I scare Japanese children...

The Miyagi Karate Competition

On Sunday I took myself along to the 54th Miyagi area karate competition. I was entered into the men’s kumite (fighting) so that i would have something to do other than watch karate all day. I did not hold out much hope of doing well since I had not been training towards it particularly, but was using it as something to help increase motivation to get myself to training. When the journey to training is an hour and half round cycle trip away, plus a couple of hours training on top of that; sometimes the option of just chilling wins hands down. Although the language barrier often means I’m left standing there slightly confused and embarrassed, I have been enjoying the training and feel I have been accepted into the club. The head Sensei is extremely friendly, and really tries to help me with a mixture of obscure English and fast Japanese, often pitching in to physically manipulate my body. 

I’ve found the training in Japan to be very similar to that which i experience back home, although often less intense. As with many formal activities (e.g. work) in Japan, it’s not how many effectively you work, it’s how many hours you spend on the clock. 

But often when someone choses a sport/hobby, they will dedicate themselves to it entirely. I often see this at school with students doing their club activity before school, at lunch time, and after school, every day of the week (including weekends and holidays). One such club at the competition from Tohoku Gakuin junior&senior high schools demonstrated exactly this. Their competitors were incredibly good and many of these teens would have ripped me apart on the karate tatami.

But whilst their physical displays were highly impressive, it reminded me of the problem of training in order to win competitions. When your self esteem is determined by your victory over others, then you will more often than not be disappointed. Only one person can win, and even that person cannot win every time indefinitely. Now you could argue that this is what drives a sports person to train harder in order to reach the highest level.

But when reaching this level sacrifices other aspects of your life, such as friends, other hobbies, new experiences, building social skills, doing things spontaneously, is it really worth it? Chancing everything on the hope that your body has the right muscle fibres for your sport, that you have sacrificed more of your time than anyone else, and hoping that you don’t get injured. It’s not a recipe for feeling good. I experienced some of a competitors heart ache when visiting the toilets just after he had lost, and heard him weeping and cursing in a cubicle

And even if you achieve the top level, will anyone outside of your sporting niche give two shits? Chances are no. 

I think sporting competition is best left as a side activity to not be taken too seriously. One of the reasons I continue to enjoy karate is the focus you can place upon yourself, and the endeavour within yourself to do better than you have done before/do the best you can. If you give yourself your all and are not comparing yourself with others then is this a much fairer competition, which you can ultimately achieve something from. 

In the end I had a really good day watching karate performed in its ancestral home, and speaking with some really friendly people (whilst waving madly at dumfounded children. Me not them)

Karate soup BBQ

Not too long ago I was lucky enough to be invited to my Karate club’s Imoni party. The Karate club I have joined seems to be of quite a good standard, with a lot of members and some very traditional training methods. The head sensei is a 65 year old 7^th dan, yet he moves like a man in his 30s. Amongst the other members of the club, there is his son, Sage, who looks more like a bond villain’s henchman than a respectable member of society (definitely a man who could rip telephone directories in half), and his much smaller sidekick, a man in his early 30s who likes to do impressions of a rubber bodied anime character (Moneky D. Luffy) for my amusement.

An Imoni party is a bit like a barbeque, but instead of cooking meat you make soup, on a barbeque. A little bit of anything and everything you can imagine gets thrown in, cabbage, miso, meat, mushrooms, potato, soy, pokemon, etc, then once it was all ready, people sat down, made a few toasts and ate up. This lasted all afternoon and was accompanied by a lot of talking, drinking, and bingo. A lot of Japanese people LOVE gambling style games, even if it’s just children’s bingo.

 The head sensei is very friendly, and seemed to have taken a shine to me, so was kind enough to force-feed me a load of fish. I’m not a fan of fish. To me they taste like the sea, and if I want to taste the sea then I’d prefer to have a nice refreshing glass of sea water. But at the time I felt it would have been too rude to tell him I didn’t really like fish, so gulped it down quickly, and loaded my plate up with things I did like so there was no room for any more sea dwelling animals. He seemed happy enough, and set about trying to get me drunk.

Overall it was a difficult social occasion. Aside from the high school English teacher who was attending (an absolute godsend); conversation was mainly made up of the unusual array of English words that various members of the club know, a general wash a quickly spoken incomprehensible Japanese, plus my somewhat limited and broken Japanese. This also wasn’t helped with by the large quantities of alcohol floating around. And everyone assumed that as I was western I could probably drink a lot and so reveled in pouring me more of whatever was on offer. With them watching the funny foreigner down some less than delicious Japanese spirits, I would murmur a few words in Japanese and everyone would burst out into roars of laughter.

Apparently being a Japanese comedian is quite easy, just look slightly different to them, get nice and drunk, and then slur a bit of Japanese and your laughing; well, you aren’t, everyone else is. Laughing in your general direction that is. And you don’t really get it. I’m not sure I have mastered Japanese comedy quite yet.  It reminds me of the time in a bar when I tried to play the joke where you point to something on a person’s chest, they look, and they get a finger in the face and learn a valuable lesson. The small gentlemen in receipt of my comedy found it less than amusing and spent the next 5minutes trying to fight me. His friend happily restrained him though and I felt safe in the knowledge that this rabid little dog would not be unleashed to snap at my ankles. I did feel that maybe my comedy act needed a little work however. 

When the karate club had succeeded in getting me nice and drunk, they sprang it on me that like all other new members, I needed to give a speech about myself in Japanese to the entire karate club. I kept it brief. But they loved every second of it. Bursting into cheers at the end of every sentence and clapping like seals every time I used a little more Japanese. I think I can probably add drunken public speaking in Japanese to my repertoire, along with drunken comedy, and being someone that has immense skill in using chopsticks (at least that’s what my students tell me).