Archive for tkd

curry rice and card games

2009/11/22 at 00:42 · Filed under food, japan, tkd

Last night after tkd, Sensei invited me up to have dinner with the kids in the senshu course (the kids who train to compete at tournaments). It turned out the kids were having a sleepover at Sensei’s house, so that they could leave early the next morning to watch a tournament in Tokyo. Those of us who went to the 8 pm practice ate curry while the other kids were in the other room. Some of the kids came in and out periodically, doing homework at the table as we ate. One of the kids kept getting distracted by the TV playing in the background, and at one point, Yuka put her hands on the sides of his face like blinders, focusing him on his homework.

Sensei told Gentarou to ask me questions about English in preparation for his English test on Tuesday/Wednesday (yes, it’s apparently a two-day test) in exchange for having him hold paddles for me at practice. We did end up having a couple of discussions on words in English. For example, apparently the word “trump” has a different meaning in Japanese, but I couldn’t tell you what it was; at another point, Sensei was talking about doing tkd in English since he’s making a trip to San Francisco next year (excuse for me to make another trip to CA?), so they asked what turning kick was in English.

After dinner, kids started trickling in, and we started to play card games. First, we played BS with jokers, with the extra rule that if you didn’t say the correct number in English, it was an automatic BS. As more people joined, we played Old Maid with the punishment for the loser being a flick on the forehead from everyone else playing. I got caught in the endgame a couple of times, but never lost, but then I felt bad because the boy who I always ended up being against lost twice in a row. :\

Once it started getting late, the kids went into the next room, two tatami rooms with a sliding door separating them. There were blankets and pillows and more blankets laid out. It kinda reminded me of sleeping over at Cornell, but this was probably cozier (but still cold).

At one point, I was asked about what I do on non-tkd days, but I didn’t want to sound lame and say that I don’t really have any friends, but they took my hesitation to mean that I was dating someone here. I clarified that I was dating someone in Boston in a very gender-neutral way (surprisingly hard to do; about the only time gender is specified in Japanese is in asking whether someone has a boyfriend/girlfriend). If I were to explain to anyone in Japan about my dating situation, it would be these guys, but I wanted to avoid potentially awkward situations in front of the kids (I also want to avoid potentially awkward situations in general).

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lab progress + more tkd

2009/11/11 at 23:45 · Filed under lab, tkd

Today, it was raining, and according to the internet, it was supposed to rain all day, so I sucked up my frugality and spent a crapload of money on public transportation. To be honest, it was nice having time to read while traveling, instead of coming into lab hot and exhausted from biking. On the other hand, I was pretty miserably cold walking from the bus stop to the dojang at night.

Since I slept late (because of a fire alarm at 7 am), it was raining (lack of motivation to go outside) and I took the horribly inefficient bus (takes about an hour for distance I can cover in 30 min by biking/walking), I didn’t get to lab until around 2 pm, then went for a late lunch with the Iranian chick in my lab.

In lab, I learned how to visualize my data. First, let’s backtrack to what I’m actually researching. Background: the lab is researching the mechanical properties of malaria-infected red blood cells via simulation. I’ve been assigned the task of breaking the iRBCs and seeing what happens. It’s taken me until now to figure out the code, program something that is probably about right, and run the code to get some potentially interesting data. Since the code takes a long time to run, I cut down the number of iterations, but cut it down too much, so the data wasn’t actually that interesting. Tomorrow I’ll increase the interval time and rerun the code and maybe I’ll know something interesting by next week.

After I skipped out of lab early, I took a bus that conveniently went from campus to the part of Sendai where the dojang is located. Actually, I was surprised because, in general, Sendai buses are not actually that convenient; usually, they all travel to Sendai station. Plus, campus is on a mountain, in the middle of nowhere (comparatively speaking).

