Troubleshooting

I've been going back to Judo semi regularly. Also, as an experimental approach, I have been drinking a lot the night before I train to see how it changes what I do. The results are not particularly repeatable every time I do it; but for the past three sessions I have been to I have done better because of it. My first training I tried this; I only threw one guy, who was maybe 20kg's-ish lighter than me in a non scoring O Soto Gari, but it is still an improvement on what I would have done otherwise. I went against a 120kg-ish guy who smashed me in an explosive Ura Nage, after I tried a negligent O-Soto on him. He felt the lack of my right hand on my lapel and smashed me for it.

But the thing is; this time, I was hungover. I too felt the lack of my right hand on his lapel. After that; I kinda felt like I had an idea of his balance; how he was holding himself and where he was going to come for me. So I shut my body down completely and started flowing through him. He would load his grip with strength and force; and I would wash through him using dead unresistant body weight. From beyond the grave Obi Wan Kenobi whispered into my ear "Use the force Luke". I collapsed like a drunk into his legs and cupped his left foot in my right. I didn't throw him, but I got closer to his balance then I ever could have otherwise. Its probably one of my favorite rounds I have ever done in Japan. I didn't throw him; but I got a few foot sweeps in that were closer to him than he was comfortable with. From his facial expression he was rattled. One of the things I keep reading about drunken boxing on the internet is that if you can make it flow right the effect can be quite hypnotizing on your opponent. I'm starting to find that I can sometimes grip people mentally before I take a physical grip on them.

The night before one of my recent trainings, I sat in my room; watched some youtube clips of Jackie Chan; and drank 4 liters of beer, on my own. I pushed myself to the furthest limits of my emotional and physical endurance this semester. I had tried everything I could think of. I had only one last thing that I knew worked. As I got drunker and drunker I also got sentimental. I didn't remember writing it at the time; but I posted this up on a web forum for alcoholics. It wasn't really appreciated. I have censored out the obscenities, tidied up some punctuation; but for the sake of retrospective verisimilitude I have left the rest intact, regardless of how embarrassing it is.

I think I am in a relationship to alcohol. Tell me if I am a cunt if if what I say suggests otherwise. I separate with him and keep coming back. This suggests more about me than it does about him. And yet, he has given me the strength to get through a lot of the ordeals I have faced in my life.

At first I experimented with him; and he was sexy. It was cool, it was what teenagers did. But I felt I knew more about you. Your character, your personality, I heard nothing of that from my friends or family, but I felt I got to know you better as I met you more. You got me through some bitter times. But sometimes you can be a bit of a drag. You dragged me into some times that I didn't want or need. I felt you wanted things from me that I didn't want to give. And yet, what you wanted, what I wanted, was the same, oblivion. Because we both know this world is filthy and dangerous. If happiness is something that can be consumed than sign me the fuck up. Can you give me that? Will you give me that? You wanted that of me and I wanted that of you. Consume of me what you can and I will take from you what I can.

I wanted more from life. I wanted a life where I could overcome myself and become someone better. But I felt you weren't happy with that; you needed me as I was. I don't know. I don't think I know you as well as I should. But I wish you knew me as well as you should. I don't want you to want my weakness. I want you to want me as I am. Can you do that? Could you meet me in the street, as a stranger, and think, " yeah ok fuck yeah that's something I wanna get onto? Because I feel; as I know you now, I couldn't meet you on the street for the first time and feel that. I feel you are a bit of a demanding cunt. You need shit done your way and that's how its gotta be done.

I am considering breaking up with you; but I dunno if I can. We are heavily tied together. Please, for you and me, let us work our shit out. I love you. Do you love me?

..............................

