2015-05-17: Keepin' It Old School

They say "There are many ways to skin a cat". I figure they must mean lots of different types of sharp things can be used to get the fur off the nasty little beast. So we will learn some new sharp thing skills.

Ewa was descended on by the other Ladies in the changing room. Apparently her clothing was not up to scratch. Now she has a knot in her hakama that will inspire fear in felines everywhere.

Tendo Ryu, the old school of naginata I mentioned previously, is holding a seminar at a town just by Kyoto called Ibaraki. The town shares it's name with a much more famous province up near Tokyo. Fortunately we had the name of the town in Japanese when buying train tickets.

Little sickle and a ball on a string. This will take me a long time to get confident with.

At the seminar they had a theory section which we avoided due to our incredible depth of knowledge of the art (none) and language skills (slightly more than none) and instead spent time learning some of the kata with the more advanced weapons.

If it was a real steel ball I would have many more bones than before and they would all be shorter than my current set.

Like many of the other old schools Tendo Ryu starts with learning the naginata, once you have that under control you learn the sword. This means you go from winning every time to losing every time. Once you have learned that simply looking at a sword on a battlefield will get you killed by a naginata wielding old lady you are ready for the true knowledge of the school. This true knowledge is that you can pick up almost anything handy and use it to kill a guy with a sword.

Despite my skills we agreed that the sword guy should look more resigned to his fate. The laughter at me was not in keeping with his destiny.

Sucks to be a guy with a sword I guess.

As is our tradition our return to Nagoya was marked with a stop at Tiger Bar for cabbage with dipping sauce and Tebasaki (chicken wings). The Tigers had played that evening and lost and a bunch of fans were there. At first we thought that maybe one of the players was there as well because he looked quite a bit like the photo of the guy matching the number on the uniform.

And the girls all had clip on ears

If I ever become an actual fan of a sport I am going to base it on choosing a player that looks a bit like me so I can cause that kind of confusion.

Arguable the similarity is more evident when you have had a few beers after a day of training.

I also wonder what happens when two friends like the same player. Do they toss a coin for who gets the same number shirt? Do they just get a new friend?