Part one

Jon Lovett

This is the second installment of my dojo diary. The diary was written as a series of e-mails to the guys and girls in the Shidokan dojos in England whilst I was training for two weeks at the Shidokan Honbu dojo in Tokorozawa, Japan. After a week of training, Kancho Yoshiji Soeno, head of the Shidokan World Karate Association, arrives and we travel together to his dojo at Ito in the Izu peninsula where I am tested for my 2nd kyu.

Ito Dojo
On Saturday afternoon I was hanging out at Honbu dojo, doing a bit of Japanese language study, reading the Rough Guide to Japan, sorting out my washing, when I get called over to Tatsuichi`s house. Kancho has arrived. Yuko gives us a glass of tea and I am introduced to Kancho. We chat for a while, it turns out that Tatsuichi and Saito are catching the same 'plane as me to Europe. They are going to compete in the Shidokan tournament in Lyons on 23 April. Then I'm told, go pack now, you're going with Kancho to Ito dojo in 2 minutes, so I hurry off and start chucking stuff in a bag.

A minute later Yoshida comes rushing in, he's been told to come too. Then we're on the way to Ito. It's a long meandering drive with lots of traffic so it's quite slow. Kancho asks me about my family - now this I should be able to handle in Japanese, it's lesson 4 in "Beginner's Japanese" and I must have been over it a dozen times. But nope, complete blank, so I struggle in Japanglish trying to explain I have a wife, a 17 year old daughter who is just finishing school and a 12 year old son who sings in a choir and who would like to take up karate when he's a bit older. We drive by the foothills of Fujisan, but can't see the mountain itself.

Then it gets dark and eventually we come into Ito. Kancho takes us to a sushi restaurant just next to the sea and we eat every sort of sushi you could imagine. Then we go to an Onsen in the basement of a big hotel. It's my first time in an Onsen. We strip off and lounge in the hot pool for a while, then go into the sauna. It's 96 degrees. After about 5 minutes we get into the cold tub - with some relief - then back into the sauna. We do this for about an hour - heat up in the sauna - plunge into the cold tub. Kancho is stretching in the sauna and starts doing mawashi-uke. He beckons me to stand up and we go through Tensho Kata. So there we are, stark naked, standing in Sansen Dachi on a bench, in 96 degree heat in a sauna in Ito, doing Ibuki breathing to Tensho Kata. Funny to think a couple of days before I was in an office in England, feeling stressed, surrounded by piles of half finished paperwork.

After the Onsen we head up to the dojo, bow to the inscriptions outside the dojo, bow and clap to the shrine in the training hall, bow, light a joss stick and pray to the shrine upstairs. Then we make ready for the night by taking a futon from a cupboard, drink a coke, watch TV and then turn in. Kancho lives in a simple way in the dojo, the training hall is downstairs. Upstairs there is an office with a huge table made of a single pine tree slab, a small room with a TV and table where Kancho sleeps, and next to it a dressing room, with a table made from a cross-cut of the same pine tree, where we sleep.

Omuro Hill
On Sunday morning Yoshida's alarm clock went off at six. It was a beautiful sunny morning, we had arrived in the dark so didn't get a good idea of the location of the dojo, but now can see its up on the side of a hill with fantastic views. As Kancho isn't up yet, I suggest to Yoshida that we go for a run, so we set off running up the road, going uphill and enjoying the fresh early morning air. I can see that there is hill above us that looks like a volcanic cone, after a while we reach a spot where the woods surrounding the hill are open to the road with a sign saying "Nature Reserve". This is irresistible so we cut up into the woods and start heading uphill.

After a couple of hundred meters we get a view of the open grassland surrounding the cone and there appears to be a path leading to the top. I head for that, taking a cut through some scrub with attractive white flowers - it looks like a Potentilla or similar - but has curved prickles and too late I realise it's actually the Japanese version of bramble, so perfect for running through *grin*. By this time Yoshida has realized he's with a nutter, but is very stoic about it. Up we go, straight up the slope. The path hasn't been used for a long time, but there are remains of steps. At the top there are five Buddha statues in a row, looking out in from the cone in the direction of the path. There is a concrete path around the rim of the cone and signs for tourists. Yoshida reads the kanji next to the Buddha statues - they are three hundred years old. We pray to the statues and I get a feeling of peace, then we head up to the highest point.

