LeonJP.com

Hi! Long time no see, hows things?

Its been fairly quiet here at Leonjp - most of my focus has been on the Expat Japan forums which have been chugging along nicely.

On the Shorinji front I have to admit I haven’t been training - I’ll need to get back into it and get back into busen. Still hoping to have Nidan before my birthday in November, and I think it should be a possibility.

I’ll be updating the blog again this week to fix some annoying issues (the new wordpress is apparently pretty good), and then you will be seeing new content!

Just busy

2008 was a crazy year, and 2009 looks like it will be equally so - ah well.

I recently moved from Kawaguchi in Saitama to Yachiyo in Chiba. Thats right, even further out of Tokyo… Gah! There was a sane reason for this - Saori will be working at a local hospital from March, so being close was important as she’ll be working night-shift and other weird hours so commuting by train will be hard, if not impossible.

We also got a white Shiba puppy which we have named “Moro” - if you have ever seen Ghibli Studios fantastic animated movie Mononoke-hime then you might remember the giant white wolf - thats where we got the name. So she’s about 4 months old at this time and busy destroying everything in the apartment in a systematic manner.

Meanwhile my Shorinji training has ground to a halt - moving to Chiba means that its almost 2hours between home and the doin. There is several clubs nearby, and in the recent past there may have been one a mere 200m from my house! I’ve been meaning to find out about that, but busy busy. Busen is also on hold, this year was a bust again as I did not have enough attendance credits to advance to the next year. I’m still undecided if I will try again (and go to Chiba Busen), or give up on busen for now.

Also the forums I setup two years ago - “Expat Japan Network” - are going strong. If you haven’t had a look go now! We have get-togethers every few months and anyone who is in Tokyo is welcome to come along, have a drink and a chat. There’s always some kind of discussion going on, and if you have a question chances are someone will have an answer.

I usually don’t have alot of free time to be writing content for my blog, so I thought I can do the next best thing - post up photos!

I’ve almost been here 4 years now and there is a healthy pile of photos, I figure I can fit in one a day.

This is a little photo of an apartment building in Itabashi.

If you have had a quick glance through the tokuhon you would have seen a section talking about sen (先　せん), which is translated as “initiative”.

Sen is not something that often comes up in training, but while at busen my instructor surprised the group by asking “I want you to do uchi-uke-duki, but using sen“. We all looked at each other - everyone was at least shodan and had heard of sen - and he pointed to a pair of kenshi and said “you try it”.

Around the group we each tried, and at the end he asked “so what is sen?”

Sen, or initiative, is split into 4:

• Sen
• Go-no-sen
• Sen-no-sen
• Ki-no-sen

For these to make more sense I’m going to explain it in a different order to what is usually listed.

Go-no-sen is how we usually practice techniques. The attacker makes his move, you meet the attack and counter. This is often called “machi-no-sen“, or waiting sen. If you were doing uchi-uke-duki then you are waiting in kamae, when the attack comes you deflect it and counter as written as kihon.

Sen is also knows as tai-no-sen, mutual sen. The idea here being that when an attack is made, you counter at the same time. Using uchi-uke-duki this would mean you would be aiming to do gyaku-duki at the same time as the attacker, using uchi-uke to stop the attack.

Sen-no-sen is one of the most simple ones - its taking initiative before your opponent does. To put it basically, its moving first, but the important point being its moving first “knowing” what the other guy is going to do. For example doing uchi-uke-duki when the attacker intends to kick is not going to work out well

Last of all is Ki-no-sen. The first three are “physical” sen, from the opponents physical actions (stance etc) you are able to take initiative. Ki-no-sen is based on their mental actions - which I understand to be their attitude and thoughts. A good example of ki-no-sen techniques are jōhō shikake, jōhō techniques which are used without the opponent having made a move.

So next time you do some training, try using different types of sen - many of the 3-kyu techniques are well suited to this, but you should be able to do it with any gōhō technique in the syllabus.

It only took three all-nighters, but this site, as well as ExpatJapan and Digital Kyohan are all running fairly happilily all on one server as virtual images. Err, what does that mean? Means its easier… you know, like only took 3 whole days easy.

Anyway, I can finally see my own site from home again, and its running on fast hardware, using a clean install. I can post up new stuff without having to fight with the site. To get things rolling, heres a photo from last year I’ve been meaning to post for a while!

Edit: Looks like images are working again!

A few small things to fix, but at least its working now

Just a quick one - had my one year wedding anniversary on Saturday!

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!)

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 »