Japan & Okinawa: 6th International Budosai, Anthropology, Kudo Party;
20.X.2 Summer Shugyo Pt.2
I had been sitting in the London airport for awhile waiting for the check in counter to open. Russia Airlines. When it finally did I made my move. I gave the lady behind the counter my confirmation number and she handed me my tickets: a flight from London to Tokyo via a plane change in Moscow. “Wait a second…” she said immediately after handing me the tickets. “The computer says you already left on a flight this morning…” … I didn’t. “Yeah. It says you’re already in Moscow.” I don’t think that’s true, what with me being here, and here being London… “Yeah. Its no problem, at least the tickets themselves are right.” Good, I said relieved. Looks like for once flying won’t be a huge debacle. “Wait…” Damn. I knew it was too good to be true. “Your tickets aren’t matching either.” What!? “Between the computer and these tickets, it appears you are taking 3 completely different trips at the exact same time.” Does one of those trips involve me going to Tokyo? Because that’s the one I pick. “It’s not that simple.” Of course not…
The poor lady had the misfortune of being the one to check me in, and she couldn’t figure out what was happening. Nash. Nash was happening. I must have stood too close to the computer or something. Soon the women’s coworkers were on the case, but to no avail. Then the supervisor. Then the manager. By the end of it all I was traveling with a pack of Russia Air employees all over the airport trying to solve this groovy mystery. I’ll say this: They tried hard and were very accommodating the entire time. When the dust finally settled on the situation I had a flight; though said flight included a 20 hour layover in Moscow.
Moscow airport was great. Great in that I took a whole terminal to myself and no one questioned my presence the entire time I was there. I found it interesting that officially there’s no smoking in the airport (signs posted everywhere), but there appeared to be no smoke detectors anywhere so people just went in the bathroom and smoked. It was like a time warp to 20 years in the past. I couldn’t leave the airport because of the customs hassle and what not, but it wasn’t bad since I had a huge area to myself. I passed the time there the usual way with a combination of reading, writing, working out, daydreaming, and napping. Without much fanfare the day passed and I flew off.
Arriving in Tokyo without getting detained in the airport for unfounded accusations was a nice departure from the previous year’s experience, and saved me some time as well. I immediately set off in the direction of where I would be based from: My friend Kc’s apartment. I met Kc five years prior while I was still going to school in Japan. She was a cosmetology school graduate originally from the states who had moved to Japan. She currently teaches English and runs a fashion e-magazine/blog thing. Most importantly she was letting me crash in her nice spacious conveniently located apartment. Almost equally important is we get along fine, which was another welcome change from a previous year’s situation.
After I got settled I made for the Kyokushin Karate dojo I usually train at in order to catch up with everyone and get some training in. Some of my Kyokushin buddies were surprised I’d still train Karate after fighting mixed martial arts. I reminded them it was such training that makes good fighters. My Japanese friend (and world middle weight kyokushin champion) Mori introduced me to those that didn’t know me. “He is a true Karateman.” He said, which is one of his highest compliments. After the introductions were over he go ton with one of his favorite pastimes: setting up ridiculous challenges against me. I put my newly long hair up in a topknot in order to get down to business. “woah. Scary looking.” Why? “You look like an old Chinese assassin like that.” Down to business then. First challenge was taking low kicks. “Wow, you’re legs have gotten really strong. “ Then it was Arm conditioning by bashing arms together: My arms versus every single person in the dojos arms. I won. “His arms are invincible!” “Hm. An incredible body, you can tell it wasn’t built with weight lifting, it’s different.” I said it was built from fighting and wandering. While making my rounds announcing my presence to everyone I was told on several occasions I need to write a book. My response? I’m currently writing 3, of course if I ever publish them is another matter entirely…
In between constantly working out in Japan I somehow managed to find the time to get my bank account shut off against my will almost constantly. This made it difficult to do things like go places and eat, which are two of my favorite things. Having lots of friends has its advantages though; every time I would run into someone I hadn’t seen in a while, they would buy me dinner. Always nice. On one occasion we were out fairly late and I missed the last train back to Kc’s apartment. No problem, I thought, I’ll walk. “hmm… if it was a normal person I’d say it’s a problem, but since it’s Nash he’ll be fine. It’s only a 2 hour walk.” Mori was right. 2 hours is no trouble at all. Except of course when you factor in being adventure prone, in which case said walk becomes 6 hours instead of 2… that was a rough night/morning/following day.
As far as the going places, my first stop outside of Tokyo was Chiba, the next prefecture over form Tokyo. I was on my way to meet David, a friend who I had not seen in 5 years who had since become a very successful high school English teacher in a small town. Outside of catching up with him I was also picking up a package I’d mailed him, from me – to me. “Yeah, the post office said I got a box from ‘Spain’. As in the area of the form that said ‘sender’ had ‘Spain’ written in it. I told them I didn’t think the country of Spain had sent me a package, but they were sure it had.” I thanked him for holding my box, and then we went out to eat. Several times. “Where do you want to do?” Anywhere is ok. “Well, there’s a few places I’ve wanted to try, but I don’t know if they’re any good.” That’s were we’re going! “Yes, I figured it was appropriate to try new things on account of you being here.” We reminisced about the last time we saw each other. About me teaching him to do a handstand. He told me he tells tales of my adventures to other people. Even though it had been 5 years since we last saw each other, it seemed like only a week had passed. Even though we had a good time visiting I only spent a couple days with him in Chiba. I had matters to attend to.
While visiting Okinawa for a Dojo pilgrimage training mission I came to train with Morio Higaonna, head of Goju Ryu Karate and most famous practitioner on the island, at his dojo. During this time Higaonna sensei invited me to the I.O.G.K.F. Miyagi Chojun training camp, to be held the following summer. I said I would think about it. “It’s only once every four year, and I am personally inviting you.” How could I pas up a chance like that? And so, 11 months later, I returned to Okinawa…
The year is 20.X.2 …
Immediately upon stepping foot on Okinawan soil I was blasted with it’s familiar unrelenting humidity. I started sweating. I knew that from that moment until my couple weeks in Okinawa were over the sweating would not stop… and it didn’t. My first order of business was to find where I would be staying. Previously I had stayed with someone and their family and while free of charge, had its drawbacks. I didn’t want to impose on his family life, and I also craved more freedom. I had heard of a certain cheap hostel on the island and so headed in that general direction. However, when I arrived it was so early everything was shut down, and it was too humid to breath, so I just laid down and relaxed by a monorail station until things started up. I knew no one would bother me, as I was by this time fairly grizzly looking from months of backpacking, made more so by the fact I had KC weave my “beard” with string before I left Tokyo for Okinawa. When morning broke and the island came alive I set off again.
I arrived at the hostel and they informed me that I could leave my belongings there, but they wouldn’t have a bed available until noon, so I was to come back then. This wasn’t bad though, because the hostel was right on the beach. I went straight there and set out to find a good spot. I don’t sunburn, but the only time I ever have was on Okinawa and I would not be repeating that. After napping on the beach for a while I decided it would be to my benefit to find some shade, lest I burst into flames. I found a picnic table under a canopy and stretched out on top and went to sleep. I was woken hours later by people telling me they needed it to set up for some event. Getting thrown off my hobo throne was fine though because it was not noon. I returned to the hostel. At hostels it is standard operating procedure to ask for the money for the stay upfront. At check-in they asked me for the money, which I didn’t have. I asked if I could pay them later in the day, and they said it would be fine. Later no one asked about it, so I said nothing. No one said anything the next day either. I certainly wasn’t going to mention it. I started going out of my way to avoid the staff, thereby increasing my chances of it not getting mentioned. After a few days of sneaking lodging, I was finally noticed by a staff person and asked to pay. This was fine on two fronts. One because it was very very cheap to stay there, which is why I had gone there in the first place, and two, because the guy I wound up talking to was quite an interesting fellow.
He was a Japanese traveler of roughly my age who loves Bob Marley and happens to be a poker wiz with dreams of playing in the world tournament. He mad e it to the all Japan tournament but wound up loosing. We became friends. While browsing some pictures of mine, he said “wow, you look so you in these! Were these taken like 10 years ago?” 7 months ago, I responded. “What!? How did you get so old and dark?” Hey! I haven’t cut my hair in a year, and I’ve been backpacking in the sun for months without shaving… it makes you look slightly older. In my defense, everyone at the hostel looked about the same, including him.
The hostel itself could be summed up in my phrase “that’s the price you pay for paying the cheapest price.” It’s not so much the things it didn’t have, because it had everything you could want: Free laundry (worked well enough) Air conditioning (better than nothing) , Shower and toilet room attached to the room, kitchen, fantastic roof, great staff. No, it was the “extra” things it had: Bed bugs, other biting bugs, random and constant work being done to my room (fumigation rendered it inhospitable to people for awhile – did nothing to the bugs, repairing the bunk beds with hot glue guns?), and a crazy roommate. By crazy I mean loud and crazy. Not in speech so much as in just living. This guy would snore so loud that if one were to do their loudest, fakest most obnoxious snore sound, it would probably not equal this man’s actual snoring. Of course, this was only while he was asleep, which seemed to only be 10 minute bursts and then it was time to get up and go to the bathroom and then go outside and smoke. The process was the same every time: get up, stumble around the room loudly, bashing into everything and mumbling to himself, flipping all the lights on (he was loud visually too!) before finally getting to the toilet. That’s when the magic happened. The sound of this guy shitting was simultaneously impressive and terrifying, much like a giant monster attacking a city might be. The sound was something like a foghorn being submerged in a bathtub full of oatmeal and then pushing the button. Or more closely, if you loaded a canon full of wet oatmeal and then fired that into a tuba. Over and over again in rapid succession. What I’m getting at is it was a horrifying and startling way to wake up. This went on constantly throughout the night and, coupled with the bugs visibly devouring my flesh, I did not sleep much. I wasn’t there to sleep anyway. I was there to train.
The training camp itself was officially “The 6th International Budo Sai; I.O.G.K.F. Miyagi Chojun Festival”. The international okinawan goju-ryu karatedo federation, led by Morio Higaonna, had outdone themselves. They presented the camp and all its extra trimmings perfectly. The welcome box everyone received contained books about the camp including instructor bios, booklets about Okinawa, personalized ID badge (didn’t use it, but the name on it was “X Nash”), a shirt, and a free drink ticket to the “Dojo Bar” (more on that later). The box itself was even a work of art. The organization arranged for the participants to be put up in a nice hotel, for a price of course, and even organized a “greeting party” and a “sayonara party”, of which I attended neither.
Each day the main training session led by Higaonna sensei where everyone trained together started at 9am. After this we would break into groups of about 20 or 30 and take training from one of the many instructors from all over the world. We would do this three times a day, for 4 hours of training per day from the camp, plus my own hour of self training afterwards for a total of 5 hours of training everyday. Some days also featured lectures related to the martial arts after the training. When all of this was finished for the day I would go relax at the beach for an hour or two before heading back to the roof of the hotel to study fight literature, review the days training, and watch the sunset. After that it was a shower, and off to bed (but not sleep) to be up at 6 to do it all over again the next day.
After a couple days training I needed to wash my cloths. I washed them, and asked one of the staff at the hostel if the weather would hold for me to put my cloths up outside to dry. “Oh yeah, it’s bee dry for a longtime. You’ll have no problem.” Which I guess is code for “Here comes a huge monsoon to almost destroy everything”. This served two functions: ensuring my cloths were maximally wet forever, and increasing humidity to the level that air almost became water. I was fine though, I was enjoying my new cleansing sweat; completely different from the nonstop sweating I had been doing up until then. I took to wearing my hair in an okinwan topknot to keep the sweat out while I exercised when I didn’t have my bandana.
The early starts to training meant that eating a heavy breakfast was out of the question, but not eating and then engaging in 4 hours of straight training also wasn’t good. This led to me drinking 2 liters of a mix of coffee mild and sour apple drink one morning. Introducing things to your body you normally don’t ingest is to be done in small increments. Smaller than 2 liters at a time it seems. Almost immediately my stomach began to rumble and I made a dash for the bathroom. I wondered if maybe I had caught the cornucopia of tropical diseases my roommate must have to be able to conduct his toilet symphony. Did I just get giardia, dysentery, dengue fever, and malaria at the same time? For about 2 minutes the evidence suggested that yes I had. After that incident I was back to my regular diet of things that aren’t coffee mile and sour apple drink, and I was fine.
Like anything else the camp had its ups and downs. Something I greatly enjoyed was running into Chris, a guy from South Africa who now lives in New Jersey that I had met in Detroit at the Kudo seminar earlier in the year. He was with me at that seminar when I went to tighten my belt and wound up ripping it in half, and since then had been on a quest for a suitable replacement. That replacement would finally be found on Okinawa, at the islands most famous martial arts store, Shureido. Shureido is a good store, sure, but outside of karate belts and okinawan karate uniforms, the store ISAMI in Tokyo has it beat no contest for martial art supplies.
Another interesting run-in at the camp was when I met a Japanese guy who was in my training group. He was an eye surgeon, and a good conversationalist, but he seemed fascinated by me. “You are a very rare person, I think. You are truly free. You are like a hippy, but a combat hippy. Fighting hippy. You are the last real samurai, I think maybe.” He made cleaver observations throughout our talks and on top of studying goju ryu karate, he also was a competitive judo player for many year.
Some of the international instructors also had very good points that they worked on, and taking their training along with the top Japanese and okianwans training was a delight. The lectures were fascinating. There was a lecture and demonstration done by Aragaki sensei, who is the last living student of Chojun Miyagi, the founder of Goju ryu karate. Aragaki sensei is hilarious, his sense of humor and outlook on life clearly not affected by his age. In fact he was very spry. Both he and Higaonna sensei moved and laughed like wrinkly grey haired children. Similar things could be said for Higaonna sensei Zen master. Though the Roshi’s physical constitution wasn’t as good (he certainly looked his age, if not older) his personality and comedic timing were at a master level. Both Aragaki sensei and Roshi had deep insights to offer about the arts. The guest Kung Fu masters from china also did an interesting lecture and demonstration of Chinese martial arts.
For all the ups of the event, there were some significant downs. Higaonna sensei announced his retirement as the chief instructor of the IOFKF. This does not bode well for the organization at large as Higaonna sensei was the model upon which all other where based. His reasoning for the retirement is sound, wanting and ensuring new blood can come in and grown and pass the torch and all that, but for all the great high ranking instructors there were many terrible high ranking instructors. As the saying goes “too many turds spoils the broth.”, and this would seem to be the beginning of the decline for the organization. There were some things taught at this camp that a certain Onaga sensei would call “garbage”, and I would be hard pressed to argue with him. By garbage I mean on most fronts. Techniques that are: impractical, anatomically and biomechanically incorrect or counterproductive, and taught in such a way that even if they were good they couldn’t actually be learned. This was disheartening for me, and caused a flair up in my deep resentment of ritualized martial arts practice. Impractical techniques taught by those that don’t understand them because that’s the way it’s always been done, for tradition’s sake. “It’s been done by millions of people for hundreds of years, of course it’s right.” That in and of itself should be the red flat that it isn’t right!
An anecdote: This is just to illustrate a pet peeve of mine that happens more often than it should. During one of the training sessions one of the instructors asked “what techniques comes first in this kata?”, expecting everyone to get it wrong so he could make a point. Everyone did get it wrong. Except me. I said the correct answer, but was ignored so his point would have more weight to it. I get it, the question was semi-rhetoric, but if someone answers your semi rhetorical question just acknowledge that it happened and then smoothly go right into your point. Don’t pretend it didn’t’ happen or you didn’t hear. As people will attest, my voice carries; if you can’t hear me, you can’t hear.
Negatives aside though, it was a good experience and ended on a high note with a full day of master’s demonstrations. Included in these were several fascinating Chinese wushu / kung fu displays and an exceptional demonstration of Higaonna sensei demonstrating Iron Body by getting struck in the stomach and chest forcefully by a large stone mallet. Not bad for a guy in his 70’s.
The demonstration marked the end of the training camp, but the end of the event as a whole was the “sayonara party”, which I did not attend. 70 bucks admission, not including drinks which were and extra 30, and you didn’t even get a chair to sit? No thank you. I’ll have my own celebration. Which I did.
I had a few extra days after the weeklong camp ended (and before it started as well) to kick around the island on my own casually. I took in all the sights, like children catching cicadas (they emit a horrible screech upon capture); as well as the sounds, like the deafening roar of thousands of cicadas. I went to Matsuyama Park to find the statue dedicated to Chojun Miyagi, which I did not find. It was probably covered in cicadas. I also took time out of my busy schedule of being at the beach or casually walking around to break my camera by pressing the “on” button. Are you not supposed to do that? Was it full of sand or cicadas? Did it not have enough sand and cicadas? I’m technologically inept so all I knew was that it was broken. I was defiantly sure of that.
In amongst my free days on the island came ocean day, a national holiday. I love holidays, and the ocean! Perfect. The streets were filled with “eisa” parades and drummers and various festival goings-on’s. I spent the taking in all the festivities and then had a nice hard workout followed by some beach time. Of all the things to be cut short on ocean day, the time I got to spend at the beach was the thing that got cut short. This was due to a tropical storm that caused a minor flash flood, but they still made everyone leave the beach. It was fine. I wasn’t done celebrating yet anyway. I went off to go find “Dojo Bar”, “The #1 Karate bar in all of Okinawa”.
