Archive for July, 2006

2. Landmark Tower.

When you come to a big city you probably want to get up in a very high building. It is a good idea and there are several to chose from in Tokyo. Most famous is the Tokyo tower in Roppongi. It may look like the Eiffel tower in Paris but has nothing of its charm. Scruffy looking interior and no outdoor platform. Feels more than a copy of the Eiffel tower from a Dutch theme park. Read the rest of this entry »

1. The fish market at Tsukiji.
The size of an international airport filled with every fish and other creature from the sea that you did not know you could eat. Dead and alive. See the workers cutting up two meter tunas using axes and circle saws. Have an early lunch at one of the restaurants serving the best fish possible. Easy accessible by the Tokyo metro. Station Tsukiji on the Hibiya line. Right in the centre of Tokyo. Read the rest of this entry »

My karate instructor makes an effort to sometimes speak English to me. This is mostly at times when it is obvious to him that I can not guess what is going on from my yet limited Japanese. Now, “belto testo” I understood. It means belt test. Grading. So there was a belt test coming up and he wanted me to take it. The test would be graded by the chief instructor so it would not take place at our dojo. In conjunction with a competition in Shinjuku, an hour from Yokohama by train, it would take place.

After various styles and belts over the years I started fresh again with a white belt when I began training here in Japan six months ago. The colour of the belt is not really important to me, I was always into MA for the exercise and the well being emerging from leaving your aggressions behind. Anyway, it is still nice to be above the white belt. If not only for the look. A coloured belt looks better with a white gi. The white belt makes the whole thing look like a pyjamas. A coloured belt looks more athletic and serious. And a black belt has of course this whole master vibe around it. So, if it feels good it is good sort of.

The problem doing things here in Japan not knowing the language is that everything becomes an approximation. I can go into a restaurant and order food, and I know I will get approximately what I order. Maybe beer in a bottle instead of glass, maybe curry with pork instead of curry with beef. The same goes for the grading, I did not know exactly what was to be tested, or how.

“It will be just like a normal training” was as close an answer as I managed to get. When the day came the few of us who were there for the grading started a joined training session with all the others who were there for the competition. In a crowd with a lot of people I wondered how this could possible serve as grading test. Did they check us out? The head sensei was sitting at the front and most of us was standing in the back so I thought this must just be some kind of warming up. At the same time I tried performing my techniques as proficient as I could, maybe there were assistants watching and rating our performance, I thought.

After this the competition started and I watched a few youth matches. We were asked to stay, so there sure was something more to come. I assumed there would be sparring in one form or another. This is full contact so to grade without some sort of fighting would be kind of lame. Seems I was right when we were issued protective gear to put on. By now I thought I would just be fighting another student who also was there for the grading. Turned out I was wrong.

When they picked a black belt from another club as the first opponent I slowly realised that this was going to be tough fights. The match started with a series of fast attacks from Kato who was up against the black belt. The fighters wore headgear that is made as a padded leather helmet with a plastic visor. This means you can punch each other straight in the face without any real damage. Even wearing gloves you have to be careful with your hands, punching wrongly can hurt both your knuckles and your wrists. Watching this first match and knowing that I was up next was a strange feeling. On one level I felt a fight or flight sensation emerging through my body. I remember thinking, I wonder if I can leave this place now without anybody noticing? After that I switched from flight to fight. I would punch out the other guy or die. No matter who was in front of me. It is good that I was not the first to fight. Watching the first two fights gave me enough time to prepare mentally and perform.

Luckily this was short, one round fights. After the first two minutes fighting I felt as I had consumed more energy than I normally do in a full two hour work out session. I had decided using the same tactics as Kato, to attack furiously from the start. Fight for my life. Go out with a bang. This worked out fine and I got many hits in the first thirty seconds. Then the opponent started to counter and I took a few blows to the head. Even though the visor protects the face a hard punch still gives your head quite a shake. I decided here to change tactics and try to keep him away from me with kicks. Problem was he started kicking me too. And by know I was so tired that I had no energy lifting my leg to protect from his low kicks, even seeing them coming clearly. It was here that I made my mistake. Too tired to think properly I threw a hard low round kick to the front leg of the opponent. This he blocked the full contact way (Thai boxing style) by picking up his leg and turning it slightly outward. The sharp pain when my leg hit his almost dropped me to the floor.

