Above:The Baha'i House of Worship of Asia. Below:Life and times of your fellow World Citizen, Kolya

Day 3: Was able to start the day with solo exercise for an hour since no classes taking tours today.  The rest of the day until 2pm: cleaned as usual, then helped Sensei trim the trees and bushes in the garden.  It was nice to work in such a beautiful space (the dojo, museum, etc are beautiful too but it was nice to work outside in the garden and such a beautiful Asian garden it is too!)  The whole garden has been skillfully designed by Sensei.  It struck me today that I was living a more real version of the Karate Kid movie!  Of course with some major differences: 1) Aikido should never be confused with Karate—they’re totally different martial arts with totally different mentalities, 2) there’ll be no competition at the end because there are no competitions in Aikido (if I graduate I will need to get thrown at least 100 times in a row by my Aikidoka, however, as a right of passage), and 3) my 3 months here won’t follow a Hollywood-melodrama plotline.  On the other hand, Homma Sensei talking to me in the garden struck me as being very similar to the Master from that movie, although Homma Sensei’s much younger, but he’s just as kind, yet strict, and speaks in lovely broken English that’s quite charming.  Today’s class schedule 17:15 to 21:00 is not so tough.  The general class is taught by Brian San who doesn’t do any super exhausting strength training exercises like Mike San, then 2 beginners’ classes.  Was nevertheless very tired and went right to bed. 

 

Day 4: Did all my (cleaning) chores.  For example: Dojo, Uchideshi kitchen, Uchideshi bathroom, locker rooms, locker room bathrooms, and hallways, also did my 1 hr of solo exercise—before breakfast.  Took the time to make myself toast in a skillet (there’s no toaster), instead of eating a powerbar and granola bars like the last few days.  Nippon Kan only has 1 class on Fridays: Weapons class, fun but no less difficult to perfect than open hand techniques.  In fact, while trying to perform an open-hand technique (very badly) Homma Sensei jokingly demoted me to a white belt—but I didn’t find out it was a joke until I had untied the knot in my belt, it wasn’t until then that he said, “no: joking”.  The partner I was working with at the time likes to throw you down hard, harder than most others and after that he threw me down even harder than usual, but as the saying (from the Hagakure) goes, “fall down 7 times, get up 8”.  Otherwise the class was very good!—weapons class is my favorite class of the week.

Friday nights Homma Sensei hangs out in the TV room which is down the hall from the Uchideshi bedrooms, which I found out when he called me over and I found him sitting down with Baina—the young uchideshi chef and another young guy from the restaurant, they were drinking a bit of 10 year old tequila that was a gift, I explained that sorry, I couldn’t join them because I’m a Bahá’í.  Sensei wasn’t familiar with the Bahá’í Faith and he wanted to know where it originated from, so I explained it was from Persia (now Iran) but that there are now Bahá’ís all over the world and the world center is now in Haifa, Israel.  (The following week I got chastised by the uchideshi coordinator for taking about religion to Sensei—in his opinion I should have just drunk the tequila!)

 

Day 5: This morning attended the Beginners class 08:30-09:45, then helped with the Children’s class and then the Advanced Youth class.  By the way, AIKIDO IS IDEAL FOR CHILDREN!  Because it teaches them to cooperate instead of to compete or beat others up.  And it teaches self defense in such a way as to avoid serious injury to the other person (thereby avoiding law suits!  And simply pain and suffering to others—compassion is a virtue!)  It teaches you to think of others as fellow human beings instead of as enemies, or opponents to win against.  And it teaches you how to fall down without hurting yourself which is useful throughout life- especially when stepping on ice, which is much more useful than knowing how to fight, which most people can avoid their whole life, unlike falling down.

I think it was Saturday that I saw Emily Sensei (Homma Sensei’s wife and a master Aikidoka (Aikidoist) herself) was back from her ambassadorial trip to the small village in Japan that we have a cultural exchange program with.  It’s very interesting how I lived in Inner Mongolia for 4 years, and now have a room next to that of a Mongolian cook, and hopefully in the future can visit our sister-dojo in Ulaanbaatar! Finally was able to find an (unsecured) wireless network to get online by driving all around the neighborhood with my PC on, and on the internet found a competent key copier at Home Depot—from a tip from the Laundromat lady where I did my laundry earlier, that that would be a good place to go (the coordinator gave me a mission to get my room and outside door keys copied), the people at K-mart either didn’t have the right key type in stock or else didn’t know what they were doing—my guess is the latter! Was happy to get some email taken care of (mostly deleting) and read some news.  Back at the dojo, looked at a few techniques using my Aikido 3D computer program and read more of Bushido—The Way of the Samurai, then went to bed (also on my bedside table are: the Dao De Jing by Lao Zi, a compilation of quotes from the major world religions called God’s Big Instruction Book (compiled by Juliet Mabey), The Hidden Words and Gems of Divine Mysteries by Baha’u’llah and a Bahá’í prayer book.

 

Day 6: Today (Sunday) there is only one class—Beginners.  The restaurant is closed and I wasn’t entirely sure, but Emily Sensei, who came in later, confirmed that I was free to go out and about on Sundays.  I went to the Bahá'í center at 11:00 for morning devotions, then checked my email and read the news, then went back to the Dojo, made myself some blueberry cream cheese sandwiches (since the restaurant’s closed), then cleaned the dojo etc, and then made myself turkey sandwiches for dinner and watched some TV.  Then caught up on writing this, took Sensei’s dog, a large Spaniel of some sort, called Genbei for a walk, then finished catching up on this diary and (now) went to bed! (23:30).