26/10/2008 In Event Log by andy
This past weekend, I travelled to Tokushima for a one-day training camp and learned a few things. All together, there were almost twenty of us coming in from Tokyo, Kansai, and Hiroshima. Among these were a few people I hadn’t met before and a few I met at the recent camp in Tottori.
Tokushima Taido
Tokushima is located on the island of Shikoku and takes about two-hours to get to by bus from Osaka. There’s actually no Taido dojo in Tokushima, but a guy named Izumi is hoping to change that.
I met Izumi in Tottori. He was a couple of years behind my friend Takeo in uni, and now lives in Tokushima for work. He’s been getting lonely out there, and he’s been commuting from Shikoku to Honshu for practice when he has the chance. That’s not sustainable, so with some help from Takeo and Uchiyama, Izumi is trying to set up a dojo in Tokushima.
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17/10/2008 In Event Log, Profiles by andy
I’ve lived in Japan for a few years now, and I’ve gotten to see and experience a lot of really cool things. I’ve practiced zazen at five hundred year old temples in Kyoto, admired Picasso ceramics at the Hakone Open-Air Museum, picked tea in the hills around Mt. Fuji, made my own Cup Noodle at the Nissin Instant Ramen Museum, gotten drunk with transsexual hostesses in Yokohama, had my feet massaged by an anime character in Tokyo, and fallen in love (and back out) all over the damn place.
However, there’s still a lot of places I haven’t had a chance to visit. Until very recently, Okinawa was one of those places. But then my girlfriend and I took a long weekend to visit a friend who moved to Ginowan earlier this year.
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08/10/2008 In Experiments / Ideas, Knowledge Base by andy
The gojokun (or five guiding principles) is the set of statements that forms the heart of Taido ’s philosophy. Since it is prescriptive rather than descriptive, the gojokun acts as a sort of mission statement for Taido. Though it gives us a few ideals to shoot for, it doesn’t offer much in the way of practical guidance.
Through the years, several several people have tried their hands and coming up with a suitable English version. I will discuss a few of them and present my own thoughts on what the gojokun says, what it means, and what we should do about it. With any luck, this article will get to the point of what can be a very frustrating mission statement.
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