I dragged myself through my classes; thinking how expensive the attendance marks were. I was watching my life evaporate before my eyes; but I needed to be in class so I could get funding from my university to pay for my welcome here. I had completely checked out of the classes mentally maybe a few weeks ago. I realized they were not helping me learn Japanese; they were tattooing phrases and grammar points onto the inside of my skull. I felt like I was in prison; peering around on the inner casing of my mind. Everyday I would see the same graffiti;  phrases such as "Yesterday, I slept as little as 3 hours" or "as a rule, you shouldn't wear jewelery" grooved into the bone. I mustn't complain. The teachers were very helpful and sincerely wanted to teach the language to me. But I feel at the same time I had to fight to keep them from taking my desire to learn. My alcoholism didn't really aid things all that much.

I went home; and logged into the internet; and found my love letter to alcohol written on a forum. I had completely forgotten about it. It wasn't a pleasant experience; seeing the slimy trail of my drunken mind smeared across the internet. I don't particularly want to lose my mind to it. It is not a glamorous way to lose what makes you human.

I was talking with an exchange student some months ago; about the tea ceremony. He was adamant that it can bring you feelings that people call Zen; where you abandon your mind and body to the ritual and have it release you of the burden of your self. I told him it creeped me out. I didn't like it when i saw it. I have heard that it is one of the highest cultural expressions of love in Japan and at the same time so mechanically memorized, so stiff and sad, that the one time I watched it I felt uncomfortable. I felt the drink itself was a tiny object on which the rest of the ceremony had crystallized around, and become so far removed from its original source that it no longer resembled a casual drink; that it was worshiped as a libation. I felt that the tea was too big of a deal to drink and enjoy without risk of offending someone.  It made me feel quite uncomfortable; like I had gatecrashed a funeral. That love and meticulous ceremony seemed to be aspects of the same ritual seemed to me that love and mechanical rehearsal are conflated concepts to those who practice it. He did not agree. I said to him "it is just a drink".

"It is just a drink". And yet, it gives me the ability to abandon my body and my mind to the flow, to the feel of the action when I do Judo. It gives me a release that I cannot easily obtain otherwise. When I sleep well and don't drink the night before, my mind locks up in doubt. Whenever I am in position for an attack, I freeze in indecision, and that moment is all it takes for my opponent to smash me. I was drinking with some friends some weeks ago; and I was trying to express my own opinion on the meaning of the word "martial art". It contains the word "art" for a reason. Your body is a medium for you to express your creativity. You can use as much artistic license as you want; it is your body and your style, no one can own it but you. Judo is the most expressive and creative thing that I do. And yet I feel I need a depressant to aid me to connect to my movements. Without it; often I feel that I am just going through the motions, I am just regurgitating a rote memorized speech that I don't want to give and no one wants to hear. And so, my critisism of the tea ceremony and my use of alcohol for judo is more or less the same.

If a depressant can increase my skill in Judo; then I must have some sort of mental condition that alcohol treats. I have spoken to friends casually about some of the things I am anxious about; they often get frustrated and vocally demand that I go and see a doctor. Mental health is not an easily broached subject. And yet if I view it the same as I would any other injury or malady; it seems to me to be an easy fix. I may potentially have some sort of health problem that gets in the way of my sport, in the way of my quality of life. If so, I can easily go to a physician; get treatment; and move on. If I have something; maybe it is just like any other sporting injury. Get it fixed and get back to training.

I would not call myself a mentally balanced person. And yet; I don't know and don't think I ever will know what "mental balance" means. I don't believe in human averages; they are vulgar and imaginary. I have never spent a day in my life being a normal person. It has taken me a long time to accept that I never will. It has taken me still longer, and will take more time; before I can become comfortable in who I am. When i was drunk i wrote;

I wanted a life where I could overcome myself and become someone better. 

.............................. 

So i drank a lot in preparation for Judo at the Kodokan. The Kodokan is the head judo dojo in Japan. I organized to meet some friends that I trained with in Australia, as they had been there before and could show me the ropes. I turned up with a bad taste in my mouth, wading through a mental fog. I knew I was in the best condition for me to do the kind of judo I am trying to develop. I went through some clerical peripheries with one of the judoka at the front desk. He got me to sign a contract disclaiming responsibility for certain damages. As I was reading it; I noticed the absence of a word which voided a whole clause of any meaning. I pointed this out to the attendant; I was instantly embarrassed for being a pedant. But I was also exited. I had drank with the intention of invoking this mindset; I wanted to be able to react quickly and decisively to stimuli that I noticed. The fact that I had done that for something that I saw on the contract, without being restrained by a niggling sense of doubt telling me to keep my mouth shut for fear of judgment, implied that I would also be capable of doing the same during the randoori class.

