Fallen egg

So weird!

It is actually the very first time (that I recall) that I let an egg fall on the floor:

So strange since I cook egg very often and I am not always as focused as when I practice Aikido!! 🙂

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – On my Chinese messenger, called QQ, I got a spam message from an unknown person that is a sort of new entry among the kind of junk one usually gets:

您好！！！
我叫苏珊，迷人少妇，为追求物质生活，嫁给丧偶香港富商。两年前和我同岁的儿子不幸死于潜水事故，由于丈夫年岁渐老，已无生育能力，眼看自家几辈人创下的基业无人继承，心急如焚。几经思考，决定让我回内地找位身体健康人品正派的男士来和我共同生育一个小孩，以便继承家业。通话谈妥即飞你处见面付定金50万表诚心，怀孕成功再付150万作为酬谢，有意请电***174540**
考虑一下有诚意电话–——联系>

..that roughly google translated it’s an offer of money for.. pregnancy!!! The power & value of laowai‘s genes!!! (yes, it’s not by chance that I post this and the fallen.. egg!)

A proper morning

During an Aikido weekend, like this in Hangzhou, where we are preparing the graduation soon to come (Beijing – Irie sensei, middle of June), I am still feeling some distress in my right ankle, the one injured in Saku.

Also, sad to say, yesterday I felt some pain in my knees and the feeling was unfortunately similar to the beginning of rheumatoid arthritis pains of last year.

So yesterday night I decided I just needed a shower and relaxing, having some beers and snacks on the hotel hall with Ulruch, but not hitting the town.

So this morning after a shirt breakfast at Starbucks, I treated myself a bath.

Very hot water and a few drops of a Chinese medicine that usually I smear on knees and ankles. One of this equivalents of Tiger Balm.

For a longer enjoyment, a fresh sugar free soda and a great book (I’m on the way to finish reading the amazing Void Trilogy from the brilliant SF writer Peter F. Hamilton).

The combination of hot water and Chinese medicine made the bathroom effectively a sauna almost watering my eyes from the pungent medicine.

It was wonderful!!!

Ready for a couple of hours practice this afternoon reviewing some points after yesterday graduation trial.

Have a good Sunday folks!!

Sent from The Lao Wai’s iPhone

Uke at the enbukai

Even if he was injured at a shoulder (and I had a twisted ankle), Ondřej Malina performed also the enbukai at Saku and I was the second uke.

..on a second thought I have to add something: check my comment below!

Other demos have been posted earlier!

A real heart for Aikido!!

The very first time I heard about Aikido was a Saturday night in September 1995. I ended up with other exchange students in Trondheim to a birthday party of a man involved in the university folk dance group (yeah, as Erasmus student, do everything you can was the motto!). Then, at that party I met the couple that now are among my best friends in Norway, Simona and Karsten, and their 2 girls are my little loves.

Anyway, that evening, Karsten did what we Aikido people always do at social happenings: talk about Aikido! In fact the “birthday-boy” was not only in the dance group but he was also the main instructor of the local Aikido club (at that time AVHI Aikido, now best known as NTNUI Tekisukan Aikido club), Jon-Øyvind. So during the evening I discovered something very Norwegian: during important events like special birthdays or wedding celebrations it is common to have a quite large number of speeches..

So while Karsten was explaining me what aikido is and why he enjoyed it so much, suddenly a tall, white hair and mustache man appears, wearing what I was used to call kimono but now I call keiko-gi and a funny looking black skirt, that now I call hakama.. and I think it is just slightly less funny looking! And he starts talking (Karsten translated something from the Norwegian speech) and suddenly he took out a rabbit from the jacket of the uniform, like a real Aikido magician!!!!

That was Kaare, the first time I met him. A few days later I started the beginner course of Aikido in Trondheim.

In the following years he has been for a long time in charge of NTNUI Trondheim Aikido club (not Trondheim aikido dojo, Sverre’s club! I always knew this, having been around long time, but my writing was confusing, as Miraja in the comment pointed out – btw, very nice name!!).