The only other person on the rim of the cone is a young lad with a model airplane. The view is stunning. As time is getting on we head down again, this time following the path rather than cutting through the forest. It's a bit overgrown, but less prickly than our original route. In the forest we have to step over a rope that is across the path and there is a sign in red. I try and make out the Kanji, I can see one for "mountain" another part of a kanji is "forest". I ask Yoshida what the sign means, "no go walk on mountain" he says. Hmmmm… whoops. The path meets the road where there is an old red temple gate, then we zoom back downhill to the dojo for a shower.

The Grading
Kancho isn't in the dojo when we get back so Yoshida gets down to cleaning the dojo - this is what he's been asked to do by Shihan Tatsuichi. After a while, Kancho gets back, asks us where we'd got to and has a laugh when we say we'd run to the top of Omuro hill. He then takes us to Ito for breakfast, stopping at a temple on the way - and tells us the story of the divine wind "Kami Kaze" that destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet. After breakfast we visit the memorial to Anjin William Adams - the first and last English Samurai - who was shipwrecked on the Japanese coast and then built and navigated ocean going vessels for the Shogun.

Then it's on to the sea view park for a walk down to the cliffs. I'm starting to get a bit nervous by now. I know I've got a grading coming up sometime during the day, but don't know when or how. We drive on back to Omuro and Kancho parks near the old red temple gate we had run past earlier in the morning. We walk up into the forest and stop by a large fig tree, which has a small statue and vases with flowering branches at its base - it's a sacred tree, Shinboku. Kancho says a prayer, and beckons us to do the same. Just by the tree is a flat area in the forest, Kancho says that this is a dojo.

We then pray to the points of the compass, to the sky and to the ground through the Shinboku. We extend our arms towards the east, to the sky, to the west, then the south, to the ground, and then touch the tree for its energy of life, and then reach towards the north. The north is where family and wealth gather. South is the direction that holds "ki" the most. We then do a big stamp and kiai, clasping the index finger of our left hand with our right hand, and finally pray again to the shrine at the base of the tree. Kancho says that this renews our energy and we should feel a taste like lemon on the tip of our tongues. He also shows us the energy point of our tanden and how to project it through muscle tension. We go for a short walk up the path through the forest and Kancho picks up a rock for each of us to keep, saying that this contains the energy of the volcano. Then we go back to the dojo.

In the dojo we change into dogi and sit around the small table in Kancho's room whilst he talks about karate and shows us copies of Funakoshi's early book explaining the origin of karate and how it was developed by Mas Oyama. Then we go down to the training hall - the three of us, Kancho, Yoshida and myself - and start training. The warm up is all done to a count of eight, working round the body starting with the feet and toes. Then we go through a range of kihon, Kancho explains that it is not possible to fight effectively without good kihon and emphasizes the importance of rhythm. The combinations become more and more complex.

Kancho carries a shinai to demonstrate points of technique - such as the position of the leading knee in zenkutsu-dachi and movements at 45 degrees in kiba-dachi. After a couple of hours he says that we will now learn Shikon no Kata. He demonstrates it twice, we go through it together a few times, then he asks us to perform it on our own. This is a failure, so we build it up section by section. Now the reason for the complex combinations we worked with earlier becomes apparent - they are parts of the kata. We go through the kata again and again. Then just about when I'm ready to drop he calls "Yame, Seiza!" and we finish - three and a half hours after we started. Kancho then pops out of the training hall for a moment, and reappears with a belt which he gives to me. Phew!!!! We get changed and head for the Onsen for a hot bath and sauna. I check my weight - I've lost two kilos since I weighed myself in the Onsen the evening before.

Return to Tokorozawa and the Visa
Kancho dropped us off at Ito station so Yoshida and I headed back to Tokorozawa via Tokyo. We took a local express train rather than wait for the Shinkansen bullet train, so I enjoyed the scenery as we left the Izu Peninsula and went past stations with names evocative of the Edo era - Yugawara, Odawara, Kamakura, Yokohama. In Tokyo we changed onto the Green metro line. Above the door a plasma screen gave a map of where we were as we whizzed underground, and also gave news of delays to the services, Delay: Narita, Reason: Earthquake. We got off at Ikebukuro and wandered around the station maze for a while looking for the right line to get us back to Tokorozawa - different lines are owned by different railway companies and you have to buy your ticket at the right bank of machines.

