Manly Things
I’ve had a lot of manly things going on lately. First and foremost of those things is MMA. A few posts ago, I put up a link to an article I wrote for the FuJET newsletter on why everyone should watch MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). Well, about 2 weeks ago, I started training MMA. It’s crazy because the dojo, if you can call it that, is about a 5 minute walk from my apartment. It’s pretty much just a small room in a building that has a very thin mat covering the floor with 2 punching bags and a ton of equipment on shelves. I’d put up pics, but…I suck the most thus far and don’t wanna be the guy in there taking pictures of everything.
Anyway, Smith, a friend of mine got me into this mess. Smith is a Peruvian guy who’s engaged to a JET friend. He’s a black belt in Brazilian ju-jitsu and we are always talking about fighting and MMA. Mostly in Japanese, as his English, while improving is not as good as his Japanese and my Spanish is non-existent. Anyway, he found this club and let me tell you. There are some hardcore guys in there. This is not your, oh, let’s go screw around kinda place. Guys with full out sleeve tattoos are packed into this room 3 times a week. It was a bit nerve wracking at first, cuz I’m the only white guy and I suck.
But ya, so I’ve been doing it 3 times a week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7 to 10 or 11pm. It CRUSHES me. The sensei, I don’t know his name, I just call him sensei, used to fight K-1, which is a premiere kickboxing league in Japan. He’s awesome. Anyway, we train boxing for an hour, kickboxing for an hour and then do ju-jitsu for anywhere from an hour to two hours. And keep in mind, this is all non-stop. I’ve been paired up with smith for the striking part of training, because he’s just learning that, so we’re about the same level, except for the fact that Smith is JACKED and a MONSTER when it comes to training anything. The other night, we were practicing leg kicks and I was holding a pad against my leg that had to be at least 8 inches thick and he was kicking it. I left that night with gigantic bruises on my thighs.
The ju-jitsu part has been awesome, although it is definitely what I’m the worst at and Smith has been kicking my ass all over that place. Positives….well, I know 20 different ways to render a human being unconscious now. Negatives…everyone else knows like 100. So when we grapple, I’m getting my ass kicked, which is fine. It’s been KILLING my body, but I absolutely love it and after a month or two of this, I’ll be a MACHINE. Look out jacked little brother, I will tap you out! I could go off about this forever, about how I can’t seem to sink in a triangle choke correctly, no matter what I do and how I tapped a guy using an anaconda choke the other day, but, you know, that’s just kinda boring.
In other man news, we had a boy’s night for the Fukushima-ken boys, outside of Fukushima-ken obviously. We went to Sendai, the big city in the prefecture over. It really wasn’t as “epic” as they used to be, as 13 of the 14 guys were in relationships. You know, just drunkenness and clubbing. Everyone got to see just how bad we all are at picking up girls cuz we’re in relationships. And obviously, prior to that, Alex, Vinnie and myself went shopping, as you do on any guy’s night. Spend the day shopping first. LOL. SOOO MANLY. I bought shirts from Zara (currently wearing one, I look awesome) and you know, vin and alex bought jackets. That’s about it for now. Halloween parties galore the next few weeks and my calendar tells me I’m booked up until the 21st of November and then hopefully I’ll be snowboarding!
Peace
B
