First few days at Tokai.

I caught the train from Shinjuku, and rode to my uni's stop. It's called "Front of Tokai University Station". That was the first sign i got that my uni might be much more prestigious than i thought. Evidently my host Uni is a bit of a thing if train stations are named after it. UQ doesnt have anything like that. Anyway, i was carrying maybe 25 kg's of luggage, stumbling up the hill to get to my dormitory. I was following the map i was given to get to my campus. The first thing, the very first thing i found when i got to the border of the campus was this billboard.

Welcome to the mouth of the rabbit hole

I can't read Japanese well enough to tell you whats going on in this poster, but i think i can read "men's judo department" and "All Japan Student Judo".... something something. Yeah, this is the place i was coming to alright. I went up to the international affairs building, and attempted to have a conversation with the head organizer for my exchange program. I think i got the gist maybe (...?) of what we spoke about. We sorted out some peripheral things, and then i dumped my stuff into the dormitory. I got shown the ropes. There are a lot of bewildering rules; such as organising rubbish into burnable bins, aluminium bins, PET bottle bins, or organic bins, wearing sandals inside, and you have to notify everyone when you go in and out by turning a tile with your name on it around on a billboard put aside for that purpose. I got my stuff sorted and went to the south gate; i had walked  past it before and seen traffic wardens directing motorists and students around. I leant on the counter, and asked the attendant as best as i could;

"excuse me, how do you go to the judo classroom?"

"oh, you mean the institute for the way of war?"

....eep.

The front gate to the Budokan

I went in and had a look. At the time the womens' club was training. Ther would have to have been at least 100 women on the mat. Just off the mat, there were physiotherapists and other people attending to player's injuries and questions. I could see that there were some Norwegian male players watching off to the side a bit, they looked tough; cauliflower ears, no knecks. All of the women, their movements looked pristine. You could just about smell the years of bitter training and frustration on them. In the start of the training, I don't think i saw a single student do a drop seoi nage in more than .5 of a second. I watched this for a while, trying to figure out who was responsible for running all this. Everyone was wearing black belts; so it wasn't really easy to identify who was the teacher. Maybe there wasn't a teacher at all. The Mat wobbled like a water bed, it had been sprung really well.

Some moved so fluidly, so easily i stuggled to beleive that i had spent time learning the same sport they had. It just looked too effortless to be anything i had ever seen before. I was starting to creep out, why had i come here, to this place, to try and train in this building? I am going to die.

And then a moth flew onto the mat.

The players all freaked out, and ran away from it. No one wanted to be within 5 metres of the thing, and as it was flying around erratically, so too was everyone on the mat frantically trying to avoid it. It was almost like a Monty Python skit or something; watching people switch from complete hardarses to being frightened of an insect in so quick a timeframe. If i wasnt so stressed out from it all i would have laughed at the slapstick.

But this comforted me quite a lot. They may be unbelievably skilled, they may have spent more time on Judo than you ever could, but remember that they are still human; they still feel fear, just as you do. No matter how good it all looks, don't forget that they still are and always were; people.

I saw some guy looking at this during training, so it has some significance, but i don't know what.

All the olympic players that had trained at this club.

I asked someone when the men's classes were on, and found out it was the next day. I watched that class too. The training looks completely gruelling; 1/2 hour warm up, 2 hours of randoori. Every weekday. I tried asking someone, if it would be cool if i tried out participating. The language barrier was too far between us; i got an explanation why it wasn't convenient at this time. I found out later that a major comp was on in Saitama in the weekend, and that their training was focusing on that date. I asked...

"can i come on another appointment?"

..And the guy i spoke to seemed to say yes. Sweet! I am going to get the beating of my life. Everyone in this club was chosen because they performed well in their highschool days, or elsewhere. I just showed up and asked if i could come on. So i've heard that when going about entering such a judo club; if you do it the wrong way, it will create a lot of animosity for the students that worked hard to get there. I am basically going to be target practice on my first training, which i think is Monday at 5pm. Ah well; i said i wanted to train at Tokai; i want to find out if i meant it.

They have ropes and tires lying around the side for the use of training. Everyone looked completely ripped.

No idea whats going on in this poster, but im pretty sure it must have been for the comp in Saitama.

A film clip proposition just for the funzies

Just for the fun of it, i wanna write a film clip for this song. I wanna see if i could encapsulate the feeling you get when you hit "the zone" so to speak. Its about one of the few times in my life where i have done Judo. So please, listen to this song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfzWpp0hMc

Follow its path, notice how its changes and where it leads, and then read this. I want to attempt to show what it feels like.

Ok, so the scene, is; two guys walk up to each other, facing each other from the other side of a judo ring. They bow and the music hits. the camera is all focused on one player, so it will come in and out of their vision depending on what the intended vibe is. (2nd person, 1st person sort of shots.)

(start-1.07)
Survival. The other player is good, and for each attack that the protagonist sends, he gets 6 back. Our guy is doing all he can to remain standing. Imagine trying to stand in a moving train that doesn't want you to stand. The camera angle dips sideways to get this across.

