CHAPTER TWO: I fight thee, with my cookie dough sticks of Doom!

My first love will always be swords. Ever since I held that first bokken, I have wanted to study the art of the Japanese sword. My love drove me to the point of craziness enough that, upon getting an internship to teach in Japan for the summer, and when asked what it was that I would like to do there, I said kendo. Now, here is where my mind got side-tracked. Mu was a student of kenjutsu- he preferred sparring with bokkens. I realize now that, done with just any Joe off the street (or the web), I probably would have died. I accidentally picked a safer route for myself by choosing kendo.

I told the leader of this internship, my boss, my “cultural experience” choice, and he was befuddled. “Kendo? No, surely you mean flower arranging, or tea ceremony.” He said this in broken English, which was funny considering he was barely understandable, and I could understand his Japanese just fine. So I repeated, “No, I want to try Kendo.” And he repeated, “Flower arranging? Tea Ceremony?” I can tell you that an autistic girl would not do well doing either of those things. Eventually he caved in.

I remember the first time I put the bogu, the gear, all on. It was the hottest day of the year. Not to mention that the keiko gi that was borrowed for me was a heavy weight grade, which did not breathe at all, and weighted an extra fifteen pounds with sweat built up in it. On top of that, I had to carry all of this extra weight while not allowing my heels to touch the floor. The head instructor, a man named Ito-sensei, would come by and, with his shinai (a training tool designed for the primary purpose to not hurt), tap me on the Achilles tendon. How nice. It did such a good job of teaching me to keep my heels off the floor, that it took me nearly a year to write it out of my brain when I took up iai in the States. I wasn’t allowed to spar really- I would have killed any one of those children who-incidentally- were also my English students. However, it was Ito-sensei who showed me the first thing- and honestly, the most important thing-I have ever learned about sword work. The very first thing I did was wait in line behind a bunch of six year olds beginning kendo the same day, for my turn to hold his sword. He told us, “This is why you do kendo. “ Now, this comment is not in any way saying that kendo will help you navigate a Japanese sword, because I will tell you from personal experience that it does not. I will get into this later. I think what he was trying to say was, “This is a weapon that can kill you- have some respect for it.” There’s not too many ways that I know of that directly instill fear, but for a martial artist who likes weapons, getting to hold someone’s sword that has a bigger net worth than you do and being trusted not to break it when you have never touched such a thing before certainly instills fear into me. I stood before the mirror and watched as Ito-sensei taught me how to do an overhead cut. I think if I wasn’t hooked then, I was at that moment.

There would be many weapons after that one, but another Ito-sensei gave me is also very special. On my twentieth birthday (twenty is a big age in Japan- it is the coming-of-age year), my host parents and the town threw a party for me, complete with the most delicious cream soda and presents. Ito-sensei attended, and brought for me a white oak bokken. It was beautiful. He told me I should clean it with a cloth once a month. It is so nice that I only used it once for the first day of iai class. The funny thing about that bokken is that it reads, “To Mr. Ito, thanks for coming to our seminar.” It’s a re-gift.

Head Sensei saw me use it the first day of class, and immediately stepped in. He told me it was a really nice bokken- too nice to be using it in this class. I figured, okay, but why? And then I learned. Kendo was far different than iai, in so many ways. The main difference was getting hit. Sure, I got my fair share of wraps when a child or a local police officer would miss my kote entirely, leaving this big welts on my forearms for days. But it meant nothing compared to getting hit with a bokken. I think, despite obvious loss to limb or possibly life, I would rather sometimes get hit with a sword. Bokken, in the hands of crazy people, turn you all sorts of colors. In any case, there were some people in my class, Happy Sensei, for one, who didn’t know the meaning of the word “light.” I didn’t like the idea of denting my beautiful white oak bokken, let alone slitting it in two, so I bought a red oak one; it lasted for almost two years before finally cracking. Bokkens are probably my favorite weapons because they are forgiving, unlike a sword. A good one will last nearly forever if you take care with it.