At workout, there was a new guy who’d studied tkd in Korea for a little while (I think). His kicks were pretty strong, and he picked up new kicks pretty quickly. (Seriously. He threw a couple of decent doubles. I wish I could’ve thrown doubles like that as a blue belt, even.) There was “sibling” bonding time between Ou-chan and Gentarou, the oldest boy of the group of awesome kids. They even look like brothers because they have similar hairstyles. めっちゃかわいい。

Near the end of practice, Yuka and I worked on clinch/back kick drills, which was pretty interesting because, well, who thinks of throwing back kick coming out of the clinch? My back kick has been dandan improving since I got here, so I was actually landing a lot of the back kicks, though they still don’t have a lot of power yet.

On the way home, there was bonding with Ou-chan about sparring pains (look at the bruises on my legs! ow, my hip hurts.) and stereotypes about America. (no, it’s not true that everyone has guns. if you try to hold up a store with a gun, the store owner will not pull out a bigger gun and run you away. well, it’s possible. it depends, i suppose.)

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today’s combo

2009/11/10 at 07:59 · Filed under tkd

right leg padachagi, step back, step forward, right leg nata

Kick names I’ve learned so far (or, at least, what they sound like):
- fast kick: puchou
- double kick: gambaru
- fast double: puchou (or maeashi) kara gambaru
- reverse turning kick: hicchu/picchu (inevitably, someone says it wrong and is corrected, but I don’t ever remember which is correct)
- nata: tan(g)

The rest I figure out by watching other people or figuring out which part of the sequence we’re in. Most of the kick names seem to be shortened, Japanified versions of the Korean names, so the names are all pretty mysterious to me. I don’t know how to say turning kick though, which is pretty sad.

In other tkd news, the dojang is being renovated, so soon we’ll be training in a place that’s bigger than 6×6 mats. It’s actually not so bad when there’s only a few people. But then there are times like last Friday, for example; it was pretty crowded with 5 adults, sensei, and a group of kids. It’s a trade-off; when there are more people, workout is especially energetic and fun, but it’s hard to allocate space such that everyone can work out comfortably.

Tomorrow, there’s no Japanese class, so no waking up early, no rushing to get places, just chillin’ in lab during the day and tkd at night. It should be a nice day. :)

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hi, snix desu

2009/11/06 at 23:34 · Filed under japan, tkd

Upon arriving in Sendai about a month ago, one of the things on my mind was tkd. Even before I left for Japan, I’d been looking online on the off chance that there may be some information on places to train in Sendai. To my surprise, I did find a dojang, and with the help of Shingu-sensei, wrote a very polite and Japanese email asking whether it’d be okay to train while I was in Sendai.  We exchanged some emails, and in less than a week, I found myself inadvertently stalking a middle school girl with a bag that had a hogu tied around it.

Since then, I’ve been going to workout three times a week. The atmosphere is chill, but focused. The kids workout has a CW feel to it, with comparable intensity and drills. The adult workout is less intense, more technical, less competition-focused.

Since I’ll probably be talking about tkd a lot, here are some brief descriptions of people I train with:

Aihara-sensei: The sensei. He’s a few inches taller than me, and according to the website, he competed as a bantam weight, so he’s really freaking skinny. When he does demonstrations, he has the fluidity of someone who’s pretty freaking good at sparring. There are interesting differences in style between here and MIT, but similar enough that it’s a comfortable extension of what I already know.

Yuka: Reminds me a lot of Emma, only lighter. Loud kiyap, strong kicks, lots of energy. The only person I’ve legitimately sparred in Japan (that time where we made the boys put on hogus so we could kick them doesn’t count). Outside of tkd, really friendly and outgoing.

Ou-chan: Token Chinese guy? Started doing tkd about a month before I started here, but did aikido for a few years. He’s been in Japan for a long time, so his Japanese is pretty fluent, and I feel like he’s more Japanese than Chinese. Easy to poke fun at for things like lack of kiyap.

Nakama-san: The first time I met him was actually about a week ago when some of us went out drinking. A red belt who apparently stopped coming for a while (maybe because of an injury), but came to practice this past Friday. For not having practiced for a while, his kicks looked pretty good.

Kondou-san: Another white belt. His style reminds me of what Ning may have looked like if he’d been in the awkward white belt phase. Also really likes reverse turning kick (apparently). When he sparred the guys, he kicked low (around thigh level), so I felt bad for the other guys.

There are more people, but I’m teaching English soon, so perhaps more later.

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