I walked onto the mat. It was amazing to be there; I had worked; saved; suffered; slogged through some bitter trials to be capable of training in that place.  I got talking to an old man. He explained to me the set up of the place; how the randoori training was run; and then he invited me to ask him Judo questions. He didn't look a day under 80. I was afraid I might break him. When he moved into me to demonstrate a technique, his technique was flawless. My fear was groundless; he had such command over his own body, I knew nothing would happen to him unless he intended it. He explained to me some techniques and threw me using them. It's hard to explain what it feels like being thrown by a 5"6 old man that is more skillful than you can even find a context to compare to. It feels like talking to an immortal being; humans were not supposed to be capable of exerting that kind of power. It is also sobering; seeing someone with that kind of skill and knowing that you can never hope to obtain anything close to that level of understanding.

I sat around afterwards and waited for the training to start. I found a guy from the UK who was visiting; we got talking. We went together and practiced some movements. I tried drilling O-Soto Gari on him but wasn't feeling it. For some reason, when I do a right O-Soto Gari, my right arm doesn't really do anything. I keep paying attention to it and trying to fix it but nothing has improved yet. My training partner noticed this and talked me through the movement. I tried adopting his advice, to fix my technique but it still felt so alien.

We sat around and waited for the training to formally start; but we realized that there was no formal start time; you can just show up and train with who you want and how you want. It's really cool; it seems to abandon the whole stuffy rigid approach of conventional martial arts training and goes for a more organic jam session kind of vibe. This was perfect for me; I had experimental ideas, I was in the mood for a 20 minute jazz solo odyssey. I asked the guy from the UK if he wanted to do some randoori with me; he agreed. I apologized to him before we started for the lunacy I was about to inflict on him. I told him I meant him no offense; but I had a weird style and wasn't using it against him as a joke. He looked at me sideways and said that it was alright.

We bowed each other on. I gripped his lapel and before he could rebut it I corpse whipped him. I rolled my force from my left foot, up my leg, through my hip, up the right side of my body, through my shoulder and head; and then projected the force out of my arm into his body.  It was interesting; it took him completely by surprise. His head vibrated like drum cymbals. By the time he had recovered his balance I had slumped into position on him for the throw he was teaching me how to do. I can't remember if I threw him in that throw or not. But I threw him at least 4 times. When we finished he said to me breathlessly "yeah your style is interesting." I replied "I have watched a lot of Jackie Chan movies"

My friends arrived; I had rounds with both of them. It was cool to see their techniques again; it was like listening to a friend's voice on the phone that you hadn't seen in a long time. One of them threw me in a respectable Seoi Nage in the motion of my corpse whip against him. I felt the force in which he blasted me onto the mat and knew I was feeling his judo "accent". No one I know "speaks" judo in quite the same way when they use that technique as him. I got a dirty sacrifice throw on him. I went against a few other Japanese players. One thing that I have discovered about my approach is that it robs my opponents of oxygen. Dealing with a sloppy weight thrashing against you like a dying fish requires different muscles that ordinary judo uses. I tried explaining to one of my Japanese partners after our round that I came up with my approach because I was training at Tokai and needed a way to counter my main physical problem; that my hips are too tall to be capable of doing judo like a Japanese person. He humored me and listened to my explanation.