The dojo bar is a fantastic place to be for anyone interested in Karate. The handle to open the door is tonfa. Inside the walls are covered with pictures of masters past and present, memorabilia everywhere, and a functional makiwara. The cocktails even have karate themed names. The welcome box from the training camp had come with a “1 free beer” ticket, which I had lost, but the owner game me a beer anyway. A great guy, and a great bar. Out of curiosity I asked him how many karate themed bars there where on Okinawa. “This is the only one. I can say with confidence it’s the best one.” He shoed me the wall that customers had been signing. The “Adventurer’s logbook”. I too place my seal upon it, along with some words to the wise. Of the karate themed cocktails I had “Ichigeki” (From the phrase IchiGekiHisatsu, meaning one strike and death), and “Tekken” (Iron fist). I wished the owner such goodwill that I wished to tip him, rare for me and uncustomary in Okinawa. To compromise I agreed to play the bar game he had setup were you try and drop a hundred yen coin into a cup set inside a huge jar of water. I won. My prize was a free shot of Habu-Shu (Alcohol brewed from the nerve toxin of the poisonous pit viper that lives on the island). Perfect way to end my Dojo bar experience. It wasn’t quite over yet though.
On my way out of the bar a guy from the states stopped an asked if I practiced karate, to which I answered in the affirmative. We talked for a bit and he explained that he was an Anthropologist who had come to Okinawa to study non-okinawans who studied karate. He asked if I would let him record an interview with me. I said of course. We met the next day for lunch (which he bought! I was already well compensated) and he proceeded to lead and record a very in depth 2 hour interview about my experience with and thoughts on karate. His interviewing style was such that it made me seem extremely intelligent, clever, and knowledgeable on the subject. I was fascinated by his research and y own responses to his questions. He agreed to give me a copy of the recording, and results form his studies. He will use this interview and many others to compile research papers and possibly a book. I told him to keep me posted, and to let me know if I could be of any further help. He would let me know, but for now we was getting ready to leave Okinawa via Tokyo. I was actually on my way back to Tokyo myself.
Pleased with myself and my happenings on Okinawa I grabbed my bag, making sure to leave worlds worst umbrella from Ireland) behind and I said farewell to new friends, the beach, the hostel room, cicadas, bed bugs, and air so thick you could drown and headed back to Tokyo.
When I got back to Tokyo it was business as usual. Visiting and training. It was summer break for schools in Japan now so David came up from Chiba to Tokyo for a couple days to visit. He and a friend of his and myself all went out to dinner. David introduced his friend and me. “Remember I told you all those unbelievable stories about that guy? This is the guy. This is Nash.” From that point on the rest of the night was more or less us drinking and swapping tales of daring do. “Yeah man, you know how Hercules was half god? I could totally see you being like 1/16th god.” I’ll take it. Aside from crazy stories I also shared my personal and hard thought theory about Archimedes, the founder of physics among many other things. After a couple days of visiting fun it was back to training fun.
Mori suggested I seek out a powerful master named Nariharu Kuramoto, creator of Shukikai Karate. I immediately began researching him and he seemed to be the man Mori made him out to be. Before finding him though I was continuing my quest to find the Kudo (DaidoJuku) main school. Which I did, little thanks to the Japanese map showing how to get there. Japanese maps surely are some of the worst in the world, for all reasons a map can be awful (orientation, scale, labeling, references, ect.), but the Japanese insist on using them anyway. With some trial and error I made it.
When I entered the main dojo who should I see? None other than Chris, who I had just seen in Okinawa! Along with another guy we trained with in Okinawa. Neither Chris nor I knew the other one was to be there, so it was great seeing each other. Oh, and the other guy that was with Chris who I had trained with in Okinawa? None other than Fred, the founder and owner of one of my favorite websites: Kyokushin4life.com. It was quit the night. As it turned out, the night was just getting started too. The training was nearly identical to MMA training, with a bit more of a standup emphasis. A beautiful 2 hour affair. Afterwards Chris and I caught up and I found out eh dojo was going out for dinner that night. Being broke and not wanting to miss the train I diced to leave before I got invited. It didn’t work. I was not only invited but practically press-ganged into going. “Azuma Jukucho is going to be there.” “We’ll pay, its fine. The sensei had already decided: I was going.
I walked into the sushi restaurant and saw Takashi Azuma, the creator of Kudo, sitting won. He looked up and saw me. His face lit up with surprise. “I know you! We’ve met before right?” Yes. “…Detroit?... You’re the wanderer! Yeah, you look like that famous movie star.” … He seemed to enjoy me being there. One of his students asked where I was from. Jukucho said “Him? Nowhere and everywhere. He’s a combat hippy! A true free spirit.” I found it odd that I’d never heard the term “combat hippy” before, and now suddenly I’d heard it multiple times in a few weeks time. It did seem apt though. His wife and students thought I was hilarious. One of the visiting students was from India, and put out an invite to come to India during New year’s, which I just may. Jukucho paid for the fancy dinner and the drinks. “This was round one of special training. Round two is from now.” Round two turned out to be us all going out to karaoke. I hit him with the best excuses I could muster in order to leave and not miss the train, but I just had to square up with it: I was going to be partying the whole night with the creator of Kudo, on his dime, with his close students and the founder of Kyokushin4life. Just another day in the life of Nash. Karaoke did turn out to be a ton of fun of course. At one pint we were al up singing a fisherman’s song, and doing a boat rowing dance. To make it more “authentic”, at Jukucho’s suggestion, we rolled up our pants and sleeves and tied towels around our heads as bandanas (hachimaki). We drank and sang and were merry until the early morning, at which time it became round 3: Time for Ramen! We went to a nice ramen restaurant were we all attempted to put something besides alcohol in our bodies. While eating, one of the students pointed at me and said “wait.. you’re still wearing the hachimaki!?” Looks like I had inadvertently pilfered a towel, by way of forgetting it was tied around my forehead. I reached up to take it off, at which point everyone said “leave it. Hachimaki suits you.” Again, more merry making on Jukucho’s dime. While eating he told me frankly “ Nash, I like you and your thinking. I know you aren’t one to commit to a style, but if you do settle down to one, I think it should be Kudo.” Kudo and I do share a similar background and ideology, so however improbable its certainly not impossible. Plus, I genuinely like Takashi Azuma Jukucho as a human being. He has a frank but warm honesty about him that I respect.
It was now past 3am. Special training was officially ending. Jukucho’s wife gave me the equivalent of 125$ for a taxi and told me to get Chris and Fred to their hotel, then get me back to Kc’s. We all said our farewells, and I went on my mission to get Chris and Fred back. Mission accomplished. I then got myself back and still had 40$ left over! Thanks to Kudo, I would be eating for the rest of my time in Japan! Which wasn’t actually all that long. The wind was blowing me to a new place, and I had business to take care of.
A couple days later and it was airport time. This, I was EXTRA not looking foreword to. On top of the usual reasons I hate flying, this would be a rematch against a most hated foe: Air Canada….
-Nash
The poor lady had the misfortune of being the one to check me in, and she couldn’t figure out what was happening. Nash. Nash was happening. I must have stood too close to the computer or something. Soon the women’s coworkers were on the case, but to no avail. Then the supervisor. Then the manager. By the end of it all I was traveling with a pack of Russia Air employees all over the airport trying to solve this groovy mystery. I’ll say this: They tried hard and were very accommodating the entire time. When the dust finally settled on the situation I had a flight; though said flight included a 20 hour layover in Moscow.
Moscow airport was great. Great in that I took a whole terminal to myself and no one questioned my presence the entire time I was there. I found it interesting that officially there’s no smoking in the airport (signs posted everywhere), but there appeared to be no smoke detectors anywhere so people just went in the bathroom and smoked. It was like a time warp to 20 years in the past. I couldn’t leave the airport because of the customs hassle and what not, but it wasn’t bad since I had a huge area to myself. I passed the time there the usual way with a combination of reading, writing, working out, daydreaming, and napping. Without much fanfare the day passed and I flew off.
Arriving in Tokyo without getting detained in the airport for unfounded accusations was a nice departure from the previous year’s experience, and saved me some time as well. I immediately set off in the direction of where I would be based from: My friend Kc’s apartment. I met Kc five years prior while I was still going to school in Japan. She was a cosmetology school graduate originally from the states who had moved to Japan. She currently teaches English and runs a fashion e-magazine/blog thing. Most importantly she was letting me crash in her nice spacious conveniently located apartment. Almost equally important is we get along fine, which was another welcome change from a previous year’s situation.
After I got settled I made for the Kyokushin Karate dojo I usually train at in order to catch up with everyone and get some training in. Some of my Kyokushin buddies were surprised I’d still train Karate after fighting mixed martial arts. I reminded them it was such training that makes good fighters. My Japanese friend (and world middle weight kyokushin champion) Mori introduced me to those that didn’t know me. “He is a true Karateman.” He said, which is one of his highest compliments. After the introductions were over he go ton with one of his favorite pastimes: setting up ridiculous challenges against me. I put my newly long hair up in a topknot in order to get down to business. “woah. Scary looking.” Why? “You look like an old Chinese assassin like that.” Down to business then. First challenge was taking low kicks. “Wow, you’re legs have gotten really strong. “ Then it was Arm conditioning by bashing arms together: My arms versus every single person in the dojos arms. I won. “His arms are invincible!” “Hm. An incredible body, you can tell it wasn’t built with weight lifting, it’s different.” I said it was built from fighting and wandering. While making my rounds announcing my presence to everyone I was told on several occasions I need to write a book. My response? I’m currently writing 3, of course if I ever publish them is another matter entirely…
In between constantly working out in Japan I somehow managed to find the time to get my bank account shut off against my will almost constantly. This made it difficult to do things like go places and eat, which are two of my favorite things. Having lots of friends has its advantages though; every time I would run into someone I hadn’t seen in a while, they would buy me dinner. Always nice. On one occasion we were out fairly late and I missed the last train back to Kc’s apartment. No problem, I thought, I’ll walk. “hmm… if it was a normal person I’d say it’s a problem, but since it’s Nash he’ll be fine. It’s only a 2 hour walk.” Mori was right. 2 hours is no trouble at all. Except of course when you factor in being adventure prone, in which case said walk becomes 6 hours instead of 2… that was a rough night/morning/following day.
As far as the going places, my first stop outside of Tokyo was Chiba, the next prefecture over form Tokyo. I was on my way to meet David, a friend who I had not seen in 5 years who had since become a very successful high school English teacher in a small town. Outside of catching up with him I was also picking up a package I’d mailed him, from me – to me. “Yeah, the post office said I got a box from ‘Spain’. As in the area of the form that said ‘sender’ had ‘Spain’ written in it. I told them I didn’t think the country of Spain had sent me a package, but they were sure it had.” I thanked him for holding my box, and then we went out to eat. Several times. “Where do you want to do?” Anywhere is ok. “Well, there’s a few places I’ve wanted to try, but I don’t know if they’re any good.” That’s were we’re going! “Yes, I figured it was appropriate to try new things on account of you being here.” We reminisced about the last time we saw each other. About me teaching him to do a handstand. He told me he tells tales of my adventures to other people. Even though it had been 5 years since we last saw each other, it seemed like only a week had passed. Even though we had a good time visiting I only spent a couple days with him in Chiba. I had matters to attend to.
While visiting Okinawa for a Dojo pilgrimage training mission I came to train with Morio Higaonna, head of Goju Ryu Karate and most famous practitioner on the island, at his dojo. During this time Higaonna sensei invited me to the I.O.G.K.F. Miyagi Chojun training camp, to be held the following summer. I said I would think about it. “It’s only once every four year, and I am personally inviting you.” How could I pas up a chance like that? And so, 11 months later, I returned to Okinawa…
The year is 20.X.2 …
Immediately upon stepping foot on Okinawan soil I was blasted with it’s familiar unrelenting humidity. I started sweating. I knew that from that moment until my couple weeks in Okinawa were over the sweating would not stop… and it didn’t. My first order of business was to find where I would be staying. Previously I had stayed with someone and their family and while free of charge, had its drawbacks. I didn’t want to impose on his family life, and I also craved more freedom. I had heard of a certain cheap hostel on the island and so headed in that general direction. However, when I arrived it was so early everything was shut down, and it was too humid to breath, so I just laid down and relaxed by a monorail station until things started up. I knew no one would bother me, as I was by this time fairly grizzly looking from months of backpacking, made more so by the fact I had KC weave my “beard” with string before I left Tokyo for Okinawa. When morning broke and the island came alive I set off again.
