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.
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