The place was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. People were helpful, friendly and enthusiastic about Judo, and wanted to share what they knew to strangers. In Tokai it is much more militaristic; the passion is still there but the lighthearted freedom is not. Afterwards I went out with my friends to eat at a restaurant. We got talking about Judo. I was feeling hungover enough to want to talk about my ideas about drunken boxing and judo. I got some criticisms; some critiques that I needed to hear. I developed what I do in a language vaccum; people would watch me train and would laugh at how unorthodox and unconventional it looked; but I never received any dialogue beyond a few complements when I managed to throw someone using it. One of my friends; the gravamen of his disagreement with me was that it was fine for me to seek release if my actions affected only myself; but Judo training requires partners. If i sought release by drinking, I could do that on my own; but not when my actions could adversely affect the health of others. If i was trying to relinquish control in my mind, then I would also lose control over my body, and therefore control over my partners safety. It was a good point and not one I had considered before.

In my defense; for about 2 years I quit alcohol completely. I think it was also during this time that I was quite determined to learn Tai Otoshi. I went crazy pursuing that throw; and the more I trained in it the worse I got.  I couldn't release myself to the flow of the movement; I was always doing it through clenched teeth. I couldn't relax or feel natural while doing it. Another of my Australian friends; he commented that every time he trained with me in that time; he was quite afraid that I would injure him. Tai Otoshi is a quite dangerous throw if you apply it incompetently. You can end up hyper extending your partners knee. I tried to do that throw the same way I tried to do everything at that time; through clenched teeth, tense and uptight. The other day; during our randoori session at the Kodokan, I threw my friend using a drunken interpretation of that throw. He commented on the fact that it felt quite stable and safe compared to how I used to do it . I know I am much kinder to myself in my own mind when i drink. I may also be more supportive to my training partners when I can relax in my body. However, a feeling that I have that relies on alcohol is not something that I want to impose on others to feel comfortable about.

After a quick search on Wikipedia, I found a quote from Jigaro Kano.

A main feature of the art is the application of the principles of non-resistance and taking advantage of the opponent's loss of equilibrium; hence the name jūjutsu (literally soft or gentle art), or judo (doctrine of softness or gentleness) [as a name for]...the principle of the Maximum Efficiency in Use of Mind and Body. On this principle the whole fabric of the art and science of judo is constructed.

I had a thorough search in my own mind; looking for strengths I could use against my opponents. I found only weaknesses. I got injured at training one day because i loaded a left handed Ko Uchi Gari against a heavier opponent; who smashed me backwards in Ura Nage. My body went; my knee didn't. Since then; I have been trying to be as loose and fluid in my movements as I can. This prevents me from being injured because i don't put stress on my joints when I am forcefully thrown. In time; I learned how to use passive relaxation as a weapon. I defended myself from a Tomoe Nage that my Australian friend tried to throw me in, by shutting my body down so completely that he had nowhere on my body that he could use as a pivot to rotate me. I landed on him as if I had ipponned him; and I did it because I did literally nothing.

I have found a way to brandish alcoholism, my main mental weakness as a weapon against my opponents. Perhaps it is not maximally efficient in the way that Kano might have thought appropriate; but in my situation it was easier and more efficient than drilling Uchi Komi to the same amount that all the other students had. I took what I understood the principles of Judo to be and I adapted them so I could use them to throw others. After 4 months of training; I took an idea and developed it into something that I could throw judo students with; judo students that had trained their entire lives to develop the skills they used to throw me. I wrote when drunk that I wanted to overcome myself and become someone better. But i have found an even better approach using the philosophy of Judo; use your own weaknesses as an advantage to amplify your ability. You cannot do this without first being weak.

I drank a lot the night before in preparation for a training the next day. I turned up for training; there was an unusually buzzed vibe about the place. It turned out the National Judo team from Kazakhstan had come to train at Tokai for a few weeks. I had ideas, and I had the best Judo athletes from Kazakhstan to try them against. A lot of the Kazakhstani players struggled to get training partners; as the Japanese players avoided them at times. I bowed on a guy who looked to be close to my weight. He smashed me in an epic Ura Nage and a lot of other throws; he had the Russian Sambo kind of accent to his Judo. So I corpse whipped him, stumbled around with him, through him, around him. I taxed him heavily of his oxygen. From memory I threw him once or twice by using sacrifice throws. He complemented me on my style as we finished.

