Day 0: Food Loading
When we were introduced to Jukendo I wondered if it was a cunning
plan by a dastardly Frenchman to get revenge for the slurs I have spread
about the Smelly French over the years.
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| Bacon! This is awesome! |
I may have also contemplated that I had inadvertently
invited the Japanese military to line up and have a bit of stabby
practice on my bloated carcase.
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| Not sure if this is her War Face |
We have been allowed to join a 3 day Jukendo seminar
in Chiba. Much of the work organising our attendance was performed by
Baptiste and I know he is busy organising the Kendo World Championships
at the moment so for him to take time out for us is pretty good proof
that I am not paranoid.
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| That can't be a warface |
Chiba is a little ways from Nagoya so we get to have
another train picnic which is great. Katsuura is right out on the beach
on a slower train but we had the Japanese version of Skymall magazine to
peruse.
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| My brother had
this robot when we were young. I was always jealous. Now I have moved
on in my life and need not these trappings for my happiness. Plus I
can't read the order form. |
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| Tired of pesky birds pooping on your laundry? Get a Bird Kill Neo! She should have been flipping the bird though. |
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| Hubby stressing you out yelling at the sports on tele? Solve it. |
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| Then get a rubber band facelift and find a better man! |
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| I was so absorbed I missed The Mikado (Ow, that is bad) |
3 days of Jukendo means we will need food. Giant pork schnitzel is the way to do this.
The
owner of the restaurant is a falconer. If these are the pigs his bird
catches I am worried about the size of the birds. Baptiste's car is not
pink though so it should still be there afterwards.
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| He wasn't wearing one of his many pink shirts either. I think I am onto something here... |
We weren't the only people celebrating at the
restaurant. A group of young guys were there excited because one of them
had just graded in Kendo and also passed his first exam for the police
force.
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| The makings of a small army |
If he passes the next couple of exams he
will have a job for life playing kendo in the police force. It is a
career choice and the police are some of the strongest kendoka around.
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| A bird on my shirt may not have been a tactically safe choice |
In a similar way the military are the strongest
Jukendo students around. Tomorrow we will meet a lot of them. When Japan
doesn't have need of them cleaning up after natural disasters I believe
they train all day every day.
Day 1: Jukendo
We got dressed up and ready to find dance partners. When they arrived
it was a little intimidating. Wave upon wave of old guys with happy
expressions greeting each other enthusiastically. That many guys that
know each other that well have been doing things together a long time.
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| New Clothes!
Heavy heavy clothes. They weighed a lot more at the end of training due
to increased Pocari Sweat metabolic byproducts |
Most of them had 7's or 8's on their sleeve. I used
to think this was some kind of military insignia, like their unit number
or something. Unlike Kendo or Naginata where there is no visible symbol
of rank Jukendo uses numbers on their shoulder, so this is their rank
in Jukendo. The numbers of stripes is the honours side of the grading
system. Very few of them had less than three bars and a lot had 4.
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| And as a bonus
two of the sensei we have trained with under Terada sensei came along
as well. Presumably to act as fifth columnists and report back. |
As mentioned previously 8th dan hanshi (an 8 with 4
bars) is such a stupidly high rank that it doesn't really figure in my
scale of thinking. In the past I occasionally got a chance to train in a
dojo which has one of these guys way up the other end from me.
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| New armour means we both had that distinctive Bouncer on roids that can't stand with straight arms look. I doubt this will catch on. |
When there are loads of them wandering around in the
morning things get a little worrying. When the rest of the dance
partners arrive in army jeeps and fatigues, well let's just say anxiety
levels go up a bit.
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| I think when there was no opportunity for camouflaged parking they went for the No cover to the Perimeter approach |
Then you notice the boys in green mostly have 5's and 6's on their arm and you realise
they are here to
receive training things seem to have escalated way too quickly.
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| The smile on the receiving guys face does not bode well for the young strong guy.... |
They do not give out zeroes so we didn't
have a badge. This will have to be rectified. Train hard, get grading.
Or I guess I could make us badges with zeroes.
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| And they keep smiling when they poke you with their sticks |
We spent most of the day training with Baptiste and a
lovely Japanese Lady. And constant interruptions from smiling guys with
large numbers on their shoulders. Most of them appear to find the idea
of a tubby Gaijin doing Jukendo sort of sweet and amusing in a mascot
type of way. So sweet and amusing that it was worth poking him with a
stick a few times. Kind of like those kids in Stand By Me
"Hey a body, that's fascinating, let's poke it with a stick".