My first experience with iai was having to change my chudan-no-kamae. In kendo, the chudan stance involves the point of the shinai to be rather high, so as to go into the tsuki strike area or the throat. The idea is really the same for iai, except one major difference; the bokken (like a sword) is curved, the shinai is not. If you were to point a sword in the kendo style of stance and then thrust it, you’d end up with the point ending somewhere in your opponent’s forehead. The iai stance, the point is lower, so you only see the point of the sword if you are looking at yourself in the mirror. It’s supposed to conceal the length of your blade- can’t really do that with the shinai. This was one of many headaches iai gave me. Then, there was my footwork. Kendo feet are balancing almost on a tightrope, where as iai is very natural. It’s hard to believe now I could screw up “natural” walking, but it’s easy when you are used to walking on the balls of your feet. If this wasn’t bad enough, I had this kendo habit almost broken before I went back to school that fall and picked up kendo club. A word to the wise for anyone: never EVER do two sword styles at once. I don’t care what the All Japan Kendo Federation says, I cannot fathom being able to do kendo and iaido together, without going crazy.

The first time I sparred in kendo was with a third grader half my height. I couldn’t score on her because she was too fast, and she could not score on me because I was too tall. We battled to a 0-0 tie, and I was just fine with that. The first time I sparred in iai was with these things called goshinken sticks, crazy little Nerf bats of doom. I went against the youngest sensei of that time, a kid I will call Broody, because he always seems to be in a state of gloomy…except when he did sparring. He enjoyed slapping the crap out of people. Besides Head Sensei, he was the only person whom I ever heard make a cracking sound with the goshinken stick that resonated across the dojo. The first time I sparred with him, I won. This was the only thing kendo actually helped me out with. That pissed him off, so he hit me in the head. I don’t remember much after that. Broody and I ended up becoming really good partners for each other. He with his skill and speed and I with my quick thinking made for some good battles. I think you could say he was my first favorite opponent. But then all too quickly, he was gone.

Some of the older sensei have older models of the goshinken not made by the Actionflex company. The insides of these models were made out of anything from wooden dowels to PVC pipe, and very often would break with one good hit. One of my teachers, Happy Sensei, had one that reminded me of a fukuro shinai- the early model of the modern shinai. It was basically a wooden rod with a bag sewn over top of it. He cracked me in the mouth with it, and the whole side of my face went numb. For days, I checked for a bruise, which I did find upon brushing my teeth several days afterward. The inside of my cheek was purple. It was the coolest bruise I ever received, and I was thankful for not having to lose teeth from it. Thank goodness for technology. As much as I hate the idea of untrained kids hitting each other with sticks, knowing that they are going to do it anyway, I am thankful for Actionflex and Nerf. They may be poor substitutes for the real thing, but do you really want sharp swords in the hands of idiots?

I loved the sword because of its safe distance it put between me and the other guy. Sure, you can’t cut them if you are too far away- a lesson Head Sensei taught me several times over- but it helped a mildly Autistic girl get over her discomfort with having to get close to people. Weapons became my joy, and addiction. Yu can never, as far as I’m concerned, have enough weapons. I don’t own a gun, but if I ever did, I’d probably collect them too. I started to do something similar going through the ranks of karate.

Firstly, there is the ubiquitous bo kata that everyone must learn- for what reason, I do not know. The bo wazas were much more helpful in learning how to use the weapon, and even those I didn’t fully understand until I was preparing for black belt. The XMA bo katas perplex me for all the wrong reasons. First off- metallic staffs. The dizzying aspect of being a judge, having to watch something that shiny spin round and round repeatedly, reminds me of a bad carnival ride which causes you to have a seizure or throw up. At least at the carnival, you can stop the ride. Secondly, the fact that most of these staffs aren’t even wood, but plastic or fiberglass. I have these visions of bo shards spiraling into crowd, causing loss of eye to unsuspecting bystanders, screaming “My eye! My eye! The toxic chrome paint chips are burning!” Obviously, a joke, but I watch these XMA children perform, and it worries me that they can do spins and release moves, but not a proper block. I can just imagine these children actually trying to block a swing from a competent artist, and watching in horror as their super-expensive stick gets obliterated. I am a traditionalist- I take my bo in natural finish wood only- no frills needed. The staff is not cool if you suck at using it, no matter how shiny it is. This is a lesson I am reminded of when one Purple People Eaters comes marching across the floor with their bo out horizontally, ends searching to spear anything and anyone in its path. Children with any weapon is a scary notion, but I’d rather them have a bo then some other weapons. But that is another argument for another time.