I arrived at the hostel and they informed me that I could leave my belongings there, but they wouldn’t have a bed available until noon, so I was to come back then. This wasn’t bad though, because the hostel was right on the beach. I went straight there and set out to find a good spot. I don’t sunburn, but the only time I ever have was on Okinawa and I would not be repeating that. After napping on the beach for a while I decided it would be to my benefit to find some shade, lest I burst into flames. I found a picnic table under a canopy and stretched out on top and went to sleep. I was woken hours later by people telling me they needed it to set up for some event. Getting thrown off my hobo throne was fine though because it was not noon. I returned to the hostel. At hostels it is standard operating procedure to ask for the money for the stay upfront. At check-in they asked me for the money, which I didn’t have. I asked if I could pay them later in the day, and they said it would be fine. Later no one asked about it, so I said nothing. No one said anything the next day either. I certainly wasn’t going to mention it. I started going out of my way to avoid the staff, thereby increasing my chances of it not getting mentioned. After a few days of sneaking lodging, I was finally noticed by a staff person and asked to pay. This was fine on two fronts. One because it was very very cheap to stay there, which is why I had gone there in the first place, and two, because the guy I wound up talking to was quite an interesting fellow.
He was a Japanese traveler of roughly my age who loves Bob Marley and happens to be a poker wiz with dreams of playing in the world tournament. He mad e it to the all Japan tournament but wound up loosing. We became friends. While browsing some pictures of mine, he said “wow, you look so you in these! Were these taken like 10 years ago?” 7 months ago, I responded. “What!? How did you get so old and dark?” Hey! I haven’t cut my hair in a year, and I’ve been backpacking in the sun for months without shaving… it makes you look slightly older. In my defense, everyone at the hostel looked about the same, including him.
The hostel itself could be summed up in my phrase “that’s the price you pay for paying the cheapest price.” It’s not so much the things it didn’t have, because it had everything you could want: Free laundry (worked well enough) Air conditioning (better than nothing) , Shower and toilet room attached to the room, kitchen, fantastic roof, great staff. No, it was the “extra” things it had: Bed bugs, other biting bugs, random and constant work being done to my room (fumigation rendered it inhospitable to people for awhile – did nothing to the bugs, repairing the bunk beds with hot glue guns?), and a crazy roommate. By crazy I mean loud and crazy. Not in speech so much as in just living. This guy would snore so loud that if one were to do their loudest, fakest most obnoxious snore sound, it would probably not equal this man’s actual snoring. Of course, this was only while he was asleep, which seemed to only be 10 minute bursts and then it was time to get up and go to the bathroom and then go outside and smoke. The process was the same every time: get up, stumble around the room loudly, bashing into everything and mumbling to himself, flipping all the lights on (he was loud visually too!) before finally getting to the toilet. That’s when the magic happened. The sound of this guy shitting was simultaneously impressive and terrifying, much like a giant monster attacking a city might be. The sound was something like a foghorn being submerged in a bathtub full of oatmeal and then pushing the button. Or more closely, if you loaded a canon full of wet oatmeal and then fired that into a tuba. Over and over again in rapid succession. What I’m getting at is it was a horrifying and startling way to wake up. This went on constantly throughout the night and, coupled with the bugs visibly devouring my flesh, I did not sleep much. I wasn’t there to sleep anyway. I was there to train.
The training camp itself was officially “The 6th International Budo Sai; I.O.G.K.F. Miyagi Chojun Festival”. The international okinawan goju-ryu karatedo federation, led by Morio Higaonna, had outdone themselves. They presented the camp and all its extra trimmings perfectly. The welcome box everyone received contained books about the camp including instructor bios, booklets about Okinawa, personalized ID badge (didn’t use it, but the name on it was “X Nash”), a shirt, and a free drink ticket to the “Dojo Bar” (more on that later). The box itself was even a work of art. The organization arranged for the participants to be put up in a nice hotel, for a price of course, and even organized a “greeting party” and a “sayonara party”, of which I attended neither.
Each day the main training session led by Higaonna sensei where everyone trained together started at 9am. After this we would break into groups of about 20 or 30 and take training from one of the many instructors from all over the world. We would do this three times a day, for 4 hours of training per day from the camp, plus my own hour of self training afterwards for a total of 5 hours of training everyday. Some days also featured lectures related to the martial arts after the training. When all of this was finished for the day I would go relax at the beach for an hour or two before heading back to the roof of the hotel to study fight literature, review the days training, and watch the sunset. After that it was a shower, and off to bed (but not sleep) to be up at 6 to do it all over again the next day.
After a couple days training I needed to wash my cloths. I washed them, and asked one of the staff at the hostel if the weather would hold for me to put my cloths up outside to dry. “Oh yeah, it’s bee dry for a longtime. You’ll have no problem.” Which I guess is code for “Here comes a huge monsoon to almost destroy everything”. This served two functions: ensuring my cloths were maximally wet forever, and increasing humidity to the level that air almost became water. I was fine though, I was enjoying my new cleansing sweat; completely different from the nonstop sweating I had been doing up until then. I took to wearing my hair in an okinwan topknot to keep the sweat out while I exercised when I didn’t have my bandana.
The early starts to training meant that eating a heavy breakfast was out of the question, but not eating and then engaging in 4 hours of straight training also wasn’t good. This led to me drinking 2 liters of a mix of coffee mild and sour apple drink one morning. Introducing things to your body you normally don’t ingest is to be done in small increments. Smaller than 2 liters at a time it seems. Almost immediately my stomach began to rumble and I made a dash for the bathroom. I wondered if maybe I had caught the cornucopia of tropical diseases my roommate must have to be able to conduct his toilet symphony. Did I just get giardia, dysentery, dengue fever, and malaria at the same time? For about 2 minutes the evidence suggested that yes I had. After that incident I was back to my regular diet of things that aren’t coffee mile and sour apple drink, and I was fine.
