2nd Kyu – The Brown Belt

We were standing in the dojo on the second floor of Yosh Uchida Hall in my former college where I used to train. I had joined the Karate Club after coercion from some friends, and one of them ranked as a Brown Belt in karate-do. He was teaching the class that day before our Sensei came in to take over, and he was walking us through the first kata. It might’ve been my second club meeting, and I was trying to memorize the next few steps of the short kata. Sempai paced the room as he counted, “One.” Ki-ai. “Two.” Ki-ai. Still keeping count, he walked up to me and effortlessly readjusted my balled-up fists a few degrees to where they should be. I remember, at that precise moment, glancing down at the brown belt he wore and thinking, “No way I could make it that far in rank. I don’t have the strength, will, time, or endurance.” Everyone around me breezed through the first kata, crisp and precise in their movements. And there I was, couldn’t remember beyond Step 3 by the time I had fumbled through the entire thing from beginning to end.

This past Saturday, I tested for nikyu.

I have to give props to my uke—I know not everyone wants to prepare a whoppin' two-and-a-half months before their actual test, and without complaint, he stayed many overtime dojo nights willing to be tossed around by me. He worked through the sore shoulder and the yonkyo bruises and the snagging of his toes on mat seams coming up from a roll. He put up with me tripping over him during shihonage from hanmi-handachi; falling on him during jiyu-waza; ramming his face into my knee during kaiten nage; me running into his knee during a poorly-timed sweep-attack from suwari waza. He showed patience through my inability to grasp the basic concept of sankyo ura, for not extending enough, or turning enough, or stepping back far enough. And when the test was over, he told me what a good job I did even after having gone through all the ugly of the preparation process.

My three Sensei each gave me a point of critique after the test for me to work on as I continue training:
1.) Watch the hanmi. It's often too wide.
2.) Step back more for irimi and for attacks from ushiro ryote dori.
3.) Tighten the ma-ai during jiyu-waza.

And for the positive comments:
1.) I am decisive, focused, determined, and crisp in my techniques.
2.) I move in an "aikido-like manner." When I asked what Sensei meant by that, he explained that after I got up from pinning my uke, whether from called-out techniques or free-form jiyu waza, he noticed the way I walked or got back into position. He said I was spiraling and scanning my environment. I told him it was totally unconscious, and he told me, "Good!"

On the mat that day, there were only three women, including myself, among the fifteen-or-so guys present. The one comment that really made my day was when a mother of one of the students taking a test from the kids' class walked up to me and said, "It was an honor to see you test." I was genuinely surprised and touched—I never thought doing my best would honor anybody. As the world fell away when I was concentrating on my test, I had even forgotten that I had an audience, and here was this woman visiting the dojo, actually engaged and watching me the whole time.

It was ten years ago when I admired my friend’s brown belt and telling myself it was a goal beyond my reach. The Monday after my nikyu test, I suited up in the Ladies’ Room before training, wearing my newly-earned belt for the first time. A rush of pleasure and happiness flooded over me as I wrapped it around my waist, akin to finally owning an article of clothing I’ve waited years and years for. I thought back to that young girl who didn’t quite believe in herself, who didn’t think she could possibly make anyone proud, who probably would never get to wear a brown belt. Well, here I am.

Daisy Irimi Nage

Daisy Kotegaeshi

Daisy Shihonage Hanmi Handachi

Daisy Jiyu Waza

Why I Know I Have Aikido Issues, List 2

More epiphanies that reveal why I'm an aikido junkie. This is a follow-up to List 1.

1. When my massages get too painful, I have to fight the instinct to tap out at the masseuse.
2. I have a tendency to open swinging bathroom doors with a kokyu-ho extension of my hand blades.
3. Sometimes I find myself practicing various aikido hand positions in my cube at work.
4. Long power outages at work make me want to do weapons suburi in the semi-abandoned parking lot.
5. I think about aikido: while working, while driving, and while sleeping.
6. Instead of counting sheep, I sometimes recite aikido techniques to sleep.
7. I've waken myself up from a dream of a break-fall by slapping the mattress.
8. I've thwacked my significant other and even myself in my sleep as my body executes some random technique on subconscious auto-drive.
9. When I'm at one end of a long hallway, I have the sudden urge to get to the other end by doing forward rolls.
10. I've taken to holding my kitchen knives the way I hold my bokken: distinctly with knuckles on top.
11. I've effortlessly (and accidentally) sliced clear through the plastic container of a yogurt drink bottle trying to cut through the plastic encasing. I blame bokken suburi #1.
12. I once used a shomenuchi strike at a store to keep a falling baking soda packet from konking me on the head. The packet ended up bouncing off my fingertips and landing in my shopping cart.
13. A coworker almost ran me over while riding a Razor scooter too fast through the building, and to save myself, I clipped him in the gut with an atemi.
14. I hydroplaned on a wet bathroom floor and managed to catch myself on the sink counter before falling.
15. I beat up a vending machine that stole the last of my change while I was starving. By repeatedly striking it with my hand blades using a kokyu-ho extension, I managed to get it to cough up my bag of potato chips.
16. I now have use for athletic tape.
17. I've had discoloration, callouses, mat burns, skin gouges, and scars on my feet from sitting seiza and taking ukemi.
18. About half an hour before class starts, even on the days when there is no class, my body gears itself up with an adrenaline rush.
19. Some nights coming back from training, I've passed out over my dinner.
20. Showing off and comparing bruises with classmates have become an acceptable and entertaining pasttime.