My latest conquest has been the tonfa. Sleek, light, and practical (if you are a police officer), they are probably the easiest on my hands and have a definite “badass” feel to them. It’s not flashy at all, and it will punish you if you are unskilled (namely, the radial nerve in your arm will punish you when you hit it- numb city). I just wondered if tonfa was a popular XMA weapon, so I went on Youtube. You can see a couple use it, but notice right away that they don’t use the tonfa much. I suppose like the sword, it is rather unkind-looking to those not dedicated to its practical use.

Suddenly I am reminded of the kid that came into our school, looking for sword instruction. The kid bragged that he had trained in fifteen martial arts. The kid wasn’t a day over eighteen, meaning that if he were being truthful, he would have tried and quit a martial art every year of his life since age three. By today’s standards of professional children, I don’t doubt it as a possibility. However, it wasn’t this, or the Nascar-like gi top he wore to class that alarmed us. It was the fact that when unsheathed his sword, you could hear the earth split in two (or at least our eardrums). This cocky brat thought that, because he owned a sword, he could use it. That’s like saying if you have the ability to jump off a cliff, you should- before knowing how deep the water is below (or if there is water). The child was furthermore very offended when Head Sensei told him to “stop toying with that” and did not think he needed any instruction for how to properly draw out the sword. This, Head Sensei counted on, as he wanted no part of this awaiting travesty. The kid did not come back. It’s moments like this I thank Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.

Next Week: Friendship kuki-do

CHAPTER ONE: rolling the dough

I blame two ex-boyfriends for this. Because these events happened nearly three years before I started the blog, I shall call them Mu and Dan. They were two martial artists who came from drastically different starts in life. Mu was a troubled kid from Baltimore who is the most spiritual person I know. His martial arts came out of necessity, and was no doubt nothing refined (he showed me his switchblade once that he carries wherever he goes). He had a particular fascination with bokkens, and he was the first person that ever handed me one to use.

It was like fish to water. He showed me how to do a basic block (which I still use today) and I remember the excitement I had. Holding that piece of wood was oddly empowering. I remember feeling joy as I knocked his bokken down. This was, I can say for certain, the birth of my martial arts.

Dan, on the other hand, went to the best martial arts school money could buy. His teachers included Navy Seals and West Point graduates. His stories what were got me. He’s say things like “oh, such-and-such used to make us do push-ups until we cried, and then we’d yell, ‘Can we do more, sir?’” - those kinds of things. His style, as far as I could discern, was essentially Kung-fu, although he claimed it was a hybrid. I loved his stories, but I could not put the martial artist he had to be capable of being, to him as a person. He had already changed at that point- moved on to other things, in this case, college.

But he was the one who gave me the motivation to start my martial arts journey. He went with me to my college’s karate club that first night and…well…let’s just say it was anything but storybook.

