On Friday I had a day off from school, so I decided to finally go out and look for the daito-ryu roppokai aikijujutsu dojo I had found online. I brought a map, where I had roughly located the address I was supposed to go and went off into town. I took a train to Otsuka station, which is near Ikebukuro. From Otsuka I started walking toward the address I brought with me (both written in kanji, and in plain old romanji, our alphabet).

After walking for about 30 minutes I found the general area where the address was supposed to be. It took some quick figuring out how the addressing works here (numbers everywhere!), but after a while I kind of discovered the system used in this area and I quickly found the dojo. Or so I thought…

It turned out that the address I found online wasn’t the address of the dojo, but of what looked to be a retirement home. The address I found was the address of Okamoto-sensei, the head of the daito-ryu roppokai aikijujutsu “family.” So instead of finding the dojo, I found the home of a nice elderly couple, who were very surprised with the visit of a gaijin trying to find the dojo.

Okamoto-sensei kindly invited me in and started explaining where I could find the dojo, by drawing a map and explaining everything in Japanese. His wife quickly turned to the kitchen and prepared some coffee for us. Please note that I normally do NOT drink coffee, but in a situation as this, one simply can’t refuse. So I had two cups of coffee, which I felt buzzing through my system for the rest of the day.

So I sat there, sipping my coffee and listening to Okamoto-sensei explaining how to get to the dojo. His wife, meanwhile, was curious as well of course, so I was talking with her a bit as well. All in all it was very nice, and I felt like I was 12 again, visiting my grandparents. After about 15 minutes of explaining and map drawing, Sensei realized this was never gonna work this way, and decided to change plans. Instead of explaining the dojo location, he directed me to Myogadani station, where he’d pick me up Saturday at 18:20, and take me with him to the dojo to see the training.

After his explanation he went out to go fishing, and brought me with him to a station that was a 1 minute walk from his house. Hmm certainly beat the 30 minutes I walked before. I quickly went to Shinjuku, where I contacted Michel to see what he was doing. Of course he wasn’t at Shinjuku, but at Ikebukuro (remember, I was there just before), so I took a train back there and found him having a drink with Chie.

We went for dinner in a Japanese place, where people eat and drink in small separate rooms. We were sharing our room with a group of Japanese girls, who were drinking heavily and having a lot of fun. However, we were totally ignored by them. So no interesting stories developed there, but we did have a very good time.

After dinner me and Michel met up with Swaroop to go clubbing in Roppongi. He took us to Yellow, a kind of expensive, but very nice Techno club, filled with an awesome party crowd. We partied like crazy, especially Swarooop, who was drunk as hell (go Swaroop!).

Towards the end of the evening I was dancing quite in my own world to a classic tune, when suddenly my bubble got popped by a small drunk Japanese girl, who decided it was a great idea to start dancing between my legs basically. She turned out to be very drunk and stumbled around me, leaning against me whenever she got the chance. I must be honest, I had now idea how to deal with the situation. I danced with her a little bit, drank the drink she offered me (free booze!), and after a while she just left again.

Somehow, that could’ve turned out much better for me, but I guess I’m not very good with totally wasted chicks . I asked Michel, who’d witnessed the whole scene, if I looked like a total idiot. But he assured me that that wasn’t the case, I looked like a nice guy, he said. Damned! Always the nice guy, I tried so hard becoming a bastard, but I guess I just ain’t cut out for that… Or I wasn’t drunk enough.

The next day I was, of course, at the station at 17:45, never take any risks in situations like this. At 18:10 Okamoto-sensei arrived, pleasantly surprised to find me already there. We walked, slowly because sensei is quite old, to the dojo, talking about the weather and how his fishing had been (always remember the little details). When we arrived at the sports center where the dojo is located, we sat outside for a bit and talked about his students, while sensei smoked a sigarette. Just before we went into the dojo, he mentioned going for sake after training, with the other sensei and his prime students.

During the training, I wasn’t allowed to participate, only to watch. I could stand or sit anywhere outside of the practice floor in order to see what was going on. The training was very interesting to see, although it was totally different from my usual fudoshin ryu training back in Holland. Where we usually train in pairs, or really small groups, here the training is in large groups. Every time one of the people in a group has to do a move, where he is continually “attacked” by one of the other members of the group. Once everybody has attacked, the next person in line has to do the move.

In this way, you get to do the move a lot of times in a row, very quickly, while you get to practice how to react to the moves a lot as well, when it is not your turn. Using this way of training, you hardly ever have time to pause, because you are constantly either doing moves, or rolling around after a move was done on you. I’m very curious as to how I’ll like this kind of training. I didn’t take any pictures of the training itself, but I did snap a shot of the dojo before training started. Quite different from the small dojo we normally train at in Amsterdam.

After training one of the students came up to me, and told me that sensei would like to drink sake with me and asked me if I wanted to join him. Of course I wanted to join him! It is one of the greatest honors a student can receive. So after sensei had finished dressing in his normal clothes, we went to the restaurant near the station, where he had reservations.

So there I was suddenly eating and drinking with the top sensei of the roppokai dojo, and two of the best students. The sensei are all men of age, but I didn’t realize how much, until Yamamoto-san (one of the students) informed me that Okamoto-sensei is already 83 years old! I had no idea, although you could see he is quite old, I didn’t give him much over 60. Quite amazing, even more considering his schedule, which he showed me. In the next three months, he will be going to America, Italy and Russia to teach and probably see how the dojo over there are doing.

Needless to say, it was an awesome dinner. It is quite special to be drinking and eating with old Japanese men. I learned a lot, ate food I never ate before (everything very tasty), spoke about Holland of course. And of course, the men were explaining all kinds of things to me. Sensei was constantly making jokes about everything, which were quite funny. All in all, it was an awesome experience!

I took some pictures of the dinner, but wasn’t allowed to place them online. Apparently, some American guy had done the same, and afterwards claimed he was sensei’s best friend. Needless to say, they didn’t like that very much. However, when I’m back home, I’m of course free to show the picture to anybody I like .

After dinner I was pretty much drunk as hell, and went back to the guesthouse, where I spent the rest of my evening watching movies and chatting with Renato, Dirk and Vincent. It was a good weekend! Tonight I have my first official roppokai training, wish me luck!