|
This past Sat, I went to Ashikaga with Michael Wert. We visited Japan's oldest school, and admired the cherry blossoms. After that, we checked out a gift shop. Mike was wearing a t-shirt he bought at a martial arts university in Chiba. Well, this shirt sparked the interest of the owner of the shop we were in. Mike speaks Japanese, so before I knew it, we were in a corner of the shop drinking coffee and discussing the philosophy of martial arts. Wait a minute, that's wrong, Mike and the man were discussing while I pretended to understand what was being said. Mike was very nice, and translated some of the stuff for me. The man asked if I understood Japanese and I said not really. Then Mike was nice enough to say that I had studied Chinese. Next thing I know, the man son, who happened to speak Chinese, was sitting with us. So now this guy is trying to discuss Japanese philosophy with me in Chinese. I couldn't understand him, so he started writing Chinese kanji, thinking that I would understand. I had no clue what was going on. (Thanks a lot, Mike!). That bombed, so the son left, and I was back to listening to Mike and the man. We spent nearly an hour in the shop. The man was really pushing Aikido. He was a 6th degree black belt and the head teacher for the Ashikaga area. He was even kind enough to give us some demonstrations, which failed when he tried them on me. I couldn't focus my flow of chi (energy). I sat on a chair and was supposed to think about my heart and my chi being at the base of my spine. so while I was doing this, I made a cirle with my thumb and index finger. The goal was for me to have an "enbreakable circle." Had I focused my chi, he would not have been able to pull my fingers apart. But, he broke the cirlce time and time again because all I could think about was how much I had to pee. Tragic, really. So why is the title, "never go anywhere with mike"? Because whenever I am with him, we always seem to get involved in some martial arts thing, not that martial arts are bad. The last time I saw him, I had to sit in a non-heated gymn early on a Sat morning for 3 hours, wearing only jeans, a t-shirt, and a raincoat. I did this because he had to pass a kendo test. So I watched about 100 kids of various levels in kendo, all test for their belts. I could think of warmer things to do on a Sat morning in March. Valerie Straayer |