Jikishin Kore Dojo
I come straight home after teaching my last Monday class in Numazu nowadays. I've been doing that since this past spring--since the oldest boy entered junior high school. Up till then I'd go from my last class to the karate dojo on Monday nights. I'd meet him there, we'd train together in the "ippan" older kids and adult class then always stop for an ice cream on the drive home to Kannami. I knew it wouldn't last forever. I knew he'd stop doing karate when he started doing "bukatsu" club activity upon entering junior high school. I knew Inochi Mujo--Life is transience. I knew, I still know, that everything changes. I try to embrace it; to revel in it even. Doing as much back then reminded me to live those drives home for all they were worth. And so Monday nights are different now.
So nowadays I come straight home after teaching my last class in Numazu so that oldest boy isn't home alone for too long. I get in and we talk a bit or do this or that and then I get at the Monday night ritual of sorts that I've fallen into since the schedule change came about in spring. I change into gi pants and a T-shirt or gym shorts when it's so blazing hot and humid like it is tonight, grab my kata list off the shelf and go down to the tatami room. It's a tatami room most of the time. It's a classroom most weekday afternoons. And on Monday nights and other times when the urge hits and time permits, it's a dojo.
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| KARATE KATA LIST |
I miss going to Seiku Karate on Monday nights. I miss going to all the dojos I ever trained in all the way back to and including the wrestling rooms where it first all started for me. So many years gone by. Sometimes I feel as if I've lived through a few different lifetimes when looking back on it all. Through it all my heart has grown purer and transcended and adapted: it's become the perfect dojo that I spent years seeking only to find it within. Or so I think or believe or feel ever since first coming across the old bushido (martial arts) expression:
Jikishin Kore Dojo
直心是道場
A Pure Heart is a Dojo
I love that. Where's your dojo? It's right here. I carry it with me. It's all the dojos I've trained in over the years combined manifesting in me in the Here and Now. It's all the dojos, all the senseis and fellow practitioners and all I've gained from training in and with them--all the moves and techniques learned, all the power and technical skills and good character traits forged through the countless hours and years of training.
It began in those first few dojos, which were actually wrestling rooms. If not for all those years of wrestling, a powerful martial art in its own right. If not for wrestling I doubt I'd ever have become as interested in 武道budo (martial arts) as I have. I'll forever be grateful for having such great coaching and being a part of such an awesome team with such incredible guys, more than a few who became lifelong friends. Indeed, it was my attempt to fill the void I felt after wrestling ended that led me to step foot into my first karate dojo--The Rising Sun in Fresno, CA.
What great years of training I had there!
What great senseis I had and people I trained with there!
It was there that I was first introduced to Japanese martial arts as well as Muay Thai kickboxing. It was there that my dream to train in Japan was born and came to me even. So I have wrestling and The Rising Sun to thank for leading me to this path. Both remain such huge chunks of it and always will. For that I am grateful, as I believe it's done much to shape me into a better person and find the will to get up and keep moving after life kicked my ass a time or seven or seventy times seven. As I wrote in Budo part I it's so much more than physical, although the self-defense fighting skills aspect is inseparable just the same.
So that's where I'm at now. Monday night home training. And that's where it began, wrestling leading to karate at the Rising Sun. Everything between that went a little like this:
After leaving the Rising sun, after leaving life in the States and arriving in Japan, my first dojo here and the sole dojo I've remained training at since stepping foot inside a couple weeks after first arriving in the fall of 1998 is Nirayama Iaido dojo.
居合道 -- Iaido -- is the art of drawing the sword. I've trained in more than a few other dojos and arts here since then but when life gets too busy to go to more than one--when the class load gets to heavy, when family life gets too busy, when other activities I enjoy must be put on hold--Iaido remains the one I work the schedule around and continue on with. Iaido is the one actual, physical dojo where I've remained training under the watchful eye of a true master of a sensei during my entire time in Japan. I lose myself in practices there now just as I did when I first began. Iai. Moving Zen. And while rank is far from the goal or purpose of training, it does feel good to have the hard work recorded. If all goes as planned just that will happen again this fall when I test for 6th dan Renshi, which I learned I'll be doing when Kojima Sensei told me as much a month or so ago.
I started karate soon after first arriving here as well. A Kyokushin karate dojo was the first I tried. It was good training but I felt a little more at home at Shumejuku Shotokan Karate dojo so it was there that I trained karate off and the most in the ensuing years. Then there was the kendo dojo at a Nichiren Buddhist Temple that I trained in for a while. Very interesting that was. I spent many an afternoon hour training judo with students of the junior high schools I taught at as well. Judo's a lot of fun, as is another art I came to love and enjoy training for quite a few years here--Aikido. I especially like the philosphy behind Aikido and have gotten much from studying the philosophy of the founder; Morie Ueashiba. I reached the rank of 2nd degree blackbelt while training there and someday when the kids are older hope to make it back to training in Aikido again.