Shomenuchi in the Cleaning Aisle

It wasn’t the brightest idea. But it did make me think about the instincts that develop in us over time. I was in the cleaning supplies aisle at Target, looking for those pods of Arm & Hammer baking soda with the suction cup, designed to minimize odor in refrigerators. Lo and behold, the coveted items were stacked on the top-most shelf. I quickly analyzed the bottom shelf: too flimsy for me to stand on for an extra boost. The baking soda was stacked a bit further back from the shelf’s edge: conveniently just out of my reach. I was like the prehistoric squirrel in Ice Age, eyeing the prized acorn. I don’t know why I didn’t walk the few steps to push the “Assistance” button at one of those stations scattered around the store. It was mainly laziness, but I’m not surprised if there was some stubborn pride mixed in there somewhere.

I decided to make a jump for it. I needed four packs and was able to snag the first three with said Michael Jordan technique. However, things went awry with the fourth packet, set even further back on the shelf. The first jump got it to slide further to the edge. The second jump was meant for me to grasp it in my hand, but I miscalculated, and the packet flew into the air, seeming to aim straight for my head on its way down. Out of sheer instinct, my hand shot up in a shomenuchi-like strike/block, snaking up the centerline of my vision and extending upwards to guard my head, just in time for the airborne packet to bounce off my fingertips and land smack into my shopping cart parked behind me. I distinctly remember pausing for a bit to analyze my body position and noticing that I had gone into hanmi stance, one arm with a clear extension from my center, palm-down, the other arm coming down from the shomenuchi, mouth gaping in shock that the baking soda flew right into my cart.

Darned proud of myself, I finally noticed the couple in the same aisle, looking up from their decided brand of laundry detergent to give me a funny look. I quickly wheeled my shopping cart out of the cleaning aisle with newly-acquired baking soda, reflecting upon the clarity that can ironically come out of one of those stupid things to do.

Solidity

“She is hard to throw,” Sensei comments about me as he helps fix my training partner’s hand positions to launch me into a kokyu nage.

I protest, utterly surprised, “No, I’m not!”

I check my own posture, try to loosen up, make sure I am not inadvertently giving my training partner a hard time. Just the other day, my other Sensei told me not to “strong-arm”—that is, stiffen up my arm to resist techniques and potentially laying my elbow open to damage in the process. I don’t mean to be stiff, and I’m still struggling with the fine line between giving an appropriate amount of “feedback” without going limp noodle, and resisting a technique in a way that may be deemed excessive. Usually, I’m the smaller one in the partnership, and my various training partners seem not at all to struggle as they launch me effortlessly into the air, my limbs flailing every which way as I lose balance, or driving me hard into the mat. Sometimes it’s almost comical, and I envision Wile E. Coyote falling from a cliff and leaving a large imprint of his body’s outline in the ground, like a snow angel on the canyon floor as that crafty Roadrunner peers down and chuckles. Instinctively, I’ve learned to resist, so as to lighten my impact with my long-time friend, the mat.

“Yes, you are,” Sensei insists, and he seems more pleased than crossed.

“But I’m very light,” I say. Surely, I must be easy to throw, even if that day I happen to be training with another woman who almost matches me in frame.

“You think you are, but you’ve built up this solidity from training that makes you hard to move. In a couple more months, you’ll be like a rock.”

I’m pleased with the compliment, but it’s hard for me to believe. Me? Solid? In my Iwama-style dojo, we stress the idea of aiming to be “hard to move”—it gives your training partner a good workout and teaches you the importance of maintaining your own balance. I’ve always thought aikido was all about flowing, softness, and motion, but here I learn to do it a harder, more solid, and steadfast way. Most times, I’m unaware of these slight changes with my technique; it’s subtle, like when I look into the mirror and realize that my hair has grown out really long since the last time I cut it. Only when Sensei points them out that I check myself and start becoming conscious of how far I have come.

