LeonJP

There is one thing I do not like about living in Japan, and that is my daily commute.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7142680690427184097

Japan is famous for having an efficient, clean and fast public transport system. Its also extremely crowded. Most mornings you will be packed in fairly tight, but on “special” occassions, normally when there is some kind of delay, you get to experience something which I find just plain rediculous.

This video is from 1991-92 on the Ikebukuro-sen (Ikebukuro Line) from Hibarigaoka Station. The train is heading towards Ikebukuro, one of the larger stations in Tokyo. It takes about 16minutes by express (no stops) from Hibarigaoka to Ikebukuro, or a painful 23minutes on a semi-express that stops 4 times so that they can jam more people in.

I can think of two reasons why this particular train is like this - the first would be that back in ‘91 the idea of “flex-time” didn’t exist and practically everyone worked from 9am. Now many companies will allow/make staff start earlier or later depending on the situation. For example at my own station between 7:50 and 8:15 is hellish - every train will be packed to the point where you cannot get on without some good hard pushing. But before and after that is completely different.

Another big difference would be that there are more trains running, new lines have been made and things are generally even more efficient, if you can beleive it.

Still, massive centralisation has made Tokyo into what it is, the good and bad alike, and for those of us who live here there is no choice but to suck it up, or go somewhere else.

Its April! And yes, I have broken the site. Again. I know…

Those of you who use Expat Japan, the forums that are semi-attached to LeonJP, will know that last week has been pretty horrible with my router deciding to quit and no longer allow anyone to see the website. This has been fixed by turning my spare PC into a gateway/firewall/router box - in short THINGS ARE FAST!

I’ve been wanting to update the blog for a while and since there is a shiny new version of Wordpress out I thought that its about time. I’ll also be posting more photos (there’s… lots…) and finishing my growing pile of Shorinji related articles! If you have questions or anything you want to see written about, feel free to shout it out in the comments or drop me an email.

I have been working on an idea for a year now, and while things are far from complete I had set April as the deadline for a long, long time. I am happy to announce that I am splitting off the wiki and dedicating it purely to Shorinji Kempo to create… Digital Kyohan

Expect an official post once the April silly season is over - there will be photos for that too

I’m still working on a logo and some sort of nice design, if anyone is able to help I would appreciate it!

Just a quick one - here is some photos from the wedding party! Enjoy~

(Click for larger, scarier photos!)

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I got married last year (eight months and counting), and it was a surprisingly simple process. Part of this is because my city (Kawaguchi City in Saitama Prefecture) started an administrative office next to the train station to help speed up the basic paperwork that most people previously needed to go to city hall to do.

What makes getting married in Japan so simple is that its a purely administrative task - you fill in a form, sign it and get it signed by two others and you are legally married. Everything else is just icing on the cake (not that I even got to eat my own cake… grr…)

The City Hall (”ward” office for those of you in central Tokyo) is somewhere you will learn to dread. There are a number of reasons why you might need to go to your local City Hall - foreigners need to renew their ARC (Alien Registration Cards) when their Status of Residence (”visa”) changes, which can be fairly often and can take a long time for what is a technically simple process. My personal record is no less than a 20minute wait after handing over the paperwork, then either being told to come back in two weeks, or simply be handed back my card which was processed in the preceeding two week wait. Both Japanese and foreigners alike can also get special paperwork certifying your address which is required for getting a drivers licence, as well as being able to apply or change your social security details, and as this post suggests, get married. Read the rest of this entry »

The wonderful Suica card in action

FeliCa is a word that many haven’t heard, but its something that many people in Japan would have used or at least have known by its other names.

FeliCa, short for Felicity Card (don’t ask..), is an electronic contact-less RFID IC chip smart card system developed by Sony (who else?) which has heavy use in Japan. The most common incarnations that most people would know is Suica, PASMO and Edy.

Anyone who has spent some time on the trains in Tokyo would have seen a poster for Suica several hundred times without really doing anything special. Again Suica is an abbreviation for “Super Urban Intelligent Card”, but is also made up of “sui” from sui-sui, an onomatopoeia for “smooth”, and “ka” from the Japanese for card. Read the rest of this entry »

Leon is not dead! Just dead tired

Happy New Year to everyone - I know its been far too long and I’ve been a very, very bad boy. Updates will come, with nice photos, which are all still in my camera. I have an announcement about something I’ve had planned for months (which isn’t really all that exciting).

2007 was a year I’d rather forget. There has been health issues for almost half of my immediate family, some serious, some just inconvinient. I was rudely fired while away on vacation (in part because I was on vacation…) early in the year which just threw everything off track.

Shorinji training was a bit of a bust. Thanks to working on weekends, being ill and just plain forgetting Busen was a total write-off with me missing well over half of the training sessions. Again, due to work, I wasn’t able to grade in 2007, but it will be a definite highlight for 2008 - look out for that soon

It wasn’t all bad I guess, I did get married in May (and I’ll post up some photos of me looking horrid in a tux) and went to Australia with Saori in Febuary (photos here).