I bowed on another Kazakhstani player. He looked unenthusiastic about going against a scrawny looking kyu grade. His coaches said something to him in either Kazach or Russian, I couldn't tell. He reluctantly agreed to do the round with me; if he didn't he probably wouldn't get a round with a Japanese player. I got the first throw against him; in Sumi Gaeshi. He threw me a lot. I got him a few more times too. He came up to me and tried a three throw combo; from memory it was Sasae Tsukuri Komi Ashi, to O Goshi, to O Soto Gari. Every time I drink I watch this one fight scene from my favorite Jackie Chan movie. He's drinking, in a happy drunk mood, fighting the James Bond one-at-a-time henchmen; and naming the techniques he is using as he uses them. One technique he uses he calls "Drunken maid flirting with the master". As the henchman goes to punch him; he twists and contorts his body in such a way that his opponents fists hit nothing but air. I surfed my opponents attacks by incorporating that technique into my vocabulary, and came out of it the other end without being thrown. He let out a long grunt of frustration to himself and his coaches. I had earned his frustration.

Yesterday; I went into training without drinking. I was quite anxious; I doubted that I could replicate the same results as I did in the last training without being hungover. But I did my best, and I did well. I did some Uchi Komi with Islam Bozbayev. He said to me "You are passionate" after seeing me drill my O Soto. Maybe it was the only truthful complement he could give me after seeing that disaster. Because he was kind to me, I decided to ask him for the first round of randoori. He threw me maybe 5 or 6 times, he used a lightning fast Tai Otoshi. I got a single Sumi Gaeshi on him. This puts the amount of Olympic judoka i have thrown up to two.

Afterwards; one of the Kazakhstani coaches came up to me and asked my name; my nationality; how long I had been in Japan. He asked me if I was a professional. I said no. He said in a thick accent, pointing to where all the Kazakhstani players were sitting "These are professional". It was really cool, it was also kind of surreal. I think I have something in what i have discovered here. I want to develop it further. But i also need my mind to think. I think in time i will learn how to do what I do without being hungover. I will need to study hard in order to achieve it.

Schrodinger's Hungover Cat

I think it was a Saturday, about 7 or 8 months ago. I had a criminal law assignment due in about 5 days, and a Judo contest on the Sunday. I was stressing out of my mind. I hadn't written up my notes from the lectures, and so I had no real idea what the assignment was asking of me. I'm not a fan of criminal law, I just don't really get it. To me, it feels like learning how to reverse park. There are all these arbitrary instructions like "when your passenger side window reaches a 42.9 degree parallel line with the adjacent car, then spin the steering wheel 16. 4 revolutions counter topwise, and you will align behind it". It was making me feel quite queasy, I was certain I would fail and have everyone know I was a failure.

My friends boyfriend is a D.J. and makes electronic music. She invited me to one of his parties. I jumped on the opportunity, I just wanted to forget that the future was something that adults had to be responsible and accountable for. Before I went to that, my room-mates had a different party going on at our house, so I drank some beers at that. This detail is not particularly interesting but it became relevant later. They asked me to stay longer, but I could smell pungent guilt billowing from my textbooks in my room, and so I left with my friend, to get anywhere far away from that place.

I didn't know anyone at the house party we went to. I think it was organized as a birthday celebration. I probably congratulated at least 4 different people for whoever's birthday it was. I promised the DJ I would get the dance floor beyond critical mass. I generally don't dance unless heavily anesthetized. I drank about 2/3 of a friends bottle of vodka. Again, this detail is uninteresting, but it became relevant later.

As a rule, I think less of people who itemize how much they had to drink, because to my mind it is evidence that the speaker considers each drink was a destination, on a gaudy travel itinerary (obnoxious selfies alongside famous landmarks included),  the record of which is kept for the sole purpose of bragging to others. I drink to get drunk, not to inflate my vanity. I momentarily excuse myself from my own standards here because what I drank became relevant to me later when I tried to repeat the results that came from drinking that amount.