Our bodies contain many amazing things, one of them is a small drug factory. By now my brain felt immediate pain and grave danger at the same time so it issued a large shot of adrenaline. My leg hurt for three weeks after this, but not for the rest of this fight. I realised I needed to try something new. The idea was never to win against this guy, but to perform a decent fight that would earn me my belt. If I was to go out it was to be in style. Having hurt the front of my right leg I decided to be bold and try a back spinning round kick. It actually worked and hit my opponent! Even followed by cheers from the crowd. By now I was so tired that I could barely stand so I just tried to hang in there until the match would be over.

I got some ice on my leg and was quite happy about the whole thing. Afterwards my instructors congratulated me on a good fight. Two weeks later the results came and I now carry the blue belt with two black stripes. I know that I earned it from fighting and it feels good wearing it.

Related articles:
Training martial arts in Japan How to get started doing martial arts in Japan.

Update: Read a review of the K1 World Max from September 4, 2006.

K1 World Max is the middleweight and not so prestigious as the heavy weights. This year in Yokohama I must say that the fighting was not bad at all. Some of these middleweight fighters definitively have enough character and fighting skills to get as famous as the heavy weight bunch.

As always the show starts outside. I arrived early to watch the people gather. You would think that an event likes this caters mainly to a macho crowd, but that is not true in Japan. More than half of the ticketholders are women in their twenties. Fame gets you a long way here and the fighters are like rockstars to the girls.

Fights always attracts other fighters coming to watch. This is a sumo wrestler dressed in a traditional yukata. When a wrestler is in training he never wears civilian clothes when going out. Right photo shows girls posing for a picture outside the arena.

One good thing about Japan is that they always manage to keep a very relaxed atmosphere even at a big event. Seventeen thousand people filled the Yokohama Arena to the last seat for this event and they do not even check your bag coming in. I am not saying that security is lax, just that the Japanese are very good at keeping it in the background. I mean, where else in the civilized world are you allowed to bring your own beer from outside to drink in your seat? Anyway I did not, but the 500 yen beer they served inside was still ok. I sat pretty good rather high up with a girl behind me screeming her lungs out cheering her favorite fighter. Most of it right into my ear. Luckily he was out after the first fight.

These gentlemen were waiting for their boss who arrived shortly in a black mercedes. Dressed in a panama hat, all white, with black and white leather shoes he was escorted in by his men. It is the same all over the world. The mobsters never miss a good fight. Other photos show members of the K1 fan club getting to take their picture with a fighter

Thai fighter Buakaw Por Pramuk won the whole thing. The thai fighters do not always win but you can always count on them performing excellent fights. I am not sure that it is the muay thai in itself that is superior, but rather the background of the fighters. Imagine a country full of poor people with only one chance to make it, and that being winning every single fight. The check for twenty million yen will support this guys family for a while. In his thank you speech Buakaw said he would use it for his sisters education. In the ring he never seemed to get tired. It is like he is able to tap into some other source of energy during his matches. Something not available to his opponents. When the opponent can barely stand in the third round Buakaw just keeps pounding away. The kicks keep coming as fast as in the first round. If the opponent makes it that far. Buakaw knocked out Andy Souwer in the second round.

Buakaw vs Souwer Buakaw vs Drago

Dutch Andy Souwer did good. He is very well trained in fast lowkicks. This with both legs. His specialty is using his front leg to kick the inside of the opponents left knee. An efficient way of wearing him out. Only it did not work against the thai fighter Buakaw. Still Souwer sported a nasty cut on his face from the match against South African Virgil Kalakoda.

Kalakoda vs Souwer Drago vs Kraus Masato vs Souwer

Dutch boxer Albert Kraus sure belongs here. He is a very solid fighter, but lost to Armenian muay thai fighter Drago. Armenian fighters are known to be wild and Drago is no exception. He is really the perfect K1 fighter because he makes sure that your ticket was worth buying. Gets you bang for the buck. His esoteric style looks like a street fighter in a circus disciplined by muay thai training. You never know if he is going to attack with a flying knee, a backspin kick or take a wild chance with a knock out blow.

Anyway, K1 is a big circus. The format of three round matches and the new rules against clinching is of course good, but there is a lot of fluff too. I don’t mind a magic show with lights and effects, but here it is a lot of it. I guess that is what people like. They are definitively doing something right to get 17 000 people, mostly girls, to come and watch a couple of guys knock each other out.

Fight videos here.

Related articles:
Training martial arts in Japan How to get started doing martial arts in Japan.