Like anything else the camp had its ups and downs. Something I greatly enjoyed was running into Chris, a guy from South Africa who now lives in New Jersey that I had met in Detroit at the Kudo seminar earlier in the year. He was with me at that seminar when I went to tighten my belt and wound up ripping it in half, and since then had been on a quest for a suitable replacement. That replacement would finally be found on Okinawa, at the islands most famous martial arts store, Shureido. Shureido is a good store, sure, but outside of karate belts and okinawan karate uniforms, the store ISAMI in Tokyo has it beat no contest for martial art supplies.
Another interesting run-in at the camp was when I met a Japanese guy who was in my training group. He was an eye surgeon, and a good conversationalist, but he seemed fascinated by me. “You are a very rare person, I think. You are truly free. You are like a hippy, but a combat hippy. Fighting hippy. You are the last real samurai, I think maybe.” He made cleaver observations throughout our talks and on top of studying goju ryu karate, he also was a competitive judo player for many year.
Some of the international instructors also had very good points that they worked on, and taking their training along with the top Japanese and okianwans training was a delight. The lectures were fascinating. There was a lecture and demonstration done by Aragaki sensei, who is the last living student of Chojun Miyagi, the founder of Goju ryu karate. Aragaki sensei is hilarious, his sense of humor and outlook on life clearly not affected by his age. In fact he was very spry. Both he and Higaonna sensei moved and laughed like wrinkly grey haired children. Similar things could be said for Higaonna sensei Zen master. Though the Roshi’s physical constitution wasn’t as good (he certainly looked his age, if not older) his personality and comedic timing were at a master level. Both Aragaki sensei and Roshi had deep insights to offer about the arts. The guest Kung Fu masters from china also did an interesting lecture and demonstration of Chinese martial arts.
For all the ups of the event, there were some significant downs. Higaonna sensei announced his retirement as the chief instructor of the IOFKF. This does not bode well for the organization at large as Higaonna sensei was the model upon which all other where based. His reasoning for the retirement is sound, wanting and ensuring new blood can come in and grown and pass the torch and all that, but for all the great high ranking instructors there were many terrible high ranking instructors. As the saying goes “too many turds spoils the broth.”, and this would seem to be the beginning of the decline for the organization. There were some things taught at this camp that a certain Onaga sensei would call “garbage”, and I would be hard pressed to argue with him. By garbage I mean on most fronts. Techniques that are: impractical, anatomically and biomechanically incorrect or counterproductive, and taught in such a way that even if they were good they couldn’t actually be learned. This was disheartening for me, and caused a flair up in my deep resentment of ritualized martial arts practice. Impractical techniques taught by those that don’t understand them because that’s the way it’s always been done, for tradition’s sake. “It’s been done by millions of people for hundreds of years, of course it’s right.” That in and of itself should be the red flat that it isn’t right!
An anecdote: This is just to illustrate a pet peeve of mine that happens more often than it should. During one of the training sessions one of the instructors asked “what techniques comes first in this kata?”, expecting everyone to get it wrong so he could make a point. Everyone did get it wrong. Except me. I said the correct answer, but was ignored so his point would have more weight to it. I get it, the question was semi-rhetoric, but if someone answers your semi rhetorical question just acknowledge that it happened and then smoothly go right into your point. Don’t pretend it didn’t’ happen or you didn’t hear. As people will attest, my voice carries; if you can’t hear me, you can’t hear.
Negatives aside though, it was a good experience and ended on a high note with a full day of master’s demonstrations. Included in these were several fascinating Chinese wushu / kung fu displays and an exceptional demonstration of Higaonna sensei demonstrating Iron Body by getting struck in the stomach and chest forcefully by a large stone mallet. Not bad for a guy in his 70’s.
The demonstration marked the end of the training camp, but the end of the event as a whole was the “sayonara party”, which I did not attend. 70 bucks admission, not including drinks which were and extra 30, and you didn’t even get a chair to sit? No thank you. I’ll have my own celebration. Which I did.
I had a few extra days after the weeklong camp ended (and before it started as well) to kick around the island on my own casually. I took in all the sights, like children catching cicadas (they emit a horrible screech upon capture); as well as the sounds, like the deafening roar of thousands of cicadas. I went to Matsuyama Park to find the statue dedicated to Chojun Miyagi, which I did not find. It was probably covered in cicadas. I also took time out of my busy schedule of being at the beach or casually walking around to break my camera by pressing the “on” button. Are you not supposed to do that? Was it full of sand or cicadas? Did it not have enough sand and cicadas? I’m technologically inept so all I knew was that it was broken. I was defiantly sure of that.
In amongst my free days on the island came ocean day, a national holiday. I love holidays, and the ocean! Perfect. The streets were filled with “eisa” parades and drummers and various festival goings-on’s. I spent the taking in all the festivities and then had a nice hard workout followed by some beach time. Of all the things to be cut short on ocean day, the time I got to spend at the beach was the thing that got cut short. This was due to a tropical storm that caused a minor flash flood, but they still made everyone leave the beach. It was fine. I wasn’t done celebrating yet anyway. I went off to go find “Dojo Bar”, “The #1 Karate bar in all of Okinawa”.
The dojo bar is a fantastic place to be for anyone interested in Karate. The handle to open the door is tonfa. Inside the walls are covered with pictures of masters past and present, memorabilia everywhere, and a functional makiwara. The cocktails even have karate themed names. The welcome box from the training camp had come with a “1 free beer” ticket, which I had lost, but the owner game me a beer anyway. A great guy, and a great bar. Out of curiosity I asked him how many karate themed bars there where on Okinawa. “This is the only one. I can say with confidence it’s the best one.” He shoed me the wall that customers had been signing. The “Adventurer’s logbook”. I too place my seal upon it, along with some words to the wise. Of the karate themed cocktails I had “Ichigeki” (From the phrase IchiGekiHisatsu, meaning one strike and death), and “Tekken” (Iron fist). I wished the owner such goodwill that I wished to tip him, rare for me and uncustomary in Okinawa. To compromise I agreed to play the bar game he had setup were you try and drop a hundred yen coin into a cup set inside a huge jar of water. I won. My prize was a free shot of Habu-Shu (Alcohol brewed from the nerve toxin of the poisonous pit viper that lives on the island). Perfect way to end my Dojo bar experience. It wasn’t quite over yet though.