The first time I stepped into the college gym, complete with six sports sharing the space and leak buckets everywhere, my intimidation level went through the roof. It wasn’t enough to be the new kid on the block, but to have 50+ people all kicking past their heads through heavy bags, focus mats, and at each other? You’re talking with a person here that can’t tell her right from her left- that doesn’t have the coordination skill privilege to call herself “with two left feet”. I explained to the woman in charge (and, at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that women leading their own schools were a rarity, even in a college setting) that I had done some karate before, and that I wished to work out with the club. Unbeknownst to me, the “club” was the college karate group- the cheapest instruction I would ever have at $85 a semester and the most painful. These people were, as Mu and Dan playfully joked, a cult. They loved their karate teacher to the point that some would train two hours a night, six days a week with her, regardless of what papers were due the following day. They also had a ritual called “fight night”, which- let’s be honest- was point sparring mixed with the jubilation of the fact that it was Friday night, and the fact that the dining hall let you horde sugar cookies by the handful. For some reason, people thought getting pelted repeatedly in the head with kicks right after dinner was more fun than spacing out at home or going out drinking. I suppose they were right- especially in a one-street town that only had one bar, barely big enough for a pool table with a missing eight ball. You could always identify the karate “cult” by who ate nothing on Fridays- I knew them. Dan was friends with most of them- the quintessential of who I call “A-teamers” with the perfect grades and athleticism to boot. They had addictive personalities already- two of them were going on to medical school- they didn’t know when to stop studying. Naturally, I thought I was like that too. I like to learn. But they were smart enough not to eat on Fridays. I wasn’t. But that’s a story I’ll share in a bit. I told the lady I wanted to join, and she said, “Ok, but you might want to take the karate class first.” Hmm.

Of course, being the autistic that I am, I didn’t understand that what she actually meant to say was, “Come back when you have taken the karate class and earned your yellow belt.” So I went to club with Dan. Dan, being a black belt in his style, was shuffled off to the black belts’ group. I was thrown in with the yellows, taught by a rather grimly brown belt that probably didn’t care too much for teaching. She persisted to yell at me for my stances and punches, to which I remember to this day, her shouting, “Don’t you know where your freaking solar plexus is?!” I didn’t know. I was newbie. It’s funny now, being that I’ve gone on to do Gross Anatomy and I’ve actually seen it up close. It was an hour and a half of getting screamed at. Needless to say, I did not find much ambition to go back a second night.

So I decided at that point, after talking through the metaphysics with Mu and the logical strife with Dan, I sucked up my pride, admitted to myself I was not able to learn karate through osmosis, and signed up for the beginner’s class. Now, this class was strictly to fulfill a gym requirement. It was meant to introduce you to karate, get your belt so you could say to your friends, “hey, I got a belt!” and never return again. The students that came out of the woodwork for this class were astonishing. I will tell you about two of these people; Chunk and Paco. Chunk was a girl of…let’s say larger than normal body mass, whose exercise regime consisted of tapping a couple buttons on her computer to play World of Warcraft (later, she did not have to do this, as she invested in Bluetooth headset technology so she only had to say the button command). Her karate goal was to touch her fingertips to her ankles. When she achieved this, she showed me in such a proud manner, and I remember thinking, “Good, now you can retrieve the bar of soap in the shower when you drop it.” Let me be clear- I am not mean to fat people. Just lazy ones who bitch about their weight while stuffing chips in their mouths. There are many big people in martial arts who go on to do great things. She is probably not one of them. On the contrary, Paco was an overachiever with a Napoleon complex (and no, he was not obviously short) who had anything money could buy. If there was a golden key that claimed to unlock the key to martial arts, he bought it. The first thing I remember about Paco was that he ran out and bought this gaudy silver sparring gear set when everyone else borrowed some from the dojo vault (a Tupperware box). Nobody liked Paco. In fact, my first semester of college karate was devoted to ignoring both Chunk and Paco.

The thing that got me most about this class was the waiting list. People would tell me, “Oh, if you wanna get into Karate, you have to get on the list. I got on when I was a freshman. I’m a junior now and I’m still waiting.” I found out why. If you did it legitimately through the registrar’s office, you’d be waitlisted and screwed. People bum rushed the instructor before the first class of every semester, hoping to get in. Someone told me this, and I felt like it couldn’t hurt to try. There were 100 people who felt the same way. I figured a class this ridiculous to get in to had to be worth it. I waited for an hour, and finally was taken off the list and enrolled…the last person to get a spot in class. It was a good thing too. I was a senior that year and it was my last chance to get in.