Anyway, so I was doing my best to rinse my criminal assignment out of my head. I also had a judo competition the next day. I had exerted pretty much all the stress I was capable of while thinking about my deadline, and so I had barely thought about the competition at all. I was drinking to enjoy the moment; and it was helping. I forgot completely about the next day, or about the work I had to do. A law student friend told me, "Law school will teach you how to drink". I understand that statement better now than I did then.

True to my promise to the DJ,  I committed to writhing like an idiot on the dance floor. It felt good. I no longer cared what others thought of me. Tomorrow all these strangers would be the same thing they were to me then; strangers. Others merged into and out of the music. I had a few conversations. There was this one guy I got introduced to. He seemed to be the perfect example of the brash American Football college athlete from teen horror movies. I was convinced at the time that I had communicated with a grindr profile that looked like him. If he was who I thought he was, he had offered me swimming lessons over a gay social media app maybe a month or two before. I alluded to it and saw his face convulse for a slight but perceptible moment.

The music wasn't really my cup of tea (I like metal more) but it wasn't bad, and I was impressed by the DJ's skill. I told him so. I got to that state of inebriation that I call invincibility at the time, and others call obnoxious and unpleasant. But in my defense I wasn't the only one making a scene. This guy I spoke to earlier, he was in a similar state of inebriation. And he bore it as obnoxious teenage athletes tend to do. He took all of his clothes off and started making a show of himself.

The party went on. I had a lot of fun with the friend I came with. When the DJ finished his set everyone was approaching my level of intoxication. The drunken nudist had jumped into the pool and was loudly bellowing challenges to all who would accept, in a lord of the rings kind of narrative. I decided to accept his challenge. I stripped to my underwear and jumped in. I asked him what it was he was defending and what the terms were. He answered, from memory it included concepts such as wisdom and bravery. I asked if he was in earnest. He started splashing me. I had not come to play as children do. With his left hand he hit the water with his open palm, to send a wave into my face. I stepped backward out of the way with my right foot, spun in with my left, and used my left upper arm to deflect his advancing arm out of the way. With the back of my hand I lightly slapped him across the cheek, and gave him the dualists' beckon; "do you challenge me sir?". It was a pretty cool movement, Later in randoori I tried for ages to recreate it in grip fighting but can't. I wish I could have done it with a glove.

Preliminary details were agreed on. I took care to explain to him that I wished him no harm, and that I would only try to do to him what he consented to prior to us starting. We agreed that the first to submit lost. Having settled that, he grabbed both my shoulders, like I was a shopping trolley he was trying to compress inward. I had done enough gi-less exercises to know that that approach is worse than useless, especially when your opponent is wet and you have no friction for gripping.

I used my right forearm to pry his left hand grip outwards from the inside. Without that grip as a prop he sloshed through the water onto me. I swung my right arm inwards, and put my palm on the left side of his jaw. I used my left arm to entwine his right, my hand and elbow lifted his right arm into my armpit, where I buried it by sinking my arm down afterwards. I stabbed my head and shoulders into a parallel alignment to his, but more in the way of a rhombus, so that our connecting arms bent out at a 45 degree angle. He was anchored onto my hips. I pushed up with my loaded right hand, and swept his right leg out with my right leg. His head aligned with his right foot; I had control of both, and I flipped him 180 degrees into the water. I gave him a good dunking, and got him to submit to me in a few seconds. He gave me a few more splashings after i let him go, I asked him if he wanted another round. I got another answer, this time with clumsy allusions to Mordor.

As an aside, you may well validly express doubt when I can say that I was in such a state of confusion that I congratulated 4 people at that party on one persons birthday, and at the same time remember my O-Soto Gari to that level of detail. I will try to explain. Judo is a language, but instead of words it has throws. Someone cannot answer you with "I am good, and how are you?" unless you first validly pronounced "how are you?" Whats different between spoken language and this physical language is that it only takes one word to be understood in judo. If you see that your opponent has understood your judo , or, to abandon the comparison, got thrown, then that automatically requires valid performance of the technique. And so because I threw him I can reverse engineer the phonetic structure of what was "said". It took me the prior paragraph to try to explain the pronunciation of that technique. There is a famous Judoka that teaches at my host university, he has written a 96 page book on that throw.

