Your Japanese word of the week is...

"face". Ok, you're right, it's not a Japanese word, but I do want to highlight it as a very dangerous word to teach children. See, I always try to encourage the kids to sound out the words they don't know based on the sounds of the alphabet and, with relatively simple topics like adjectives or body parts, it usually works. The only problem is that each letter usually has two sounds so when faced with a word such as....... well....... "face", rote memorisation sometimes beats out learning the theory that "ce" sounds like "s". So it inevitably ends up sounding something like this:

"F-.......... fah-.......... fah-?..... faaaa.... K! fak? FA-kuh?? fa-kee? fak! FAK!!"

The last one is usually the loudest since that's when they think they've got it. Really, above all else, it's ok because no one else realises what other word they're vocalising and, to be honest, you can buy shirts that full on spell it out in big letters from stores. People don't know what it means so it's just a nonsensical accumulation of the letters K, U, F, and C. But I still can't help myself but to not let them sound out that particular word.............. y'know, just in case.

However, I'm pretty sure I let a few of those words slip yesterday at the Sugito tournament. Held at the Sugito Takanodai Elementary school gym, it hosted dojos from Sugito itself and neighbouring cities like Satte and Miyashiro. The gym wasn't very big but still managed to pack 4 rings and 3 rows of chairs on three sides for spectators.

Starting at about 9, the nearly 400 competitors started off with kata. I didn't make it out of my kata division with a placing so I looked forward to the afternoon's kumite match. That's where it all went sour.

See, I don't really mind losing. I realise that a lot of the people here have trained just as long if not longer than I have, and a lot more seriously/frequently. Not to mention that I needed a lot of catching up to do when I arrived, which is really the overall goal of being here. But there's still some difficultly translating what I can do in training to doing the same in competition. My first opponent really wasn't that strong but perhaps I set the bar too high for myself and my lack of experience means I should be aiming for more realistic goals, but I was pretty upset with the loss. It didn't help that we were the last division so everyone was watching. I know I shouldn't be as vain as to really worry about what other people think and just to do my best, but I feel more like I let them down than myself.

But today is a new day and tomorrow is the start of another week of training. I just gotta keep my head down, really work on everything, and let the competition experience build as, really, the only place to gain it is in competition. The next one is Nov 3rd, where I fight with Richard sensei in the Kita-ku (North Tokyo) competition. He works in a high school in the northern area of Tokyo and I'm fighting for the school's "team kumite" group.

Onwards and upwards =)..........