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| Drinks Corner needed Pocari Sweat restocking |
The idea of a Lady Gaijin joining in and training
hard is so damn cool that Ewa got lots of attention. I think there have
only been a couple of Lady Gaijin willing to join in and do it properly
over the years.
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| 5.5m above sea level? pffft I am used to way scarier. |
Military guys, in my experience, tend towards the
train hard, drink hard mentality
in a way which I suspect only the most dedicated IT guy with years of
experience can keep up. Fortunately I am one of those guys and at the
evening welcome party I managed to keep up with the 4 styles of beverage
which every thought I should try repeatadly.
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| I think I
liked this one and I took a photo so I could find it again. Alternately
the volume of beverages and toasts made my photography skills ambiguous. |
We are a great team, between us we have almost all the skills needed to cover most social situations.
Day 2: Tankendo
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| Yesterday was fun, let's do it again |
I would like to claim that I was in a zen state;
observing, but not caring as the sheet of cloud rolled in, displaying
control on the edge of chaos the falcon drifted in the thermals and the
sparrows bounced around like ADHD kids without their ritalin.
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| Okay, now we know what it looks like, let's copy that |
This would be a lie though, I was just knackered. Day 1 of the seminar was Jukendo (bayonet mounted on a rifle).
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| No fear in his eyes. I wonder if he is bluffing and is petrified |
Day 2 was tankendo (bayonet in hand). We have done
little tankendo and it happens to be the lovely Japanese ladies
specialty and Baptistes favourite as well. As we have done little we
haven't grown the leetle teeny muscles that are needed for the fine
control. That means I usually engage every other muscle group to try and
do things proper.
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| Okay nope,
he's not bluffing and not scared. At least this one didn't make Baptiste
laugh, nothing more embarrassing than a Frenchman laughing at your
martial prowess... |
Linguistic Skills: Engaging every Opportunity to learn
Maru means gently, softly, relaxed.
Maru, maru, maru means gently, softly, relaxed - you absolute idiot.
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| Two pools of Relaxed Tranquillity |
When I was learning naginata I spent about 6 months where the only correction I got was "relax".
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| admittedly Fast moving Pools of Tranquillity |
It got to a point where I was going to make a little
head mounted illuminated sign so that sensei could just push a button
and have his advice relayed to me visually rather than lose his voice.
Rating: 8/10 (because I will hear it again and again)
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| Two pools of "wow we are dead" |
Tankendo kata has elbow and arm locks followed by a
stab using the hip to force the bayonet in. We like these. Unfortunately
I was told that due to the nature of judges positioning in shiai they
are not used as much in competitive fighting.
Often
only one judge will be able to see all the technical aspects of the
attack and you need two flags to score a point. That made us sad.
In
the afternoon the people with energy remaining had shiai competition to
allow those practising judging to have competitions to judge.
I
don't know if it was because it wasn't real competition but the guys
were doing the arm locks at full speed in the shiai. I doubt it though. I
suspect it was because if you are fighting and someone grabs you,
immobilises you, has you off balance and under control and makes a clean
stab you don't care if it gets a point or not; you are suddenly
terrified of that guy.
In the evening I spent a long time soaking my feet (and the rest of me) in the bath. I think it has magical healing water.
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| Blue pool of tranquillity |
Only one more day, we can do it!
Day 3: Kata
One of my favourite things to do is to be the best at something.
To be the best at something you just have to measure yourself against your peers on an applicable set of criteria.
Over the years I have gotten quite creative in defining the criteria for measuring
The Best and defining exactly who my
Peers are.
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| I like this
kata, makiotoshi (spiralling entrapment of the other weapon) with a
straight weapon at high speed, when it works it is great. When it
doesn't you try harder next time. |
The past few days seminar has been an Instructors
Seminar. Lots of Super Senior Types teaching Insanely Good Guys how to
be a teacher. Obviously neither group are my peers.
Baptiste is French, so he can't be my peer. Ewa is a Lady, so she can't be my peer.
Therefore by a process of elimination I was the best person there. Excellent.
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| One of our sensei from home in Nagoya, he has an 8 on his shoulder and can't be my peer for these purposes. |
Today we focussed on the kata. Jukendo has many kata;
gun vs gun, bayonet vs bayonet, bayonet vs gun and so on. A book was
being studied which has even more kata which have apparently been lost
over the years including unarmed against a gun kata.
