At Jukendo on Monday we learned that the All Japan Teams competition was on today in Tokyo.
Good Morning Tokyo!
Tokyo is an hour and a half by train so we zipped up to see it. In many of the Japanese martial arts the teams competition is more important than the individuals so we figured it ought to be cool.
Jukendo is mostly practiced by the military. Hence the vehicles were an unusual mix
The championships are at the Nippon Budokan. This is a hall originally built specifically for martial arts but over the years it has also been used for some of the cooler concerts and also Cheap Trick played there.
Most martial arts have a few sort of core ideas. Kendo, for example, loves the idea of Never Retreat. Naginata is enamoured with Flexibility. I think Jukendo has Scary As You Can.
The military guys had an instinctive choice for camouflaging themselves in the green seating area
In Jukendo there are three targets; heart, throat and "wrist if it is covering the heart". I
think if you knock someone off balance you can poke them in the back as
well.
A Gentle Warm Up
All targets are hit using a stabbing style. I did see a guy
trying to stab a dude that he'd knocked over. Not sure if that is in the
rules or just a good display of fighting spirit.
Coming for you!
Right back at you!
Needless to say I am already in love with this. It is fast and aggressive and you probably get to go for beers afterwards which kind of hits all my requirements for a pastime. Oh and it has hats obviously. Hats are required for all good pastimes.
A Naginata friend Baptiste is a Jukendo guy and he helped set us up with a sensei in Nagoya to train with; I am not sure if this means Baptiste likes us or not. It could be a cunning plan to have me beaten within an inch of my life. (This is an NHK Doco on Jukendo featuring Baptiste, be warned "contains much French accent").
If they took turns it might work better
At our first lesson Terada Sensei said he wouldn't be able to train this weekend because of the championships; we asked if it was open to the public.
Budokan checklist. We are at 30%. I will need to eat more to collect them all
This turned into a phone call which strongly indicated we should be there, early and not so half arsed about things. Conrad suggested that my usual uniform of shorts and a T shirt featuring internet comic references might not be quite up to standards.
When we arrived we discovered we had seats at the table of fancy people. Fortunately I bought a collared shirt yesterday.
Giving thanks for food (or for not being on the court)
The speed of the footwork is insane and also incredibly stable. They look like they are on wheels rolling across the floor as there is no up and down movement at all, just thousands of tiny steps one after the other.
We remembered to get our food for the suckers stuck at home too
Because of the small target area the entire art is about tiny movements, in naginata you can attack the feet or the head (plus bits in between) so there is a big range of techniques the other guy could use on you. In Jukendo you know exactly where he is going to attack. Everything becomes much smaller.
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