By late afternoon we were back in Honbu Dojo. We were full of joy at managing to return to our starting point despite having to negotiate the Tokyo metro, and for having had the most amazing couple of days at the Ito dojo. However, Saito-san, the Mongolian fighter, was in a deep depression. Instead of training, he was slumped on a chair next to the kick-boxing ring. He was due to travel to France with Shihan Tatsuichi for the Shidokan World Tournament in Lyons on 23 April, and had just had his visa refused by the French Embassy. Months of training, 4-5 hours a day, day in, day out, looked like it was all going to be wasted.

That evening he hardly trained at all, the same the next day - just visits to the French Embassy, telephone calls to France, late nights in the internet café when France was awake. Eventually a strategy was worked out, a fax arrived from France and I helped him fill in the Euro-form for a particular type of visa application that would permit a Mongolian passport holder to attend a sporting competition for a few days. That evening there were four of us watching "House of the Flying Daggers" in the accommodation on the top floor of the dojo. Saito pointed out that there were four different nationalities - the Muay Thai trainer, Reku-san, from Thailand, Yoshida, the Japanese dojo student, me, the English visitor, and himself, from Mongolia.

The next day he went on yet another visit to the French Embassy - this time success! A visa! That evening he returned to full on training. Reku-san had injured his elbow and so was having difficulty holding the pads for Saito to kick against, so I volunteered to lend a hand. For four, three minute rounds I held the pads - two kicks one side, two kicks the other side. It was like being hit with a sledge hammer. Even through the pads my forearms were bruised and my hands numb from gripping the pad handles. He has an astonishing ability to deliver a huge amount of energy at a focused point with lightening speed over and over again.

The last days
On Sunday Yuka Takahashi came to Honbu dojo. We drank thick green tea-ceremony tea made by Mrs Soeno and I gave her the cherry blossom haiku which the Waseda students had helped me write, as cherry blossom is the symbol of Shidokan. Mrs Soeno said that Kancho considered that dojo students had to see the dojo cherry blossom flower three times before they were ready to be fighters. We then went to Kawagoe with three generations of the Soeno family.

Monday was my penultimate night and after training at about 9:00 pm, Saito says, let's go to the Onsen. So he produces two bicycles - small Japanese lady size. In the UK you see kids going around on bikes way too small for them as a matter of style. We were doing it for real. So I found myself cycling up the A6 towards Kawagoe at high speed, in the dark, hot on the heels of a Mongolian kick boxer, on a bicycle built for someone half my size, with only a faint front light for illumination, dodging flower beds, concrete curbs and railings. Dangerous obstacles on the pavement had flashing red lights on them to warn cyclists, for which I was very grateful.

At the Onsen we weighed ourselves. I'd lost 5 kilos since arriving two weeks ago, which just goes to show that weight loss is all about lifestyle. We spent a long time in the sauna, before plunging into the cold bath, then relaxed in a bubbling hot bath, followed by lying outside on bamboo mats in the open air under the trees and then soaking in a barrel shaped hot tub. We cycled back at a more gentle relaxed pace.

Tuesday was my last day. Mrs Soeno's daughter and her husband took me out to visit a temple, together with their children and Mrs Soeno. The temple was just near the baseball stadium in the Saitama hills. An ancient temple on the former road to Kamakura, Samurai travelling to Kamakura would meet here and rest. The Soeno family tomb is here. We rang the great bell by the graveyard and span the prayer wheels, then went to the main temple to light joss sticks and look at the pictures describing the story of Kobo Daishi's trip to China, and his meeting with the red faced hunter and the two dogs.

In the evening Shihan Tatsuichi took karate training. In one of the exercises we each counted down the technique in Japanese. Because I could count in Japanese, Shihan then made the class count in English. Yoshida and I had to perform Shikon no Kata in front of the class to show what we had learnt at the Ito dojo. At the end of the session Shihan Tatsuichi awarded me a certificate of my grading. Later we went to the Sushi resturant and ate huge amounts of sushi. The manager was a former student in the dojo, so he came out to chat with us (wearing wellingtons from the kitchen) and presented us with a huge plate of deep fried oysters. I was presented with a beautiful decorated red lacquer parasol.

We got up at 4:00 am to go to the airport via taxi to Tokorozawa and then bus to Narita. Shihan Tatsuichi and Saito were flying to the World Shidokan tournament in Lyons on the same 'plane so we all traveled together. Yoshida and Reku got up to say goodbye - Yoshida presented me with some drawings and a "Hello Kitty" bag containing some anime characters to remind me of good times in the dojo - and we set off on the long journey back to the UK.

This article is to be published in the November edition of Traditional Karate magazine.