The New Wakizashi [Short Sword] with My Old Cutter

Sheathed...

Unsheathed...

The hamon upclose...

試斬大小

Gosoke coerced me into buying a wakizashi this month, so I told him that it had to meet certain standards. If I'm going to buy one, then damn it, I want one that can cut! He agreed and told Oka-san (his sword appraiser way the hell out in Shiga prefecture) to send him a bunch of waks that have potential as cutters. Gosoke emailed me earlier this week with the good news. "Twenty man (200,000 yen) and it's yours!" he said. I swear I could hear him smiling through the phone. He had a couple on hand to show me when I stopped by Suimokai Hombu on Thursday afternoon. One was an incredibly beautiful and long koto (lit. "old sword") wak that weighed next to nothing. The next one he showed me was almost just as nice aesthetically, but was a bit shorter and was a considerably heavier "mumei" ("no name") from the shinto ("new sword") period... at least that's what he thought.

Basically, any good sword expert will tell you that one major difference between koto (old) and shinto (new) period swords is the quality and weight of the steel. For some reason, the magical sword-making skills that are now only talked about in some mythical sense (and are a part of Japanese folklore) suddenly vanished around the 15th or 16th century. All swords made after this mysterious period are known as (see above) "shinto," due to their distinctly different features. While many swordsmiths in the shinto and shinshinto ("new new sword" ... yeah, I know, just bare with me) periods still emulated the koto smiths to the best of their abilities, even masterpieces from these periods paled in comparison to fine koto blades.

Ergo, the lack of information in addition to the weight difference between the koto wakizashi and the unknown wakizashi led us to believe that the unknown wak was a shinto blade. I bought our mysterious friend, the heavy shinto blade since more weight means easier cutting!

links to come

Last night was Takadanobaba's last cutting practice. It was raining like crazy last night, so not a lot of people showed up. There's usually some God-awful number of people at Baba (around 20 or so), which means two things: one, there are a ton of rolls that need to be carried over from Saka's place to the practice area, and two, since there tend to be a lot of beginners cutting for the first or second time, the wait can be as long as an hour before your turn comes. Only ten people showed up, so we got about 12 rolls each (three times the usual number). I did some tricky stuff towards the end of practice that should be linked up as soon as the video clips get posted on Saka's blog.

The down side to having fewer people is the clean up. Set up starts at about 5pm (two hours before the scheduled practice), and yesterday was no picnic because of the rain. Clean up takes about an hour with ten people, but by the time we started cleaning up last night (about 10:30) there were only six people left! I got home at midnight....

As the new year approaches, a lot of changes are being made within the organization. This comes as no surprise, but the fact that changes are made so frequently really upsets me. As soon as I get my schedule figured out, suddenly everything goes to shit and I'm back at square one. Up until this month, cutting practices were held on Saturday afternoon at Hombu, but as of the new year they'll be held on Sunday morning. While this isn't exactly inconvenient for me, the fact that I have to rework my schedule again is a pain in the ass. Takadanobaba will stop having cutting practice in March too, and apparently the kata are going to change as well. Trying to contend with all the changes that are made really takes the focus away from training (for me at least). I'd rather show up to train than have to worry about where and how I'm going to train a month from now.

Saturday afternoon Kei and I went to her family's home to have a holiday lunch. True to the multicultural gathering of people (umm... that would be... just me?), the meal was not without it's variety of food. We started the meal with a lintel/miso soup that was made by Kei's sister, chased it with lasagna, moved on to roast chicken (for which, by the way, I had to give instructions on how to cut) and topped it all off with sushi. Ahh, Japan at Christmas. This is also the first Christmas for Kei's family with their two Shitsu-Chihuahua mixed breed ankle-biters, Maron and Ayame! Very cute and very spoiled.

Perfect Timing

I managed to not be sick anymore just in time for... Hombu dojo to close for the year. Hooray.

The up side is that I've gotten my fair share of ass whipping from sensei these past few days that I've been well enough to actually show up to train. Tonight he made me stand absolutely still so that he could show the class how to properly cut shomen and yokomen. The catch is that he was holding a tanto. Most of the room went dead silent as he repeatedly clocked me in the head and neck, but when it was clear that I was perfectly fine (thank god he's a professional) after this ritual flogging/right-of-passage, the class erupted with laughter after he commented on the pleasant sound my head makes when whacked with a wooden stick. Nothin' says lovin' like a good bludgeoning.

Tough Decision

I've entered my fourth week of illness. I've decided that I'm going to take it easy until the end of the year. I'm only going to do a few more days of aikido, and maybe only one or two more days of iai before the year is finally out. Why? Because I think my body is trying to tell me to take it easy. I'm back on antibiotics, so we'll see how that goes. I should be 100% by next week. Someone even suggested that I ask Santa for an immune system. Somehow I don't think he'd follow through though.

Congratulations Ren and Hiroko!

Ren and Hiroko had a baby girl this afternoon a little before 4pm Tokyo time. Apparently mom and baby are doing well, and the name they finally settled on is .... drum roll... Chikage!

Yep... Still Sick

The good news is that I can feel that tingling sensation that comes with taking strong antibiotics. About 30 minutes after taking my pills I'm totally high. There's nothing worse than a sinus infection, but at least I know I'm (finally) on the path to recovery. Today is the two week marker. I haven't been sick this long since I was in grade school.

I haven't done any serious training in so long that feel like I'm leading a completely different life. During one of my healthier days last Friday, M. sensei asked me where the heck I'd been. When I told him that I had had a bad cold, he said that it's good to have me back in the dojo. He totally jinxed me. By Sunday morning, I was so mad I was relapsing that I actually forced myself out of bed to go to Sunday morning iai in Shinjuku. I cut for an hour or so with The Mugai-Tencho and his gang (even managed to pull off a pseudo mizuguruma) and by the time I got home I was completely knocked out. Fever of 101, not to mention a virtual rainbow of colors in my snot. My tissues looked like something that could have inspired Pollock to paint. Took Monday and Tuesday off, loaded up on antibiotics, and somehow managed to teach three classes today.

Sometimes catching a cold is just your body's way of telling you to slow down. If that's true though, then my body is pathetic. I get sick on average once every two months. This shit has got to stop.

Sick... still

Two Wednesdays ago I caught a cold that kept me out of commission for about two or three days. It wasn't anything too terrible (I could still work), but was bad enough for me to stay away from the dojo. Last Sunday I started feeling worse, but by Monday morning I was well enough to go to school again. I stayed away from the dojo until this past weekend and managed to get in a night of aikido and a morning of iai before plummeting back into the abyss. When I got home yesterday afternoon, I had a fever of 100.5 and was so achy that I couldn't get into a comfortable position to sleep. I ended up taking the day off work to see the doctor, and just as I suspected, my light cold had turned into a sinus infection. Thankfully, neighborhood doctors are much cheaper than hospitals in Tokyo, so I loaded up on antibiotics and passed out on the couch.

I'm not a hypochondriac, but I DO get sick more than I deserve. On average, I figure that I get two or three mild colds a year plus one or two major illnesses that keep me in bed. At least once every two months or so I end up catching whatever is going around at the time. Maybe I don't need a people doctor. Next time I'll go to a horse doctor. At least it will be quick and hopefully painless!