The good thing about entering a college beginner’s class is that it does wonders for your self-esteem. No matter how hopeless you think you are, someone will always be more inept at athletics than you. I remember this, thinking about how some of the kids in my class had trouble with jumping jacks and stretching. Then, there was kata time. The head instructor was obsessed with group kata. We, all 100 of us, had to do group kata while dodging each other and the drip buckets for gym’s creaky ceiling. The amount of people who would bump into each other doing Taikyoku Shodan was hysterical; I never did figure out if my instructors were laughing or crying at us. The funny thing about it all was that we were cramming both Taikyoku Shodan and 27 movements every free moment we had, as if we’d actually fail our yellow belt test if we didn’t. That’s what the fear of college taught us, but that’s not how the martial arts are learned. I wonder now how many of those diligent students forgot those katas.

Even though it was a beginner class, I worked my ass off. I wanted to go back to club and prove I was good. I also wanted to prove that my escapades in my martial arts classes would be a worthy senior thesis topic. I am proud to say I am the only student from my college to ever have gotten karate to count as credits for my major. Incidentally, my senior thesis, “Kinship in the Martial Arts” won an award and $100, but didn’t help my anthropology career any. Maybe that’s why one year later, the school dissolved my major. Needless to say, between working physically and mentally, I pushed myself. And this was my first sense of injustice. I got a yellow belt at the end of class. Chunk got a yellow belt. And so did Paco. And, the hard work paid off…how? I was disgusted at the fact that I got the same belt as a lazy fatass who’d skipped class half the time and a jackass that alienated 99 people plus his instructors. But there was nothing I could do. I knew that after that, Chunk would be a memory, and she was (her yellow belt, I horrifyingly remember, was quickly shown the proper respect of being shoved underneath her bed with 20 pounds of wet clothes and garbage on top of it.). As for Paco…that was another story.

Perhaps now would be a good time to tell you, a little more chronologically, how I got into martial arts. My parents had taken me to a karate school, which was in the business of cranking out black belts and making money, when I was about 6. The only thing I remember about being there was getting to kick and punch this big red foam thing. My dad remembers the instructor shoving a contract in his face, demanding he buy one year of lessons. That instructor probably still remembers my father telling him to go piss up a rope. And so ended my martial arts career. For now.

This is what bothers me most about own culture- the need for all things young and beautiful. The idea that a child should peak at 10 or high school is damn near ridiculous, considering we live now to be about 80. What do you do with the rest of your 70 years? This obsession carries on in sports more than anything (except Hollywood, but that’s a problem for another book). I had a friend, not too long after my run-in with the black belt factory, who had made a local newspaper for her dealings in karate. She was a black belt at age ten who competed and won medals, and was training for the Junior Olympics. Everyone was ga-ga about it. She was supposed to become the next big thing. It turns out this is not an uncommon news story. “All-star kid, does this and this, gets A’s and is a three-sport star!” There’s just one thing the story forgets to take into account- the kid. A couple years later, my friend quit karate. So much for being the next big thing. I bring this up because here I was, at 21, wondering if I was too old to start in karate. It’s rather dumb to think now- yes, I was too old to make the newspaper or compete in the Junior Olympics, but those weren’t the goals. When I first came to karate club, I met two young people; one purple belt, and one almost going for black belt. They were both 17 or 18, bubbly and full of energy. At the beginning of that semester, the latter girl got her black belt, and decided to take a break from class. She never came back. The other girl, despite her age, was a wealth of information. She told us which people are good to spar with (and in some cases, which ones to stay away from) and never once talked down to us yellow belts. It was nice- I wish all young high-ranked people were like that. The point is, age shouldn’t matter. Maturity should.

