Aso'bee'-gokoro

We've changed locations. Tomoko and I are now in sunny Fukuoka, in the south of Japan. She's here to teach some Yoga and I'm here to support her and track down Miyamoto Musashi, but more on that later.

My last day of training was Wednesday with Nagato sensei in the afternoon and Noguchi sensei that night. Both were terrific. Nagato sensei and I talked, along with a few others, almost as much as we trained, about a variety of things as they came up.

During one technique, we were to grab the person by the shoulder and take their balance. This was to be done using, Mushin, 'no mind.' "Don't think," he said, "Just do it. Just take it." Nagato said this was the same way of thinking one needed to catch a bee. In fact, that's the teaching. He commented that his own wife, when she was very young, used to simply take honey bees off flowers and collect them in her hand, until one day she was stung; she had stuffed too many in. Because she had no fear, no thought about getting hurt, she did it naturally, casually, and had never been stung before.

A question came up about training both sides of the body. Nagato said it was only necessary to train on one side. He said in some parts of the densho, it specifically mentions training a particular technique on both sides, but otherwise we should train only the one. He explained why, talking about how the earth and universe only spin in one direction, and yet are in balance by being 'out of balance.' Nature too, remains 'in balance' by necessarily being 'out of balance.' It was complicated.

A whole lot more came up. In brief:
- At the beginning of one's training, Taihenjutsu is the most important. That and learning to be in a safe place.
- Positioning at the beginning of movement is critical. The first one or two movements make the difference, because we don't always know who the opponent is and what they will do.
- Footwork is vital. Too many people concentrate on what the top half of the body is doing when they should be paying attention to the feet.
- Keep training, and all good things will come when you're ready.

There was much more than this, but sometimes it's tough to remember what Ninjas said after they've said it.

Noguchi sensei's class was a great deal of fun. He took us through Kukishinden Ryu kata at a furious pace. He kept changing the movements again and again, so it was tough to keep up: now he's punching a guy in the gut like a stylized Kabuki dancer, now he's throwing me over his shoulder with no hands, now he's locking shoulders and arms and freezing people in place, now he's throwing my punch back onto my own skull ... All of it done with the connected feeling Soke keeps talking about.

Yesterday, I made my way to Kumamoto, site of the last days of Miyamoto Musashi, to track down his life, art, and death (grave). I've studied Musashi for years, having read 'Gorin no Sho' countless times in as many translations as I can find, including buying the original Chinese. But after my experiences there, I feel like Musashi himself had given me shugyo; I raced all over Kumamoto city, through its castle, and even into the depths of its surrounding mountains, in the rain, at great expense. Today, I'm exhausted, my legs are killing me, and all I want to do is soak in the local onsen and have a beer/s - I'm a wreck.

Want to know what I learned? I learned, "Sumimasen." That's what I learned. The day was strangely enlightening. Was it a taste of Musashi's training? I'll detail my pain in my next post. Tomoko just told me we're to meet up with friends bright and early tomorrow morning to hike up the same path the Shugensha did to some ancient shrine.

Great. With friends like these, who needs friends?