We played a drinking game after that. It was a hell of a lot of fun. It felt exactly like what I imagined University student life to be like, fun and irresponsible. The rest of the night left me in a blur. I got home, went to sleep, woke up to my alarm maybe 4 or five hours later. I spent maybe 5 or so minutes blankly looking at the ceiling wondering why i had set it. Then I remembered I had a judo competition.

On the train heading toward the competition, I groggily looked out the window. ; I realized I had burnt out most of the emotions I could possibly have. I had left my law assignment as late as I did; and so I would fail. This was a complete certainty. I felt no stress. I resigned myself to the future I earned and deserved. When I walked, it felt like I was walking across a water bed; it sloshed and undulated underneath me, and made me feel a little sick. I had to compete while moving like this, and so I would lose. This was a complete certainty. I did not feel any embarrassment, any sense of foreboding of what was to come. I knew exactly what was to come.

At the competition people waited for their turn to compete; and then it became time to warm up. I went through the motions. I just wanted to leave that place, to get it over and done with. I did a warmup with another player, he was in my division. I would be competing against him soon. Conversationally I asked him a question about some kind of hip throw. He joked, but not without sincerity, that that isn't really the sort of question you expect from someone who will be your opponent in a few minutes. I reassured him it wasn't plausibly possible that I would give him any more than a few seconds of competition during our round.

I sat down next to another player from our club. She was quite nervous. We spoke together. I felt unnaturally calm, bored even, like I was in a waiting room for a government agency. I had something unpleasant to wait for, that was all. I had no more stress left to give, my mind was a wrung out sponge. My first round was called up. My opponent was (from memory) a 3rd dan black belt from Croatia. He was likely to be very skilled. I blinked slowly. I knew what I had done last night, and I knew what it meant. I was going to get my arse handed to me, because I deserved it. I shuffled up to the ring and bowed him on.

The match started. I threw an experimental hay-maker-y kind of O-Soto Gari in his direction. My movement was very half-arsed and casual. He pulled his right foot behind him to deny me access to his balance loaded leg. I did it again, he reacted in exactly the same way again. I remember the thought "O-kay...?" passing through my mind. His left leg was shining, like any object you find in a 1st person shooting game. It was glittering, I could see it, it was inviting me to pick it up. I didn't really think about it any more than that. I went for another sloppy O-Soto, but feigned and didn't commit to it. He shifted his right leg behind him again. In that movement, I threw myself at his left ankle. I loaded my right foot behind his left and swept it out from underneath him, using my own falling body weight as the force to do it. I landed on top of him and Ipponed him. It was the fastest judo round I have ever won. I beat an experienced dan grade in maybe 3 movements. I got congratulated by my opponent as we bowed off, then i went to sit with my teammates and they commented on the movement. I felt a mild feeling of disbelief, a little relief that it was over. That was all. It made me as happy as maybe finding 2 dollars in your wallet that you didn't know was there. I went to the sitting area and waited for my next round.

My second opponent was a rank higher than me. I had trained with him before; I knew him to be very strong and quite skilled. We bowed on and started the round. It was a long and hard round. I felt like vomiting a few times. His grips were strong, and he had a strong loading stance to fortify it. His body felt like stone. Mine felt like a garbage bag filled with water. Then;

Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun." 

Every force he exerted radiated through me like ripples on a dirty puddle. I realized I could feel the movement through his hands, telling me what he intended to do next. I knew before he committed to any particular attack what it was he was going to do.  They call this the "feel" of judo, that people telegraph what it is they intend to do to their opponent by letting their balance flow into their hands. I have felt it less than 4 times in my life. I was standing as if I needed my opponent to support me, he was leaning into me like a 45 degree support girder. It was like, just for a short period, I learned how to read his mind. I knew i would become aware of what he was going to do next the very second he had the idea himself.

