Matthew Aaron Kelly
ENGC 1101-42
Professor Cleaves
2/09/10
Trials and Tribulations of Budo
I practice a Japanese Martial Art, or Budo, called Kendo. Practiced and taught in a very traditional sense but still a light atmosphere among peers. We are taught respect our training place, the dojo, by taking our shoes off, bowing when entering and leaving and other traditions. It is a medium-contact sport using near-full-body armor including three main pieces, chest piece (dou), helmet (men), and hand guards (kote). We use a bamboo sword made of four pieces of wood and leather to hold it together called a shinai. It is a very engaged budo involving endurance, strength, but mostly a willing mind. Many traditions are upheld while during the course of practice. Learning such a martial art can be very demanding yet rewarding and has almost a militaristic feel to it. It can be very stressful mentally and physically which have brought forth many different unique thoughts and emotions I have never considered in my life before.
We call our teacher by the Japanese name, Sensei. Sensei is used as a suffix for a person in a respected position, such as teachers, doctors, professors, and many others figures of authority. He is a strict but fair teacher who uses mainly examples to show you how things are done right. It is often hard to understand exactly what he means on the first and second times he explains it, but I try not to worry since I know it will be shown in again later. My main issue is when I am performing taught action. This involves us being up close and personal with my opponent, striking each other with our shinai. When it is our turn with Sensei, this is where stage fright tends to set in. Knowing exactly what he wants us to do at times seems easy, but he can often see flaws in our work due to his twenty years of experience. Sensei is quick to point out the flaw, and will make you repeat it until you perform it to perfection. When you strike a target you have to call it out by name, shouting it strongly with good spirit. At the same time you are lunging with your hips towards your target and slapping your right foot down. The strike, the foot slap, and the shout should all be at the same time. There is a term in Kendo for this action, kikentai, and the action of doing it at the same time is called kikentaiichhi. The term icchi is referring to all before it, being as one. Ki is your spirit, Ken is your sword, and Tai is your body. So the closest English translation is, spirit, sword, and body as one. It is one of the strongest points you learn early on that is your goal to master. This mindset is added to any action you perform in Kendo. To gain perfection such a goal is impossible, though can always strive for it. I have learned from the arts in Japan that you can never obtain perfect, but you can always get closer.
The main stress of Kendo for me is jigeiko. Jigeiko is free sparring, a training session where one trains and apply the fundamental skills of Kendo. Every time I come to Kendo, I worry about what I will gain from jigeiko. We spend two or three minutes with each person and continuously spar until time is up. No points are scored, since the main purpose of jigeiko is to learn from each other. Jigeiko is done at the end of practice, when you are fairly worn out from previous encounters.
I try my best when I am practicing with Sensei, but I am already fatigued from the day’s lessons. He is quick to point out mistakes and while using the time wisely, he keeps on the pressure with strikes that are supposed to show me where I am weak. When I don’t get how to change my actions, it looks if he is just beating down on a defenseless person. He does this for a reason, and anyone in kendo would respect this. It does benefit me in the long run, as I learn from it. I would try to block on instinct, but it is something my Sensei frown on. Blocking is something I was never taught, so I should not be practicing it until I have learned how to do it. What he wanted me to do was apply pressure to him, attacking his weak points. My problem of thinking things were not open took me several weeks to grasp when I could hit something. The next problem was, I was afraid of hitting places other than men for non point-scoring hits. Only recently did I go for kote or even the rare dou hit. I believe I have a clearer understanding of how I should present myself. When I give it my all, I need to make sure I am looking at not only mastering what I know but what could possibly be next. Unfortunately even when I give it my all and learn from my Sensei, the job is rarely ever done. I will still have several other matches with fellow students leaving me exhausted and often unable to give it my all with them.
In the end I leave with sore feet, and several bruises. I have a smell of sweat combined with the leather and cloth used to make the armor, a stink unique to Kendo. My hands and legs are often spotted blue with places where the cloth gets touched. When you complete something so intense in but two hours, a very rewarding feeling to be that worn out and damaged. This is something many will brag to other Kendo students, their family and friends. I have been doing this every Saturday for almost a year now, and hopefully will be practicing Kendo for the rest of my life.

SENSEI SAID MY JOURNAL SHOULD SAY I SHOULD LISTEN BETTER!
Noted.

Last week Sensei was beating down on me hard and telling me not to block and take some hits. So this week, I went for hits that were actually successful. He still brought on a lot of pressure. But I really felt like I made progress. That felt really good.

I was reminded how much I suck at suriashi and fumikomi. But good fun, long and heavy day that I actually liked. Can't really think of much more that went on. I did feel I was being less awkward about hitting Kote

I was talking with Mon and Nate inside the ice cream shop about that practice. Nate brought up that one could have a journal to note what you are doing wrong, right, etc. Then you can look over it and think more clearly about what you learned in Kendo. Mon or Nate then talked about how Mon blogged about must of her experiences in Kendo. Since I believe myself to be a technologically inclined person, and already had a blog on my own personal website.
Whenever we learn things, one way is from Sensei's instructions to the whole group. The other way is from each other one-on-one with keiko or jigeiko. So I start with what I recall told from each person I was with.
Nate told me early on to keep zanshin and for kihon strikes, so with him I got to get used to that and worked on it.
Sensei was very straight forward in what he wanted, but not in a way I understood right away. In jigeiko today I had issues understanding that he wanted me to not block(something I have never been instructed to do), and to attack for the sake of pressure, not just for kihon. Which I didn’t quite understand, since I felt he got me in too close to even really strike. The purpose was to have me strike regardless, not needed to step forward. Eventually I may have an opportunity to strike with fumikomi, in order to get a strike that would count as a point.
My Men was too tight, my skull was bruised. Oh well!
I was flustered from the fight with sensei and had troubles getting engaged again when it came to fight Mon, so I think I wasted any sort of usefulness there.
Not sure if I remember how things went with Tyler. I haven’t been doing jigeiko too long and he hasn’t been here many Saturdays. I think it was like Berry with less talking. Does that work for an explanation?
With Berry I worked on zanshin and looking for proper openings. I had some issue with turning around and coming back, having to do with zanshin that I practiced with.
Elizabeth and I seemed to both be fairly tired and would go in spikes of of effort and apathy. She then asked if we could practice men tare-tare men, switching off. I liked that suggestion, seemed to work out.
Gibb and I could rarely get anything off on each other. I heard Nate working with him on zanshin before, so I got him to stick to that, instead of trying to reset the match after every confrontation. Thinking about what I could hit for a counter-attack or pressure I took my trys on hitting kote here and, kind of brought things together for the day.
Again, men, hurt, bllerrggg. That reminds me, time to go tie it tightly now and take my stuff out of my bag in general.