Saturday 17 June 2017

Iai Injury

In my 18 years of serious budo practice, I've been lucky enough to be spared most of the usual serious injuries like torn achilles tendons and such, aside from a cut finger shortly after acquiring my first shinken. Although this did require a visit to the hospital, I was still able to compete in next day's taikai (albeit with a bokuto) and the EJC a few weeks later. This was until last Monday's keiko.

I'd started training around 20:00 by running through the seitei forms once each, then moving on to the standing okuden. I spent about five minutes on each form, focusing on refreshing my memory of the main points of each one and making sure to cover the kaewaza as well and, by the time Kancho arrived shortly after 21:00, I was most of the way through. Around 21:35, I was just starting Itomagoi sono san when, just after the draw, I heard the sound of cloth being cut and the kissaki caught on something: my forearm. As it turns out, I hadn't waited until I'd completely lifted the kissaki before bringing my left hand forward to try to take the tsuka, impaling my arm on the kissaki.

Thinking back, I don't remember any pain or what I did with the sword immediately after. I do remember a lot of blood, though, and clapping my hand over the wound to try and keep it in but it was no use: my formerly white summer keikogi and hakama were now adorned with dashes of a bright shade of red called "soup of Aurélien". Everyone else in the dojo immediately stopped practice and rushed over with tissues and tenugui while Kancho called for an ambulance. I think I ended up with about five tenugui wrapped as tightly as possible around my arm, the vast majority of which were soon soaked through, and Fujikawa s. gripping my left bicep as tightly as he could and keeping it raised (given that I'm quite a bit taller than him, this required me to kneel and eventually lie down when I started getting light-headed). The ambulance took around 10mins to arrive and, after taking my details, asking a couple of questions and having a bit of a look, I was taken with Fuku-Kancho to Daiichi Hospital nearby at the usual leisurely pace of ambulances in Japan.

I waited in the ER for I reckon about 15-20mins until the one doctor and nurse on duty finished tending to another patient and turned to me. While the doctor had that grizzled veteran look, the nurse seemed quite new and unsure of a lot of things, so much so that another senior nurse was called on to assist. The whole process of anaesthetising part of my arm and sewing me up took a good couple of hours and I was sent on my way with three days' worth of antibiotics and painkillers and orders to report to the Daiichi Clinic the next morning to have the wound cleaned and the dressing changed. Kancho very kindly came to pick us up and drove me home.

I'll need to visit the clinic every few days, the threads should be taken out in a couple of weeks and it'll take another two weeks or so to heal completely. Luckily, because it was a stab rather than a cut, the actual muscle damage is minimal and, even right after the injury, I was still able to move all of my fingers, if with some difficulty. Now, five days on, I've regained a lot of mobility, although I'm still trying to use it as little as possible, and I just feel lucky that I'll be able to get back to full strength and training eventually.

Apologies for the lacks of photos but I didn't have my phone on me when all this was happening. Also, although I wasn't really expecting it to do any good, I washed my keikogi/hakama a couple of days later and they are now spotless!

Friday 9 June 2017

35th Kanagawa Prefectural Jodo Taikai

A couple of weeks ago, the Kanagawa Prefectural Jodo Taikai was held in the Prefectural Budokan in Yokohama. Since the Tohoku Iaido Taikai was being held the same day in Niigata, this year's Shimbukan delegation only included Fuku-Kancho, Jane, the Ishibashis and myself. On top of that, Fuku-Kancho had somehow broken his thumb during kendo keiko and was therefore out of action. He still drove us there and back and helped with refereeing and court management.

Things kicked off at 9:00 with the usual announcements, speeches of encouragement and national anthem before everyone splitting up between the two courts, each one being overseen by two 8dans (Kotsuka s. and Hayashi s. on one and Kaminosono s. and Yano s. on the other). As usual, the 5dans-7dans were assigned to help with court management and refereeing so, for us, it was a busy day of shepherding competitors, making sure everyone had a tachi, recording results, refereeing and a bit of competing.

Unlike most other prefectures in Japan, in Kanagawa, only the jo side is judged, the result being that there's always a fair amount of rushing around off-court and desperate calling for anyone of a certain grade who might be free to tachi. Unfortunately, Nishigaki-san (my tachi of choice and usual partner for the Tokyo Taikai and All Japans) was unable to make it this year but there were a couple of other fellow 5dans who were kind enough to tachi for me and, although my grip faltered a couple of times in my first couple of matches, I didn't do too badly.

The shitei-waza were:

Individuals
1dan and below: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2dan: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
3dan: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
4dan: 6, 7, 8, 9, 11
5dan and above: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Team:
Sempo (up to 1dan): 1, 2, 3
Chuken (up to 3dan): 5, 6, 7
Taisho (up to 5dan): 8, 11, 12

Since I started competing here, Shimbukan has never put a team forward, I think largely due to the rather top-heavy makeup of the dojo in terms of dan grades (aside from one 2dan, everyone else is 4dan or above) and, considering every member attending this year was at least 5dan, this year was no exception. One interesting thing I would mention about the team taikai was that, unlike at the Europeans where there is a set way for the competitors to rotate between matches on court, here, all team members left the court after each decision, changed weapons and returned to the court in the correct configuration for the next match.

In terms of decision, although I didn't agree 100% with all the decisions, I didn't see any matches where I felt anyone was robbed.

Finally, before the closing ceremony, we were treated to koryu and seitei embu, notably tankenjutsu (Chuwa Ryu) by Kotsuka s. and Tokito s., several demonstrations of kusarigamajutsu (Isshin Ryu), seitei 1-6 by Abe s. and Kobayashi s. and 7-12 by Otake s. and Kaminosono s.. It's always great to see the 8dans in action and I never get tired of koryu embu, especially the tankenjutsu. All in all, an exhausting but great day!

The taikai results, as well as videos of each final, can be found here. Apologies for the lack of videos/pictures but I only decided to write up a post about it on the way home. I'll make sure to get pictures/footage for future posts!