This man always puzzled me: a very independent personality, sometimes defined an old time Norwegian anarchist, a man feeling at home in the real nature, made for mountain trips in any season and for sharing the pleasure of good sauna post practice. A man that started Aikido quite late but gave a huge amount of his life and time to Trondheim Aikido club. In the early years I never shared his view for Aikido, not the politics and not about the teachers. But I have always been motivated and impressed by his energy and commitment. Even in his days suffering injures he always cut short the recovery in order to get back on the mats.

He will be 72 in September, and a friend told me that yesterday he went to practice less than 1 week after a.. heart operation!!!!

And he complained because apparently he had slightly less energy than usual.. forgetting the operation part!

This is our Kaare!

Kaare and Jorma

Kaare & Tissier sensei

Way to go dear Kaare!!!!

super Kaare!!!

Thibet??

Actually, according to Wikipedia, also Thibet can be correct for the English of Tibet, so then in this train magazine picture the editor is using some historical correct definition:

But if you notice on the top left the name of the local restaurant, “Tibet kitchen”, spelled as we all would think, I am more comfortable assuming “Thibet” is just a “normal” Chinglish mistake!!!

Endo Shihan enbukai in Saku – “full” video

It is not the complete video and the quality is not great. Also the Japanese is not so clear, no subtitles, but for us, “followers”, it is not new what he says.. like any other training with sensei, when we hear the same words in.. Japanese and translated to Finnish, German, French, Czech, Slovakian, Russian, etc…

Except actually in Japan, when sensei spoke English most of the time!!! 🙂

More than a demonstration is in fact an explanation of the spirit of his Aikido for the Japanese audience (Aikido families and normal people in Saku) and the three politicians on the right side (among which there is Saku city major).

Hope you’ll enjoy a little anyway:

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – In order to upload this video, first I had to send it by chat to my father in Italy, save locally there then remote his pc from mine during Italian night hours (hoping in faster net connection..) and upload on my youtube channel.. and this was a pain!!! Sending the file from China was much faster than the last upload! 50% uploaded on youtube in more than 4 hours!! Is that normal? But this upload, via my proxy to open youtube, was apparently impossible (and flickr video is limited in time/size!)

[tags post by email, funny thing of the day, saku

Endo Shihan enbukai in Saku

This is just a small but so relevant (for me) video from sensei demonstration at the 18th Saku International Aikidô Kenshûkai in Saku, Japan.

What I especially love in this video is a concept typical in Iaido but not so developed in Aikido: the concept of “seme“, 攻め, literally “attack, pressure”, that from my learning it is not a physical attack, but it is more metaphysical, psychological, expressed by the power transmitting from the eyes of the samurai, by the way, before drawing the sword, one looks at his opponent. Iaido is anyway “saya no uchi de katso“, the victory (the outcome) is in the scabbard, everything is decided before drawing the sword.

In Gorin no sho, “The Book of Five Rings” (五輪書 by Miyamoto Musashi), it is said: “The body merging with the katana, united, becoming one”. So it is not need a physical manifestation of the pressure you give to your opponent, to disrupt his sense of confidence and resolution, prior to an attack.

And this is exactly what sensei is doing toward the end of the video!

I can tell that the first time I saw Endo sensei freezing the strike of uke in midair just thanks to a sudden shift in his stare, I felt goosebumps! Not only timing, as sensei always says, but my mind jumped to my Iaido training: before performing any movement in the kata we had to visualize the scenario of the kata and then “be there”, mentally and psychologically, then transmit this presence not only with the cuts but with the eyes and full presence as well.

In Aikido we focus more on zanshin, 残心, the state of mind at the completion of an action (important in Iaido as well). Combining this with the feeling before any movement, with seme, the technique, if necessary, becomes whole. If your opponent has also a budo mind, probably would see in your eyes there is no need to fight.

Anyway, there are only my personal considerations: long time I do not practice Iaido and my teacher was never a recognized one. Also, being only at the beginning of my martial art path, if I wrote something too silly, please forgive me. But these are my feelings, my understanding for now.

I got more or less the full video (unfortunately lots of Japanese talking, bad audio, no English), but I have to uploaded to youtube (in some ways.. remember, the great firewall of China!!)..