yon, shi, shichi, nana

For the past few weeks, sword sensei has been trying a new warmup for iai class. It hasn't been going well. Basically, all twenty of us take turns announcing whatever cut in the happogiri sequence we are at, and counting to ten...in Japanese. Problem is, nobody can remember their vocabulary worth a shit. The sad thing is that Sneezy, Doc and professional mom and son have all done other Japanese arts before this one. How the hell do you get to be a black belt in Shotokan and not know how to count to ten?! I don't get it.

Shi is a funny word- it can mean "four" or "death". Shichi is "seven" unless you say it like half my class, "seechi". Oh, my ears burn. Nana is the other word for seven, as in nana-ju - seventy. Seechiju sounds like a cow chewing cud. Or my other favorite blunder- hashi, not hachi- hachi is the number eight. Hashi is a pair of chopsticks.

I started a new karate kata called "Tensho", or "Sanchin" to most other styles. It is a short, but exhausting kata. It's all about breathing properly. They ought to call it the Tomato kata, because it turns you red in the face.

Bork! The summer comes to a close...

Fast approaching is the end of summer and my free time. Wait- freedom from lack of intellectual stimulation, hanging aroung people my own age, and a job that monkeys could do?!? That's not freedom! Horray for chiro. college!

Anyways, I got my brown belt today! Horray! It is bittersweet for a couple of reasons. I am glad I got it, and with the amount of teaching I have be subjected to, it's nice to have something to learn again. However, it reminded me that I will not be in to class much after school starts. That means a lot of lost training time. I tell myself it will be alright- that not too many brats will pass me, and that I will make up the lost time during breaks. It will be much tougher to leave trainign this time around, now that the real fun begins at this rank. I was also reminded I no longer have Verizon Guy *sniff* to work with.

As for aiki and iai- bah. Aiki class is a mess. We are spending a lot of time on high ranked stuff and not enough on basics so we're ending up with a lot of bad ukes. They can't roll and they pull punches. And they're all younger than me now. What the hell. Iai is getting frustrating too. People are jumping up in the ranks that really shouldn't be. I have been forced to work with little senseis and their mom for the last month. The mom won't let me help her because she thinks she knows it all from watching her sons do it (an armchair sensei). The little senseis are seperating in height, and because the older one grew into the adult-sized bokken, the younger one wanted it too. Except he is a foot shorter. I had to teach them a complex kumitachi which I had just mastered myself and they are not having much luck with it. They are speed demons with weapons. Oi.