Sunday

My God it is raining.  Real hard sheets of rain, and constant since 6 this morning, so that's about 7 hours of constant rain!  Warm though, not that you notice it till you go into an airconditioned building.

So, Saturday was a relax day, helped James with gardening, then we managed to put together a bamboo knife hand conditioning thing whose name we don't know, but it is basically a fair bit of bamboo tied together that you then do knife hand strikes through...

Just had five instructive minutes on the internet trying to find the name.  Found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ykNZ7rAcw

and

http://www.skepdic.com/yellowbamboo.html

Sigh, Ki masters... so sad.

Anyway, back on topic, as it were.  We went to Gojo Ryu on Saturday night, had fun there.  The katas are very different to the Shuri-te ones I've learnt; all slow, slow-quick-quick!  I spent some time getting lost.  The one strike kumite was interesting also, though I found the ranges on it difficult.  I like to step forward, but the requirements were to step back.  Overcoming natural inclinations is hard, but then I have a natural inclination not to get hit and I still tend to embrace that!  Humm...

Today was meant to be us doing the Fudoshin challenge, but the rain has prevented us.  I'm going to go out in a bit and lift weights in the rain, do some weight circuits to get the blood flowing.  There's a family meal this afternoon, but we might get out in time to go to Gojo Ryu again. 

Tomorrow will be me at the Budokan in the morning, then jujitsu in the evening.  Ah, this is the life!

Heeeeee!

You know, it occurs to me that I was meant to be doing some stuff on my observations of Japan on this blog.  I'll try and stick an entry up later.

Peace out!