zero tolerance

All of my life I have been a person who is naturally against alcohol. Not really because of any specific thing, it just seemed like people who drank alcohol tended to not get much else done in their lives... This was my teenage, Black-and-white view on the world (It would change, of course, as I grew older)

And being drunk seemed like a real uninteresting experience to me (Why would anyone choose to throw up and have splitting headaches?).

Recently, though, I have come to the conclusion that I am afraid of alcohol. And that wasn't acceptable to me.

So, I have taken to drinking a beer with the guys next door when we watch movies or go to the ramen shop down the street.

One beer every two weeks or so.

But recently, I thought about having a beer at night, at home, by myself.

Maia suggested that I shouldn't have beers unless I'm with the guys. And she seemed a little worried when she said it...

So a couple of nights ago I'm standing at the convinience store and I'm looking at the beers and thinking "Gee, I really kinda want a beer." Not with the guys... just me. I was going to go home at watch a movie and drink a beer and just exist...

That was it.

I'm just too compulsive a personality. Its too easy for me to slip into this pattern... No.

Alcohol just isn't right for me. It's just not. Okay, so maybe I'm being afraid... but standing at the convinience store and thinking about a beer for no reason at all except to have a beer... yes, I realized right there and then that I could throw my life away with that one beer.

Dramatic? Melodramatic? Maybe... but really, should I risk it? I can't control my weight yet. It took 15 years to control martial arts. I just recently realized just how addicted to Television I was... I'm a person who falls for these traps. It's why I never even so much as took a puff off of a cigarette; I have always known, deep in my heart, that I'll fall for it.

I don't know, I need to make a call on this one, and I'm thinking the call I made at 12 years of age just wasn't a bad one (Even if it was built on an underwise thought process).

Japan has a zero tolerance policy on drinking and driving. Something this culture respects to an almost militant degree (It's the quickest way for me to get out of drinking at enkai parties; tell them I'm driving and not a drop gets near you. They even watch to make sure you don't get anything but tea). Maybe zero tolerance, which is what I have lived on all of my life, isn't such a bad policy.

Okay, so perhaps people who drink are not all losers (I figured that one out a long time ago), but I just have this feeling that should I start drinking, I would be a loser... and I simply don't have time for that.

Too much to do.

I'm not afraid of alcohol, I'm afraid of me and alcohol. Is that an acceptable fear, or do I have to face it?

And....

I am now a Black Belt (Shodan for those of you who are nitpicky).

Anyway, I'll post more later, but for now, I'm going to go get dinner! :D

Don't worry, you are only testing for Black belt... no one expects you to hit the target

So here we are, almost at a real turning point in my life.


See, on Sunday I test for my black belt in Kyudo. I thought it was my halfway to black belt, but no, that's called something else... we adults, we don't test for red, green, blue, purple... whatever, no no, we simply test for Black and then you go on from there... Had I been in High School I would have been passing through all those other belts...

I have struggled with this all of my life... I would get to a pretty high belt in something, then quit before I could make anything of it...

So now we are actually about to do it... and do it right. You can't get much more authentic than testing for a black belt in Japan...

Anyway, I digress. Sunday I drive to Mito (The capital) and take my test.

It's a two parter, a practical and a written test.

"You can write the answers in English" says Sensei, "But they will ask you the questions in Japanese"

Nice.

So, now we prep to do the test, and for the first time I'm actually doing the complete competition procedure (And I thought the 8-step firing procedure was tough... step with your left foot, step with your right at a 45 degree angle, bow to the judges, step to the Waiting line, kneel, bow to the target, stand, move to the firing line, kneel, turn, kneel, put the bow in front of you, pivot the bow... no, take the string at no more than 10 centimeters from the bottom of the bow, load the bow, turn the other arrow counter... now wait....

That hurts... I'm sitting in what's called "Kiza", this is like Seiza (The traditional Japanese sitting posture of "kill your toes", but instead of having your feet flat on the floor, you are sitting upright on your toes (As in kneeling more like how westerners are kneeling). You can't move so much as a muscle as the other archers go through the firing procedure... approximately 3 or four minutes. If you think that's nothing, you should try it... it HURTS.

Now, and this is the part that kills me every time, you must go to the next "wait-point" when the person 3 archers before you fires... not 2 archers, not the guy in front of you, no... the timing must be perfect...