I was feeling ill, and wanted the round to stop. I threw him for wazari, or maybe yuko, from a O-Uchi/Ko-uchi combination technique. I won the round, but I cant remember how or why. The win wasn't that important to me. What will be forever framed in my memory is that for a short while I felt his movements, as if they were mine, as if they were forces that I could take and command and use against him. I don't often feel this, something that feels like Judo. If you can do it, you take your opponents force and use it at your own discretion. This realization burnt through my indifference; I had to acknowledge that i had done judo, or something like it, and not some cheaper imitation as I normally do. I started to beleive i had a chance of winning my division.

The third person I went against was a 2nd dan (from memory) that is quite competitive in interstate competitions in Australia. I knew he would be the hardest opponent I had to face. He was the guy I spoke to earlier, the one I reassured that I had no chance of threatening him in this round. We bowed on and started the round. It was hard, harder than the last, and I came closer to vomiting. But there was something about my body that I hadn't felt before. As he attacked me, I slopped off him like a limp, dead, slimy fish. I wasn't doing well, but I was making him work to get me. I would have been amazed that I had gotten this far at all if i wasn't using all my concentration to stay standing and keep the contents of my stomach to myself. I think I got a Yuko for a dirty but acknowledgeable throw on him, he had a Wazari on me for a better one. I started to run out of breath. We went into groundwork. I balled up in the turtle position, trying to buy myself some time and oxygen. I very nearly puked onto the mat (which incidentally results in a disqualification). He took advantage of my distraction, and pried my left arm behind my back with his right arm. He was going to turn me over and submit me on the ground.

It is going to be hard for me to try and explain what happened next, but I will do my best. In that moment, I recognized what was happening to me. He had a strong position on me, and he was about 1 second away from winning the round from it. I was Schrodinger's hungover cat, locked in a box with him. I peered at the dynamite (or acid, depending on which version you use) and knew one of two things would happen. Either the technique would succeed and I would lose, or it wouldn't and I would continue to get thrashed. There were only two possibilities, no more. All other probabilities had been eliminated apart from this binary fork in the road. And so, I existed in two states at once. I had already lost the match right there and then, and I had also lost it later by somehow escaping and being beaten later. I had no control over what was happening. I peered at the dynamite/acid, and one idea went through my mind. One probability would eventuate once this idea was acted on and observed by everyone watching. I acted on my idea and let it flow through my body.

I suicided my balance into cooperation with the direction of his force, and rotated around and behind his grip. Continuing the movement, I rolled through him, got him into Kesa Gatame with a double arm grip and held him out. I do not know this technique and I have never seen it done before. I watched myself do this in the third person. I had no control over it, it wasn't my movement. It was something external to me, happening to someone else. It was as if i had cast a die, with only two faces, and all I could do was watch and wait for the result. The result was that a complete stranger beat my opponent and won the round and the division. Its one of the weirdest things I have ever felt.

I fought 5 rounds that day and won 4 of them. I am not really sure what happened or why; but i think alcohol must have something to do with it. Since then, i have been experimenting with alcohol to see how it affects my judo. The results are hard to replicate, but it does work. At a later competition, I won by doing the most complicated and otiose newaza turnover into san kaku I have ever done, And i think i did it because I took care to drink the same amount I did during the first competition.

A few days ago I drank maybe 3.5 litres of beer, slept 5 hours, and then went to training. I had a 6 minute round against an 100Kgs player from the Israeli national team. In that interval, he threw me once. I unbalanced him several times and was moving in a way unlike normal judo. I moved with him, I felt his balance. Afterwards, the coaches from the Israeli team came up to me, wanted to know my name, where i trained. They told me my style was unusual.

At the beginning of the year me and my sister went to some temples in Kyoto. There, you can buy fortunes from paper vending machines. If you get a good one, you keep it, if you get a bad one, you tie it to a tree. It was snowing heavily, we were standing near the temples and reading our futures from small paper slips. Mine had several things writtten on it. Amongst them was this.

"You will win, but you will be thought ill of" and

"Study hard. Destroy your weak mind"

I didn't tie my fortune to the tree.

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.