Next week I take my 2nd-kyu test. I’ve been practicing for a little over two months. 2nd-kyu is a rank that first demands jiyu-waza on the test, and last night I went a few rounds with my uke. Once, I ended up losing my balance trying to overtake his and falling into a most un-aikido-like heap. Gosh, how embarrassing—I really hope I don’t do that during the actual test. Maybe my new-found solidity will rear its head out of hiding and lend me strength.

Warming the House

We had our housewarming on Sunday, July 31st, 2010. The day was filled with lots of food and family. We set up extra tables and chairs, and doing the party in two batches (afternoon and then early evening), everyone fit! Here are some photos of the event.

Tung's sister and her boyfriend James chill on one of the leather recliners

Tung's cousins David and Steven, with David's girlfriend Lily, on the recliner

My cousin Huong and her husband Marty

Tung's Aunt Thuy with the soup bowl and his mother

Tung talking "man talk" with Uncle Nghiep

My nephew James and his dad

A line-up of the kiddies! From left, James, the twins Kaitlyn and Mindy, and Tiffany.

Chow time!

Hmm, perhaps we overdid the food...

When the guests left, of course it's present-opening time! Tung unveils the Zojirushi hot water dispenser that James gave us.

Now Tung can finally cook his Cup o' Noodles

 

 

This is a hand mixer!

"I accuse Colonel Mustard in the Guest Bedroom with the 13-piece aluminum cookware set"

Some well-wishes from my Aunt Hoa and her crockpot gift

A lovely tea set from Huong

Some twinnie presents:

The Spirit of O-Sensei

It’s not the best shomen out there—not the fanciest or well decorated or grandest. It is “Ai Ki Do” calligraphy, signed by the artist, resting in a simple wooden frame. It’s not even permanently fixed, as we share our dojo with wrestlers and sometimes out-of-town sports visitors of the private high school in which we’re situated. In a given week, it would come off and on the wall many times to either accommodate our aikido training or make room for the wrestlers who also frequent the gym. But our shomen has been there for as long as I have joined the dojo, and its presence stretches back as far as when the now-yudansha were still wearing their white belts. Captured in photographs from the past, it stands slightly out-of-focus, regal and serene, like an observer in the background presiding over all our belt tests across time.

One Saturday, our morning class was booted to training outdoors as some out-of-town visitors practiced wrestling in the gym. After they left, we discovered that someone in their crew had taken our shomen with him. It was a tiny thing, but its absence was literally and figuratively an emptiness in the room. Not only did it serve as a reference point for our line-up and bow-in, it was my focal point when I first started. I tried to shake off the wrestling-room décor and the bizarre Biblical quote painted on the far wall to adapt the “empty cup” zen mentality more conducive to my aikido. I studied the characters, I memorized the strokes. I tried to visualize how the artist’s brush movements and energy could mirror my own as I trained.

We waited for a week, and our shomen didn’t make its way back to the dojo, so we put up a new one in its place. This one is smaller, more modern, with the same “Ai Ki Do” characters written in a different hand. It is bordered by a square black frame, and at some angles, the glossy glass reflects a glaring amount of light.

Maybe it’s the onset of hotter, muggier summer days. Maybe it’s the major-overhaul construction that they’ve been doing to the parking lot and blacktop areas of the high school grounds. Maybe it’s the broken concrete and debris stacked waist-high right across from the dojo that makes the entire place look like a garbage dump, or that awful smell of cooking tar in the cauldrons right at the entrance, blowing toxic fumes into the air as we train. But since the original shomen went missing, there has been a slowness to my training. A busy schedule has been breaking up my rock-solid, four-times-a-week participation. When I do go, I still enjoy myself, but there’s a part of me that feels withdrawn. I am not as energetic and enthusiastic, and the laughter that keeps it fun does not come as easily.

I know I carry aikido in my heart, and, like my writing, it’s this unique thing that I can take with me wherever I go. “That part of you will never go away,” a good friend had told me once when I confided that I was afraid of losing my creative writing skills. So I tell myself that when I step onto the mat. I push past the discomfort and languidness. And I’d like to believe that even though his original physical representation is missing, the spirit of O-Sensei hovers over us all, like a regal observer standing in the background, watching.

Shelves

It's amazing how messy things can get without proper storage. Here are binders, folders, papers, and files all over my office floor.




Tung and his dad put in these shelves in one of the double-door closets. The precision-drilled holes are creatively a courtesy of reusing the hutch of the computer desk.



Here's most of the stuff off the floor. . .



. . .and neatly tucked away on the new shelves. Ahhh, cleanliness.