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| Sure he has no number on his shoulder but that, oddly enough, does not qualify him to be my peer either. |
The interesting thing about the kata is that each
technique is shown winning and losing. For example in the first kata of
gun vs gun the attacker runs in and stabs the other guy as soon as he
moves.
4 kata later the same thing happens but the guy that died the first time uses a counter technique to win.
Sign Review: Train Station Smoking Room
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| Those damn kids with Hip and their Hop |
Rating: 9/10 (I hate it when the kiddy smokers are all running around screaming)
In the kata of bayonet vs gun half the time the bayonet wins and half the time the gun does.
I
like this as it feels like a rounded set of kata to me, you learn the
important principles of attacking and countering, rather than just one
side always winning for the same reason.
Unfortunately the person
that dies is always the same side and for some reason Ewa and Terada
sensei both agree I should be the guy that dies normally.
It was no different here with the senior chaps (no doubt egged on by Baptiste) deciding I ought to die.
I guess when you are the best (by my definition) people get jealous and want to see you suffer.
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| Ewa's
favourite zanshin (preparedness after a strike). Sensei explained that
if she thrusts too hard and fast and gets me in the throat she should
most definitely say sorry to me. And next time I will move quicker. |
Interestingly Jukendo has kata of sword versus gun.
And again half the time the sword wins. I am not aware of any other
mixed weapon kata involving a sword that allows the sword to win
occasionally.
These Jukendo guys are nice to the poor sword guys.
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| Over the arm to the heart |
We practiced the kata until the lunchbreak when the
senior sensei announced something which sounded to me along the lines of
"These Gaijin, Present them to me that I may judge them"
And so we did the kata in front of all the senior instructors and teachers to be.
There was no stress involved in this at all.
Maru all the way.
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| Under the arm to the heart. Ewa always knows the way to my heart. |
I am lead to believe that Jukendo is looked down on by a lot of other martial arts because it is
Too Violent and Aggressive.
Certainly if you are an idiot (like me) and don't tie your armour
correctly you can get hurt but that requires a special skill (being an
idiot
and looking competent) which I find many people lack.
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| And sometimes I say stupid shit and a poke to the throat is required (or a glass of water if I have been drinking too much) |
Many people can be an idiot and many people can be
competent, the art of combining the two seems to elude most however.
This is probably why I am also told Jukendo has fewer injuries than most
other full contact martial arts.
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| What the kata should actually look like |
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| I think he might be about to say Sorry |
If this looking down on Jukendo is true all I can say
is it doesn't seem to affect the Jukendoka. As one person commented to
me
"It's not like <another martial art> where everyone is
pretending to be a warrior, these guys are military, they are warriors
and don't need no steenkin pretense (they do need badges though)"
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| New kata
involves striking to the wrist. I get the feeling it was "Hey the wrist
is a target, why don't we have a kata for that?" "Oh we don't? bugger,
here's one in an old book, let's do that" "Cool, let's go" |
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| You only get one Sorry a day though. |
All in all Jukendo and, to a lesser degree, tankendo feel immensely practical focussed to me.
We
were thinking of taking up Kyudo at one point but then saw just how
much bowing and so on is involved and the bit we considered important
(hitting the target) was kind of not that relevant.
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| If you do it like this it really smarts for the other guy |
Obviously with Naginata etc we do a lot of the
etiquette stuff and I certainly don't have a problem with it, but it
isn't my favourite part.
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| Watch I'll show you |
In Jukendo there are important things; 40% of power
is the strike, 60% is removing the bayonet from the dead dude, this is
important!
Then there are slightly less important aspects; the
angle of the gun when you are walking around is discussed occasionally
but if you aren't getting the 40/60 ratio correct they seem to hold off
on correcting "How to hold a gun when you aren't fighting" for the time
being.
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| I have no need of these words of apology, he's still standing isn't he? |
In light of this aspect of Jukendo it probably
shouldn't be a surprise that a martial art with a seriously long history
(started with the Prussians at least) has decided they need a new kata,
it was announced, demonstrated and then everyone was told they could
pretty much take it or leave as they liked. It could be a language
skills thing (I still have none) but no one looked surprised at what
would be quite weird for anything I have experienced before.
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| I like the slight look of dismay, "I hope he isn't going to demonstrate that bit on me" |
A few people seemed vaguely interested in the new kata, a few wandered off to do something else.
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| Baptiste likes being the underdog in a fight, he's French, He's used to it. |
We find this refreshing and a nice change of pace. So I think we will stick with this as a new Activity with Hats.
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| The smiley people? Don't be fooled! |
