Half way there

The 5th day of Kangeiko finished, 5 days remaining. I'm dead.

A full day

Every day I get up at 4:30, get on the first train at 5:14, the practice is 6:00--8:00 but I bail around 7:30. After that I go to work, go home for lunch, continue working form home until around 19:00 to hang with the family. I start getting the kid ready for bed from around 19:30, I put him to bed some time after 20:00 and if all goes well we're both sound asleep around 21:00. Rinse and repeat.

A typical practice session

One practice session consists of:

- A good warm-up which includes some kicks and punches, the usual push-up, sit-up, squat combo, and judo specific crawling and falling (ukemi) execises.

- Uchikomi, i.e., repeptition training, in pairs. Uchikomi looks like doing "half throws": from a "natural stance" you start doing a throw by breaking the balance of the opponent, you might even lift him/her, but you don't throw. This is repeated approximately 100 times by both practitioner, alternating throwing and receiving roles after each set of 10.

- Newaza, i.e., ground randori (sparing) where we start from a knees on the ground position, and try to pin or force the opponent into submission.

- Tachiwaza, i.e., standing randori, which is trying to throw the opponent starting from a standing position.

As the minimum, I try to do the full warm-up, 100x uchikomi and at least one newaza and tachiwaza randori each.

Today was the Kagami biraki

The remarkable thing about today was Kagami biraki, a traditionally Japanese new year's celebration, which is a regular event at Kodokan. This includes judo demonstrations and some food, namely the traditional new year's oshiruko (sweet porridge of azuki beans boiled and crushed, served in a bowl with mochi). For Kagami biraki, the names of recently graduated and promoted judokas are displayed on big boards around the dojo. This year I was also included since I got promoted to 2 dan last month!

Oshiruko

Kagami biraki

As for me, in the early morning hours today, the temperature rose from the typical 0C to a crazy 14C. This resulted in terrible sleep for the whole family, so I didn't feel like staying too long, but as always I did the minimum, and left at around 7:30 (so I didn't stay for Kagami biraki unfortunately), collecting my 2 dan certificate on my way out.

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