(1.07-2.01)
Our guy has survived for long enough to take stock of what is actually going on; and is starting to strategize. In his mind he can visualize at least 8 judo attacks that his opponent has used. Each appear before his vision (in 1st person) as a spinning model performing the throw on him, before minimizing like a computer window into the corner of the screen. Each throw has its own allocated color, represented by a trail on the mat in a broad dotted line that curves across the floor. As there are many throws, there are many of these lines, all of which are starting to tangle into a confusing mess. They are all moving, squirming as if alive. Think of looking at a bath full of severed octopus tentacles, that's the kind of movement I'm looking for. And they all move in curved lines, like rust shavings on a bar magnet, from the other guys hands to our guy.

(2.01- 2.22)
And the thing is, our guy's mental projection of all these lines, is happening in real time. Meanwhile, his opponent is still throwing attacks at him.By noticing all of this, our guy is wasting time. So now, he is dodging both the other guy, and all the squirming lines on the floor. imagine that game "fly" (the game where you jump over the shoes) if at the same time people were trying to tackle you.

(2.22- 2.39)
Out comes the drop Seoi nage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJQeVvR3e_Y&t=0m37s

This fries our guys mental simulation; there are red flashing warning signs everywhere; so many that you can't really see what is going on. He clicks through most of them; and behind it is the other guy doing that throw on our guy. He only just steps off it and gets around the throw, out of immediate danger, but is clearly rattled.

(2.39 - 3.15)
Again; survival. all the lines are squirming around the protagonist, and he's having to duck and weave around warning signs of the last throw thrown at him. The Seoi nage is represented by a small black hole that the other guy can pull out and suck him into at any time. He keeps doing it; keeps summoning this miniature black hole that our guy cannot block but can only surf around the gravity of. Each time he does this he gets nearer and nearer to it, but doesn't get sucked in, although its clear it's taking all of his effort to avoid it.

(3.15- 3.56)
There seems to be an emerging pattern in all the mess of other throws lines on the floor, and the black holes that the other guy keeps throwing. Think of the intense timing obstacles in some of the harder levels of Mario. Our guy, he's watching the floor, watching the other guy, and maps out his moment and his attack. he goes in for Ko uchi gari,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9DnkH-2tGg&t=0m6s….

(3.56- 4.29)
…and gets countered with De ashi harai.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVCbY0ZkLU&t=0m7s

The camera is in first person, and our guy understands clearly he has lost. He mistimed his moment, or didn't do something right, and is now spinning vertically in the middle of the air in slow motion. He seems calm; knowing it is all over; he is resigned to lose. All the warning signs and spaghetti lines disappear, and whatever system was running them crashes, to be replaced by the blue screen of death. The system shudders, flickers out and reboots into DOS. But then suddenly, from the cameras point of view, the camera turns away from being pointed directly at the ceiling and starts to rotate away from the axis of the throw. In green screen DOS, lines start measuring the angle, and run down to our guys left foot, which stamps down and counters with this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLcaT8HATRA&t=0m4s

(4.29- 4.58.)
Our guy has landed on top of the other guy, and moves into ground work. This shouldn't be possible from the other guys attack; the other guy is surprised and was caught off guard. The camera cuts to the pair standing again, and our guy is moving fast, fluidly, without any of the spaghetti lines or black holes.  The past operating system that ran them fried, its all green screen and crappy pixels now. To each one attack the other guy sends, our guy gives 4 or 5 back.

(4.58- 5.25)
Our guy is too high off adrenaline to know his own name. The camera focuses on the pair fighting, in black and white silhouettes, like sin city. Our guy is kinda crouched and looks a bit like a werewolf; elongated face, weird 45 degree upward attacks from the ground, which the other guy is desperately fending off. They spin around each other, in profile, and keep doing this.

(5.25 - 5.52)
Our guy has come down from the adrenaline enough to realize what is going on. He can see the whites of his opponents eyes. His face is still kinda too long to be human (think Professor Lupin from Harry Potter transitioning under the moon, but this time the other way around, transitioning back into a human). He's got the advantage and he knows it. He's pushing his opponent into a mental corner.

(5.52- end)
Times up. There's 15 seconds left on the clock. On the edge of each ring there is a digital clock; each completely blocking off that side. The ring is essentially a closed off box. Every second that ticks down, the digital panels that change to represent a different number don't disappear, but drop to the ground and shatter like glass. There is black glass spraying everywhere from the ends of each ring. Our guy knows that if he is to win this, he must do it now. He shapes a Koshi garuma,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJsQrgMhgk4&t=0m4s

which the other guy moves to avoid. That moment freezes for about 3 seconds; you can see immobile spraying black broken glass, towering clocks, and both the the players bodies frozen into the positions thew were in. This is it; this is Eminems single shot; there wont be another. Our guy gets a 15 symbol combo of buttons moving underneath the bottom edge of the screen, (think like nailing a combo move in the practice mode in Tekken, or the various buttons you have to step on in Dance Dance Revolution) nails each button, and throws the other for O soto gari,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqoWM0dhYA&t=0m23s

...and falls through the floor with him. the final shot is of the broken glass falling down toward the camera, like the bullets in that scene from the matrix where Neo is shooting into the building with the mini gun.