i had been doing judo for. I answered "6 year". He said it was alright.

My first round was with this guy called Oono; Big Field. Massive field. He would have had to have weighed over 120 kg. He had the opportunity to smash me in harae goshi and didn't; he gently dropped me in it. I was very grateful, i had heard all these horror stories of having to survive the first few weeks to prove that you were serious, &ct. No one wanted to belt me.

My lungs have gotten soggy. There was a point, probably a few years ago, when i went mad and started training 6 days a week. My judo turned to rubbish because i got so strong, i didn't need technique anymore. By my own fitness as a reference, i was very fit then. By comparison, tonight my lungs started to shut down after maybe the 4th or 5th 5 minute round. I think the training is intended to destroy your strength so you have only technique to rely on to throw other players. It sucks if you never had any technique to begin with though. I got maybe two or three dirty sumi gaeshis on, but for the most part got thrown every 20 seconds or so. The mats here are amazing; you don't feel it at all.

Then i got asked to tie on a coloured belt. This was to mark you as having to stay on after each randoori finished. You had to stay on and go for another round against someone else, while your old partner got to rest if they wanted . I got thrown really well by some lighter players in tanae otoshi. I kept trying my smearing sumi gaeshi but it didn't really amount to much. I ducked out for a bit because my finger started bleeding; Ive noticed here that they really freak out if they see blood. The second someone sees a slightly bleeding finger they run off to tape it up. I think it probably has to do with keeping the suits clean. Also tonight another insect flew into the mat, and people looked considerably nervous. Is there something i am missing here? Is it venomous? No idea. But my first impression is; Awesome judo, aversion to blood and moths.

After we finished, we had to bow off. They lined us all up. I had to line up at the side as a guest. We knelt and did the whole "mokuso" thing. Its a thing in Japanese martial arts where someone bellows at you to calmly consider what you have learnt that day.

I got asked to come to a newaza session by some other students at 7 am the next day (well, i didnt really get asked, told is probably more accurate). I've always fancied my groundwork, i defer to it whenever i can. Tonight, i tried my usual game and got quickly beaten by everyone. I might take them up on that offer/command.

Dinner was a raw egg cracked over some sort of beef concoction, rice, and beer. I really needed to pee, so i went into the pachinko parlour to use the bathroom. In the urinal, they have this game, where it measures how much you urinate, and shows it to you on a screen in front of your face, represented by a cupid statue urinating into some kinda brand of canned coffee. Pretty weird. It got me thinking though; i could get all Ewan Macregor in "The Island" on this. I will never freak out about hydration again if i know how much i have drank and how much i have peed. Everyone at this university is so ripped, it really motivates you to have a go and working towards their example.

And now i gotta go to bed because i have to get strangled next morning! I am living the life i chose.