Man... suddenly I'm forgetting everything... Worse, I forgot to do the stepping procedure, a "day one" thing that you learn before you even learn to not wear rings on your fingers (Ha... that is a brilliant thing to learn)... I'm getting all kinds of tangled up in the procedure, Sensei is yelling at me... boy I'm pretty down.

Then Mr. Graves says "Good. You'll do fine" and I feel the weight of 10 tons lift off my shoulders...

Here's an interesting thing to note:

I have been at the Dojo for 19 months now (78 weeks, 150 or so classes), I have been to class an average of 4 hours a night twice a week (I have been less times and more times, but on average it was twice a week), for a total of some 600 hours of practice. I fire at the makiwara (Practice target placed about a meter and a half from the archer) approximately 5 times a night, or about 450 pulls. I had one seminar where I shot at the Mato (Real target) probably 16 times (It seems it was four sets of four arrows). The target was at short distance, about 10 meters or so.

After all this time, last Tuesday was the first time I actually fired at the target at 28 meters. My first arrow went very, very wide, hitting the burm about a meter to the left and 2 meters too high... the second... HIT!

Everyone stops and looks at me with shock...

"Was that a hit?" Asks Mr. Middle. The targets are paper, and they make a very distinct "snap!" when the target is hit.

"I... think it was" says Mr. Graves...

It was! I hit the target at position "2"...

Of course... I... I um... I was at position "3"...

"Don't worry, you are only testing for Black belt... no one expects you to hit the target."

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much sums up Kyudo, right there.

Now lets see if I can not really mess up on Sunday... and lets see if my toes will stay attached to my feet as I sit on them...

--ShodanMae

A Life Update

So, it occurs to me that I have a lot of little things to report, but nothing really big, so I'll consolidate:

1) Kyudo: This is pretty much eating up all of my time. I am going to class five times a week now... but the test for Shodan (Which I recently discovered is "Black belt" for those of you not accustomed to the Japanese system) next Sunday. I have to answer questions (Luckily I can wrtie the answers in English... but I have to listen to the question in Japanese... I'm not sure that helps much). This is the primary reason I'm not getting anywhere on my major Hiroshima blog post.

2) School: School has started and my new first years are so cute. I have a girl in my second years who is wonderful, but she has a problem staying conscious... (I'm not sure what it is, but it's medical). Last year she passed out once a month or so... but this year she has passed out every day so far... and sometimes she is out for many hours... it's unfair but the teachers are thinking she's going to be remanded to a care facility... Which is a shame, except for this problem she is a perfectly normal little girl (I say little but I had to lift her from the floor a couple of times... Perhaps "Perfectly normal teenage girl" is more appropriate. She doesn't seem so little when you have to lift her up...). This is unfair considering we have a third year boy who has punched a teacher (Not me) and we can't get rid of him (He also fights every boy he gets near and he insults me simply because I'm American... he hates Americans, see...). He stays, she goes. Next time people talk about the wonders of the PTA, I'm going to remember this. It's because of the PTA that we can't ship him out.

3) Drawing: I am getting some drawing done, but because of Kyudo I am a little behind. I am in the middle of an interesting side story for Tamerlane which I think is cool (But don't we all think our work is cool? I mean, who would purposely do uncool work? I guess whether it really is cool or not is debateable) :)

I've started watching the evening news in hopes to get better at my Japanese. Maia is going to help me on a weekly basis with Japanese as well... see, a few weeks ago Sensei looked at me and said "Your Japanese is awful! I would have expected more from you after two years! You are slacking! Get to it!" It stung, but it was really refreshing to hear (Most Japanese people look at you and say "My goodness! You are almost fluent" when you can barely say "Sayonara"), he added, "If you go back to America without speaking Japanese fluently, it will not only be a waste, but you won't be able to keep the language." He is absolutely right. One of my goals while I was here was to become fluent in Japanese. Not so that I could watch Anime without subtitles, but because I firmly believe it is important to be bilingual. Any language... but there is sufficient evidence that says bilingual (Or quadlingual... ahem... DrMal) people are markedly sharper mental-processing-wise, and have a lower risk of Alzheimers.