So for 2008 I plan to pull out all the stops. Something I’ve been playing with for a while is putting up things that I cook on the site, as well as sneaking a camera into the supermarket I’m sure you’ll find it all interesting.

The photos are broken - if you click them you will get the full sized original images, which are very big. I’ll have it fixed sometime soon.

This year Shorinji Kempo celebrates 60 years since its foundation in 1947. To celebrate this there was a commemorative taikai (tournament) held in the Nippon Budokan, with around 2400 kenshi giving displays and participating, and around 7000 guests watching from the stands.

For the first two hours of the morning, from 9:00am, they had 12 courts going with kenshi of all ages doing just about anything you would expect to see at a typical taikai - tanen (single), kumi (paired), dantai (group) and unyoho (randori). These are usually done by rank or age, with elementary, junior high being seperate to the high school, university and adult embu, which is split by rank (kyu and dan), as well as there being a “masters” section for those above a certain age (50? 55? I don’t remember..)

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There is also often an oyako (parent and child) and fufu (husband and wife) section, which is always very interesting to watch.

One highlight of the day for me came next – many Doin-cho from all over Japan had come to the Budokan to participate in the taikai. And it was quite the site to see – easily over a thousand men and women, all in dogi, all with white belts, lined up nearly perfectly facing the “front” of the budokan. The (very most) senior kenshi lined up on stage and they did chinkongyo, before doing some light kihon (basics) training. It was almost freaky how well they all moved as one with unusually good timing…

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It was at this point that an Indonesian kenshi was introduced to talk about the next International takai which will take place in 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. And with with floor of the Budokan full of dogi clad kenshi, she taught them an Indonesian dance, and to the accompaniment of music they danced for a while.　From where I was sitting it looked like everyone was having a lot of fun, and was a good way to remind people about Indonesia and the next International taikai.

Being the 60th Anniversary Taikai and all, the Hombu Demo team came down and gave some amazing performances. I got a few photos, but it really doesn’t do them justice.

After that we had some speeches, the best of the day being from the retiring committee members, all of whom older than 60 themselves, and very highly ranked in Shorinji Kempo. These are the people who until now have worked behind the scenes making decisions at Hombu. The torch has been passed to the next generation, so it should be interesting to see how things go for the next 10 years or so.

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Some special presentations were given by students, families and an amazing guy in a wheel chair. Again, photos don’t cut it, you really need to see it on video. I’ll put it online as soon as I get it!

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Last we had a speech from Shorinji Kempo Board Chairperson Arai-sensei who closed the taikai.

Now I have to say that I was fairly disappointed – the one thing that this taikai was missing was President Yuuki So. I was looking forward to hearing something from her, it being the 60th anniversary and all. I was also disappointed by the feel of the whole taikai – Arai-sensei’s speech at the end of the taikai was spoilt by playing music in the background as he spoke, the latter half of the taikai was commentated by a pair of announcers who talked to the audience like they had never heard of Shorinji Kempo before in their lives. I don’t think I was the only person to be disappointed as many people had left once the hombu demo team had finished. Only one of the speeches had any feeling of being appropriate for the setting and that was from the board member who was retiring!

I’ll have to stick around and see if they do any better in 2017!

Hope you enjoy the photos, I’ll add some more into my gallery as I get time.

Yet again it has been 3 weeks since my last post! Many, many apologies, I can tell some of you still pop in to check if anything is happening, then curse my name when you realise that nothing has changed in the slightest.

Well I have some goodies coming, namely photos, and lots of them. Most recently was the Tokyo Kita-ku Shorinji Kempo Taikai. I’ve also been told there is video footage, so get ready to see me get battered in Unyoho (better known as Randori to kenshi, and sparring to everyone else), and also do a paired embu with my wife (its not very good). I’ll even throw in some videos of really good people doing embu just so you get an idea of how bad I was.

Not quite as recent was the 60th Anniversary Taikai, which I will write about later today and get something onto the site for you all. I went away dissapointed, and I will explain why, but at least I got some nice photos.

I also recently went on this years Yamanote Halloween Train, which any google search will give you as much “I heard from a friend of a friend” bollocks as any good wackjob conspiracy site will. I’ll talk about that and give you some photos AND maybe even a video! Good eh?

Last is more Shorinji Kempo posts! I’ve had a mini series on Goho, Juho, Seiho sitting in my half-written pile for many months now, which will be mixed up with some photos, and put onto the site this month. I promise. If it doesn’t happen this time, I’ll paypal you all a dollar each - which wouldn’t be all that bad if the exchange rate keeps going the way it is

Oh and in other news I have a new job - I shouldn’t say much but it is still IT, still with a foreign company, but easily a hundred times more fun.