As yellow belts, we were the babies. It felt at times we were the prey, too. I got the feeling as I lined up for class sometimes the high ranked belts were T-rexes looking for a quick meal, and we were the little plant-eaters they could pick off without anybody noticing. The yellow belts were always the biggest group; we were a collection of rag-tags who were delusional in thinking a yellow belt actually separated us from white belts. We instinctively knew we all had to band together to get through this semester- everyone, except Paco, anyway. Paco had his own grand delusion- that he was the leader of us all. He took it upon himself to lead group kata, to “give advice”, and to go full force on us as a favor because “that’s how they do it on the streets.” It was only natural that Paco took me under his wing…and promptly squished me with that wing. There is a special circle in Hell for students like Paco, where I believe he is forced to teach clones of himself karate until eternity ends, just so he can figure out he isn’t the shit. As much as Paco was on my nerves, I had another problem- I sucked at sparring. I hated it. I had a knack for getting punched in the face a lot. Naturally, the way to cure this was more sparring, I thought. Study the sparring patterns, I thought. Do your wazas- kick, punch, punch. Block, punch, kick. Kick, kick, kick. So, I went to Fight Night.

Remember what I was saying about the sugar cookies on Fridays? There were few foods at college worth eating, but the cookies were to die for. That’s why people used to sneak in Tupperware dishes on Fridays. I discovered this delectable truth the same night I went to Fight Night for the first time. I thought it strange that my pre-med friend, who normally ate like a horse, ate so little at dinner time. Then I went to class, and understood why. I usually pride myself on my conditioning- I was a gymnast and a child, always did sports and other physical activities. I wasn’t a lazy kid. I thought to myself, I can handle this. My stomach thought otherwise. I had no less than fifty sparring matches in less than an hour, all of which I lost, and can’t remember how many times I walked into a punch. I puked my sugary cookies up into a snow bank as soon as I was out of sight from the gym. Sad.

But one good thing came out of Fight Night. I fought a couple of the instructors and found out how good I actually could be someday, if I stuck with it. I still suck at sparring today, but I’ve gotten a lot better. It actually wasn’t from lack of skill but lack of confidence that I was so bad. Paco saw to that. He would make sure to always hit me hardest, for my own good, for course. I don’t know what he intended to prove by hitting a girl that hard (not that I ever think girls should not spar as hard as boys, but he was overkill), or why he seemed irritated at the few times I downright screwed up in group kata. I kept thinking it was a good thing I was only mildly autistic- I had several instances where I wanted to jump him and beat the shit out of him. I think my fellow yellow belts were catching on to this fact because towards the end of the semester, they started sticking up for me. The more Paco opened his mouth, the faster someone in the group shut him up. I’ll never forget the time that the quietest, most laid-back instructor we had, tore into him after Paco suggested he was doing the kata wrong.

Finally one night, there were one-on-one sparring matches in front of the whole club. They were highly entertaining. Then, it was the yellow belts’ turn. Naturally Paco was ready to everyone his prowess, and everyone groaned. I got picked to be his opponent. I don’t know if it was completely random (and I expect it wasn’t), that the instructors chose me, but I stumbled up there anyway, expecting to get beaten. But I didn’t. I won. And that was the end of Paco. I think that was the turning point to my martial arts career. From that point, I could have quit after I graduated from college, and I would have been fine with that. But the moment I won that first match, I knew I loved it. I got my orange belt at the end of the semester, and that was the end of college karate. I lamented that I didn’t have the courage to start sooner, but I did, and I guess that was the important thing.
Half way through this first year of college karate, I got the bright idea that, since my martial arts school back home that I was already studying iai and aiki at also offered karate, that I should do it there, too. I never, ever, EVER recommend taking two styles of karate at the same time. EVER! This was a horrible idea that I will never do again. I don’t know how I did it. My college was two hours away from home and I would study five days a week at college, and go to class every other weekend on top of that. I called it “research” for my paper, and it was to an extent. I was also a nut. But I digress. It was a good thing I earned that orange belt. Head Sensei let me do a lot of things on the account that I was a good student, one of them being allowing me to wear my belt from my college style. Thinking back on it, I’d rather have worn a white belt until I caught up in rank, because I ended up wearing that belt for a whole year. That poor, poor belt left orange thread everywhere.

It’s quite funny how things turned out after I started going to this school full time. I met some nice people- one of them was around my age and rank, and shared the same frustrations about being the same rank forever as I did. Because of his job I called him Verizon Guy, and ended up being more instrumental in my martial arts than I would ever know. I also met one student in particular, who…maybe is best left for when I talk about my love for swords…