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.