On my way out of the bar a guy from the states stopped an asked if I practiced karate, to which I answered in the affirmative. We talked for a bit and he explained that he was an Anthropologist who had come to Okinawa to study non-okinawans who studied karate. He asked if I would let him record an interview with me. I said of course. We met the next day for lunch (which he bought! I was already well compensated) and he proceeded to lead and record a very in depth 2 hour interview about my experience with and thoughts on karate. His interviewing style was such that it made me seem extremely intelligent, clever, and knowledgeable on the subject. I was fascinated by his research and y own responses to his questions. He agreed to give me a copy of the recording, and results form his studies. He will use this interview and many others to compile research papers and possibly a book. I told him to keep me posted, and to let me know if I could be of any further help. He would let me know, but for now we was getting ready to leave Okinawa via Tokyo. I was actually on my way back to Tokyo myself.
Pleased with myself and my happenings on Okinawa I grabbed my bag, making sure to leave worlds worst umbrella from Ireland) behind and I said farewell to new friends, the beach, the hostel room, cicadas, bed bugs, and air so thick you could drown and headed back to Tokyo.
When I got back to Tokyo it was business as usual. Visiting and training. It was summer break for schools in Japan now so David came up from Chiba to Tokyo for a couple days to visit. He and a friend of his and myself all went out to dinner. David introduced his friend and me. “Remember I told you all those unbelievable stories about that guy? This is the guy. This is Nash.” From that point on the rest of the night was more or less us drinking and swapping tales of daring do. “Yeah man, you know how Hercules was half god? I could totally see you being like 1/16th god.” I’ll take it. Aside from crazy stories I also shared my personal and hard thought theory about Archimedes, the founder of physics among many other things. After a couple days of visiting fun it was back to training fun.
Mori suggested I seek out a powerful master named Nariharu Kuramoto, creator of Shukikai Karate. I immediately began researching him and he seemed to be the man Mori made him out to be. Before finding him though I was continuing my quest to find the Kudo (DaidoJuku) main school. Which I did, little thanks to the Japanese map showing how to get there. Japanese maps surely are some of the worst in the world, for all reasons a map can be awful (orientation, scale, labeling, references, ect.), but the Japanese insist on using them anyway. With some trial and error I made it.
When I entered the main dojo who should I see? None other than Chris, who I had just seen in Okinawa! Along with another guy we trained with in Okinawa. Neither Chris nor I knew the other one was to be there, so it was great seeing each other. Oh, and the other guy that was with Chris who I had trained with in Okinawa? None other than Fred, the founder and owner of one of my favorite websites: Kyokushin4life.com. It was quit the night. As it turned out, the night was just getting started too. The training was nearly identical to MMA training, with a bit more of a standup emphasis. A beautiful 2 hour affair. Afterwards Chris and I caught up and I found out eh dojo was going out for dinner that night. Being broke and not wanting to miss the train I diced to leave before I got invited. It didn’t work. I was not only invited but practically press-ganged into going. “Azuma Jukucho is going to be there.” “We’ll pay, its fine. The sensei had already decided: I was going.
I walked into the sushi restaurant and saw Takashi Azuma, the creator of Kudo, sitting won. He looked up and saw me. His face lit up with surprise. “I know you! We’ve met before right?” Yes. “…Detroit?... You’re the wanderer! Yeah, you look like that famous movie star.” … He seemed to enjoy me being there. One of his students asked where I was from. Jukucho said “Him? Nowhere and everywhere. He’s a combat hippy! A true free spirit.” I found it odd that I’d never heard the term “combat hippy” before, and now suddenly I’d heard it multiple times in a few weeks time. It did seem apt though. His wife and students thought I was hilarious. One of the visiting students was from India, and put out an invite to come to India during New year’s, which I just may. Jukucho paid for the fancy dinner and the drinks. “This was round one of special training. Round two is from now.” Round two turned out to be us all going out to karaoke. I hit him with the best excuses I could muster in order to leave and not miss the train, but I just had to square up with it: I was going to be partying the whole night with the creator of Kudo, on his dime, with his close students and the founder of Kyokushin4life. Just another day in the life of Nash. Karaoke did turn out to be a ton of fun of course. At one pint we were al up singing a fisherman’s song, and doing a boat rowing dance. To make it more “authentic”, at Jukucho’s suggestion, we rolled up our pants and sleeves and tied towels around our heads as bandanas (hachimaki). We drank and sang and were merry until the early morning, at which time it became round 3: Time for Ramen! We went to a nice ramen restaurant were we all attempted to put something besides alcohol in our bodies. While eating, one of the students pointed at me and said “wait.. you’re still wearing the hachimaki!?” Looks like I had inadvertently pilfered a towel, by way of forgetting it was tied around my forehead. I reached up to take it off, at which point everyone said “leave it. Hachimaki suits you.” Again, more merry making on Jukucho’s dime. While eating he told me frankly “ Nash, I like you and your thinking. I know you aren’t one to commit to a style, but if you do settle down to one, I think it should be Kudo.” Kudo and I do share a similar background and ideology, so however improbable its certainly not impossible. Plus, I genuinely like Takashi Azuma Jukucho as a human being. He has a frank but warm honesty about him that I respect.
It was now past 3am. Special training was officially ending. Jukucho’s wife gave me the equivalent of 125$ for a taxi and told me to get Chris and Fred to their hotel, then get me back to Kc’s. We all said our farewells, and I went on my mission to get Chris and Fred back. Mission accomplished. I then got myself back and still had 40$ left over! Thanks to Kudo, I would be eating for the rest of my time in Japan! Which wasn’t actually all that long. The wind was blowing me to a new place, and I had business to take care of.
A couple days later and it was airport time. This, I was EXTRA not looking foreword to. On top of the usual reasons I hate flying, this would be a rematch against a most hated foe: Air Canada….
-Nash