So, soon DrHeimlich is moving, Good luck to you on that one, my friend! I'd love to say "I wish I was there"... but really... that would be lying... a lot... But at least I have a hell of an excuse :D I wish I was there for the "after-moving-pizza and a movie"!

Also Good luck to Tia for her Job hunting this coming weekend! :D

And.. er... Gads, Mal... what ARE you doing? (Noting nothing on your blog recently, hint hint)

Okay, so... I twisted a muscle in my neck somehow sleeping crooked so I'm going to go to bed, read a little more "Musashi" and go to sleep I do believe!

Free who?

Okay, I need some help on this one...

Why is Tibet special?

Yes, I get that Tibet was invaded in 1950-something and has become part of China by complete force. That sucks, but many places have been invaded since time immemorial and... honestly... we just have to get over it... We can't really return all the lands to their rightful owners, there's simply too many people (Can you image 5 billion people trying to squeeze into Europe? Meanwhile in No-man's-land USA, 50,000 people live... one person for every 100 square miles...)

I get that China is abusing human rights. They need to stop. I have no question about that. That's part of the International Community's domain. And we are working on it (Slowly... China is a rather large monster to be fighting, but we have been and continue to make progress).

Why Tibet? Why disrupt the Olympics? The only time that the world (Or at least the ones who are willing to play nicely) get together in peace? The only world activity that really doesn't involve guns and tanks (biathalon (or is it Triathalon?) notwithstnading :D)

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm angry to see that the Olympic torch, a symbol of peace, getting snuffed out because of one little country which has (rightfully) been wronged.

Is this what our future is all about? Snuffing out peace until everyone is happy? This could be a loooooonnnnng time, then.

The thing that makes me so mad is that people seem to be resigned to the concept that we will always kill each other off, and that we might as well all take a collective sigh and grab a gun and shoot someone, because it's just inevitable...

The world isn't perfect. We all know that. As we grow things will become even more testy, should we really just cancel the Olympics and go back to killing each other like civilized people?

Anyway, I digress... someone tell me what makes Tibet so special as to disrupt peace?

Hanami

So, I am swamped, I admit it... On April 20th I test for Shodan (No, really), and Sensei has me coming to practice 4 times a week... On top of that, I'm doing all the other things that I have been doing for a long time. Also, we went to Hiroshima (Which I'm STILL composing a blog post about that one...)...

But since the Hiroshima blog post isn't done yet (Lots to talk about), I'll show you my Hanami pictures.

See, the Cherry Blossoms are blooming here, and they are stunning... so Blain and I went on yet another Photo Safari... this time to the wilds of Ueno park (Which has a famous Cherry Tree... erm... stand? Forest? whatever, famous trees... :D)

So... until I get my Hiroshima post up, here's some Sakura (Cherry blossoms):

As the wind picked up, the blossoms started to fall like snow:

Of course, the blossoms only kept me entertained for a few moments, then I started to see all the people around me... and... well... Here's mom showing the little one the picture she just took:

I love this one: "Me, in Ueno park... taken by... erm... me.":

There is something surreal about me taking a picture of a person taking a picture of themselves in Ueno park...

Japan's Finest were in force in Ueno park... this is particularly entertaining since I think the crime rate in Ueno park is the worst in Tokyo... one robbery per three months or something like that... and certainly not during Hanami:

RIGHT! I was taking photos of the Sakura! Here we go:

Sakura festival Lanterns... man these are beautiful:

Sometimes you just have that once-in-a-lifetime-shot... this was definitely one of them:

I should make product pictures... It was Hanami, everyone was taking pictures of the flowers... Don't get me wrong, the flowers were cool... but the people were cooler... so I took pictures of the people taking pictures of the flowers. I love this shot:

I have totally had days like this (Note the flash is out on her camera... in broad daylight... I think she's having more trouble than she thinks...):

What was I here for? OH Right! Sakura!:

When I got to the dojo after this, I told them that I had gone to Ueno park for Hanami (Hanami, by the way is "Flower Viewing". It's so popular in Japan that they have a special word for this pasttime), the entire dojo claped and OOOoooooo'ed and Sensei said: "Now you are a real Japanese, you have done Hanami".

I didn't have the heart to say I was watching the watchers almost as much as I was watching the flowers...

---Hana-Me