Back in..business!

Not so much action for the next days, except action.. at work, starting from overtime today!!

Back home in the early morning, after a very nice and useful, for my Aikido, trip to Kyoto. As I will write more about later, it was a great reality check after probably too much time practicing only in China.. I got my @$$ really kicked and got the further proof that my technique sucks, and probably sucks much more now than 1.5 year ago, after so little practice with the kind of sensei like Tissier sensei and Yasuno sensei.

Anyway, the practice has been quite demanding, even if I am happy to have reached the “end” still standing 🙂 ok, I had to leave the mats 30 minutes before the end of the last session with Tissier sensei, but still, I am quite satisfied by the physical condition. On the other hand, the trips to and from Kyoto have been really hard, an almost deadly combination of bad luck and overestimating my energy! I sometimes forget I am not anymore a young backpacker able to stay awake a full night and still hitchhike the day after along the roads of Northern Europe (it was 1999 – god, so long ago!!).

The bad luck had shown itself firstly a few weeks ago, when I had been called by Ctrip, the agency where I bought my flight tickets, saying that the return flight Shanghai – Hefei for yesterday night had been canceled, without any replacement at an acceptable time. Only solution for not losing more working time (that I will need later!!) was taking a night train from Shanghai.. First time with multiple luggage (backpack and new Chinese trolley, 26 inches, bought for this trip at the very good price of about 250 RMB).

The other bit of bad luck arrived basically three steps into Japan: as soon as I got out of the airplane, in the connecting extended corridor from airplane to terminal there were one guy and one woman with a white board and my name written on that. I was just walking past them, without even noticing that (this is not a common situation when I get out of a plane), but the man was there just to attract the attention of gaijin (laowai in Japanese 😉 ) and pointing to the board.. As soon as I saw my name written there I knew there were not going to be good news!! In fact also my return flight Osaka – Shanghai had been canceled (!! China Eastern Airlines, if you wonder which company I was using). So then I had been re-booked to the only other possibility, that was a flight 3 hours earlier, making my Sunday transfer from Kyoto to Kansai airport a bit more stressful!

You see now why I cut short the last session: not knowing traffic and distances from dojo to train station in Kyoto I wanted to be extra careful with the time, not having much margin to play with!!

The overestimation of my abilities to recover energy came for the first part of the trip: a night at Hongqiao airport (Wednesdya to Thursday) in order to catch the very fist subway to Pudong (that takes about 2 hours) and check in not too on a hurry!

So my trips have been:

Going to Japan (Wednesday):

• taxi from home to the airport, good time in advance to be sure – left home around 6:30pm
• Hefei to Shanghai Hongqiao by plane
• “sleep” in airport (not too uncomfortable, but I am a little paranoid, so I took care to sort of bind my luggage to myself – discover in the morning that actually a part of the airport closes until 5am, and you can sleep inside there in a more safe way – good to know for the next time!)
• subway from Hongqiao to Pudong
• Shanghai Pudong to Osaka Kansai airport by plane
• express train Haruka from Kansai to Kyoto
• local bus to hostel in Kyoto
• check in and run to first session with Tissier sensei!!

Coming from Japan (Sunday):

• taxi from Kyoto Budo center to train station (around 20 minutes on Sunday)
• express train Haruka from Kyoto to Kansai airport
• Osaka Kansai airport to Shanghai Pudong by plane
• subway from Pudong to Shanghai central train station
• Shanghai to Hefei by night train
• taxi home, from Hefei train station, 6am this morning (the 23:52 train from Shanghai is always late!)
• got home, set washing machine for sweaty keiko-gi, gave my feet a salty-hot water relaxing bath and.. went to take the shuttle bus for work!

Just missing a bike and boat tour for the full package!