When the boys were younger I first introduced them to martial arts at a Shorenji Kempo dojo that I trained in for a while, only to move them to Seiku Karate Kyokushin dojo in Numazu. After a month of watching I joined them there. The younger boy did it for a few years but never really got into it all that much. The oldest boy never was too crazy for it either but he stuck it out and we trained there together for just over six years. Alas life with work and three kids and all that goes with it is busy; the schedule wouldn't allow continuing training there after oldest boy started jr. high this spring.
So now it's back to the one I can't let go--the sole dojo I go to each week now is Iaido. Be that as it may, the countless hours of training in karate allows me to continue my training when and where ever I can--usually at home hitting the homemade heavybag and doing kata in the tatami room or training the fists and elbows on the makiwara (punching post of sorts) out in the yard, but also after climbing a nearby mountain or peddling to a nearby empty shrine or temple grounds. The latter are my favorite places to do kata. Not that my kata is any better there, but something about the change in scenery just resonates through the body.
Still the true dojo--literally "place of the way"-- is on the inside. Strip all the ranks, trophies and medals and certificates; take it all away the dogis and hakamas and black belts and everything, and still every single hour of training, every mat burn and bruise or lesson learned after being taken down or hit or kicked or thrown, all the character built from getting back up again or repeating the technique a thousand times over trying to get it just a little better, it all remains on the inside. It's woven through and through in the spirit--embodied and beaten into the martial artist. And it goes well beyond the physical, as Gichin Funakoshi, the father of modern day karate, explains of karate--those who take pride only in the physical aspect of it are "playing around in the leaves and branches of a great tree, without the slightest concept of the trunk" The power and eventually even technique will fade with age, but the spirit and knowledge, the inner strength and fortitude, will continue growing till the last breath.
Thus that pure heart--the true dojo that I feel I'm finally catching glimpses of--it's that thing that brings me more in tune with Nature--with the Universe or God or Life or whatever you want to call it. It's that thing on the inside and thus it's the dojo that goes with me.
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| Unbeknownst to me at the time, starting wrestling when I was 10 yrs old was the beginning of this journey. Above is CWHS State Championship wrestling team that it was an honor to be a part of. |
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| Together with Sensei Dow (L) the man who introduced me to karate when I first stepped foot into The Rising Sun in the early 90s. |
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| Testing for my Shodan (black belt) in Shotokan Karate at the Rising Sun summer rank test around 1995. Hangetsu kata blindfolded. Ugh! |
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| Circa 2001, together with Sensei Cho and a mere handful of the many great people I had the honor of training with at the Rising Sun |
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Aikido
合気道
 Together with Yamagata Sensei--super neat guy he's forgotten more aikido than I'll ever know  Circa 2006 or 7ish group shot of Aikido dojo I'm holding my oldest boy center row  |
Testing for my 2dan -- second degree black belt
居合道
Iaido
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| Testing for my 6th dan |
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| Nirayama Iaido Dojo -- the one dojo that I've remained training at religiously since first arriving in Japan in fall of 1998. Pictured here is Shibayama Sensei (L) Kojima Sensei (Center) and the late Ishizu Sensei (R |
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| Kojima Sensei (8th dan ju hanshi) correcting my form, which is something that he has to do quite often! |
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| Ishizu Sensei (L), me, Kojima Sensei (R) at Nirayama Dojo circa 2001 |
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Outside and inside views of Shibayama Sensei's Iaido dojo at a Ryokan in Shuzenji
  空手道
Kyokushin Karate
Second only to getting to do karate with my sons, entering a few full contact karate tournaments
was a highlight of training in Kyokushin. I'm on the right out on the mat in this shot. I never brought home a trophy but held my own and learned a few things so win win. Like mentioned above, although tournament is more sport than true budo there are things gained from it that one can carry on the inside--it's does have merit for building the dojo within. |
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| A favorite shot of my wife paying respects to her ancestors in an old family home on her mom's side in Yamanashi. A pure heart is a dojo and a dojo is a place of the way -- Punching and kicking and the like is not always required to foster the true spirit that all Martial Arts are rooted in. My wife does not practice any form of budo but she has that spirit. She shows it in her own way I'm always amazed when I catch glimpses of it in her. |
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