Occupation:
Aikido Instructor
Time in Japan:
Six years
Where are you from? Melbourne, Australia.
What brought you to Japan?
I came to do an intensive aikido course and then stayed. I' now an instructor at the
Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo. I teach classes in English, assist with other classes, deal with
correspondence from abroad, do translation work for the dojo and generally help out in any
way I can.
Are you planning to stay? Yes, four more years. Right now I teach English for the money side of things, but I
doubt I'd still be in Tokyo if it weren't for aikido. Maybe some other part of Japan, but
if I quit aikido there'd be a big hole in my life.
Tell us about your training. We arrive at the dojo at 7:30am, clean it, then do calisthenics before training
begins. The first training is from 8:30-9:30am, then we take a break. During the break we
make a formal report to the teachers, what's called a shinkoku. We also have to maintain
diaries about the training and techniques. There is another class from 10-11:30am, a break
and the third class from 12-1:30pm. After that there's a final shinkoku, then we're free
to drag ourselves off to work.
What do you like most about Japan? I like the convenience here, and also the beauty of the countryside, Shizuoka in
particular.
What do you dislike about Japan most? Crowds, pollution, and waiting.
Tell us about your commute. I go everywhere by motorbike. I graduated from the trains a few years ago and never
looked back.
What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen or experienced in Japan? I took a job on an island hotel in Shizuoka for a short time. Guests would pull up at
the island in boats. One day I thought I could see two children sitting in the back of the
boat. As it drew near I realized that they were actually life-sized dolls. We had to take
these dolls up to the room and place them in chairs with the radio on. Their owner was in
the adjoining room and could occasionally be heard chatting to them. Throughout the
weekend the dolls would pop up all over the island: on deck chairs, the garden, beside the
pool. It was really quite bizarre.
If you could take one thing back from Japan to your native country, what would it be? Tatami, absolutely. You need it to train on and it's way too expensive outside of
Japan.
Where would you like to be when the big one hits? I'd like to be on a very high island so if there's a tsunami I can be on the top of a
mountain and watch it all happen.
You have to spend the rest of your life trapped on the Yamanote line. You're allowed to
take one book, one CD and one luxury item. What would they be?
The book would be a dictionary of Japanese idioms. The CD? Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. The
luxury item would be a keitai because I don't have one at the moment and everyone else on
the train would. Once a month I think "Gee, I wish I had one, too."
Readers are
invited to watch an aikido class at Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo. For further details call
3368-5556 or visit http://iac.co.jp/~iyaf/index.html
Occupation:
LIFE IN JAPAN: