Reigandou is in a forest on a secluded hillside just outside Kumamoto city centre.

Also known as Musashi’s Cave, it’s the spot that legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto retreated to in the final years of his life, to write Go Rin No Sho (’The Book of Five Rings’).

These days it’s something of a pilgrimage destination.

The path to Musashi’s cave is long, and the mountainside along the route is dotted with ‘500 Buddhas’. On a sunny spring day, in a silence punctuated only by the buzzing of insects, it’s quite a sight.

Here’s what the worlds fastest walker does

“I accept the punishment given to me. Both Daiki and I apologize deeply for our wrongdoings. Considering we should be taking a gradual approach here, don’t you think a 1 year suspension is too harsh? For an 18-year-old growing boxer like Daiki, a year is a really long time.”

Shiro Kameda, head of the Kameda Family on son Daiki’s Kameda’s year-long suspension by the Japan Boxing Commission following Daiki’s misbehavior during a WBC world flyweight title fight last week.

This “Ninja bear” can do very hard tricks that even a human would have trouble doing!

Twice-Olympic-champion Judo wrestler, the ever popular Ryoko Tani, took a record seventh world gold by beating Cuba’s Yanet Bermoy in the under 48kg class. She’s been out of the game for the best part of three years, having taken time out to have a child.

She wasn’t the only gold medallist -

Japan won another gold in the women’s open class with Olympic champion Maki Tsukada, who defeated Lucija Polauder of Slovakia in the final.

Yasuyuki Muneta beat Jury Rybak of Belarus to win the men’s open class and give Japan its third gold of the tournament.

Quote & photo - AP

Sounds like the title of a Shaw Brothers B movie, doesn’t it? But China’s Shaolin Temple, normally regarded as the cradle of Chinese kung fu, is demanding an apology from an Internet user who said its monks had once been beaten in unarmed combat by a Japanese ninja, according to Reuters. Ninjas — professional assassins trained in martial arts — date back to mediaeval Japan.

The user said on an online forum that a Japanese ninja went to Shaolin, asked for a fight and many monks failed to beat him, the Beijing News said. Shaolin temple “strongly condemned the horrible deeds” of the user: “It is not only extremely irresponsible behaviour with respect to the Shaolin temple and its monks, but also to the whole martial art and Chinese nation.”

Although the monks retained a lawyer and were about to sue, the story was pure fiction and a (possibly tongue in cheek) apology issued. Reuters points out that “Relations between Chinese and Japanese are sensitive at the best of times, with emotions still running high over Japan’s invasion and occupation of parts of China in the first half of the 20th Century.”

Thinking about Chinese and Hong Kong movies, usually the Japanese and their puny martial arts are easily defeated by superior Chinese ones. It’s well known that Jet Li can easily defeat a whole dojo of karate yudansha without missing a beat. On the other hand, even a Hong Kong movie like Iron Monkey can depict Shaolin monks as ineffectual over-rated jerks, although it does turn out they were all renegades. Still–they were trained there.

The Boing Boing report on this story has a user comment that seems good advice: “He is a priest of the Shaolin Temple. A Shaolin priest can walk through walls. It is said that listened for he cannot be heard; looked for he cannot be seen; felt he cannot be touched. …Dude, I’d make the apology. Yesterday.”

But, if you recall Shogun Assassin the kid and his father stay up every night around the old campfire, listening for the Shogun’s ninja, however as the kid remarked “but they never make a sound…” And they do have those darts and shariken that they can throw in the dark and they’re always poisoned too.

Ninja do finally get old and somewhat less effective, as Samurai Fiction shows, but old monks are not exactly unknown either. It’s said that many of them are prematurely bald even at a relatively young age. So–it’s hard to say what would happen in an actual showdown.

Probably what Jet Li said in Fearless is correct: all schools are just different ways to climb Fuji-san– although results may vary, they depend primarily on the skill of the practitioner. Plus realizing that the true enemy is yourself, not the one standing in front of you?

Photo: Inside Shaolin temple. Uploaded to Flickr 07/31/06 by slaqua. Some rights reserved.

Wild!

There is a pretty good National Geographic documentary about aikido on YouTube. A bit fuzzy but still good–like life is sometimes (especially last weekend)…

In the five-part video “Josette Normandeau seeks out Japan’s top Aikido masters to train her in the martial art of peace. Will she be able to learn its difficult code of Japanese etiquette?”

Well, who knows? You must watch to find out. The hombu dojo is the still center of the aikido universe and AikiWeb is the best place to find out about aikido, which has diverse applications to life and business as well. Wikipedia says of this gendai budo in part:

Aikido, translated as “the way of harmonious spirit,” is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba (O-Sensei) as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Ueshiba’s goal was to create an art practitioners could use to defend themselves without injuring their attacker.

Aikido emphasizes joining with an attack and redirecting the attacker’s energy, as opposed to meeting force with force, and consists primarily of body throws and joint-locking techniques. In addition to physical fitness and technique, mental training, controlled relaxation, and development of “spirit” (ki) are emphasized in aikido training.

Too much ukemi
Aikidoka blends with mat
Tai chi way less pain

This week Overoften is jumping on bandwagons so you don’t have to.

In a country that loves its fads, the latest sensation to sweep the nation is Billy’s Bootcamp - the series of instructional exercise videos by American fitness expert, martial artist and Tae Bo inventor, Billy Blanks. The ads have been everywhere for months. I was flicking through the channels just the other night and came upon three channels showing the Bootcamp commercial simultaneously. And Billy’s just completed a promo tour in Japan that had him appearing on many prime time shows (and torturing the tarento, which is always entertaining). For many, Bootcamp is the topic of conversation du jour. Families up and down the country are having a go at it. Kids are even doing it in their P.E. lessons at school.

Mrs O and I are not great practitioners of physical exercise. There is sofa space for 7 people in our living room. We enjoy clean mountain air by winding the car windows down. We’ve made a bit of a hobby of comfort. In short, we went soft a long time ago.

But we got a copy of the dvd, and in order to report on the Bootcamp phenomenon, Overoften has put his money where his mouth is, and has submitted to the daily harsh routine of Billy’s tutelage. The first week went something like this.

Day 1
We lasted approximately 15 minutes. I didn’t even break a sweat. Mainly because my creaking muscles gave up all motor functions before I was even warm.

Day 2
I ache all over. But the exercises get yesterday’s lactic acid moving about and today we last 20 minutes.

Day 3
Not in quite so much physical pain this morning, but can’t really say that I’m actively looking forward to beginning the workout today.

Day 4
I can actually feel muscles I haven’t felt for quite a while. Today I break a sweat, something I’m immensely, and rather pathetically, proud of. We’re up to half an hour.

Day 5
This has become a buzz. When Billy shouts “Feel the burn!”, I dutifully comply. This is not, however, Billy’s most feared phrase - that’s “One more set!”, not only because you’re usually hurting quite a bit by the time he says it, but also because he frequently fibs and has you doing two, three, and once even four more sets.

Day 6
I’m bouncing and ready to go this morning. I’ve begun to change shape. As Billy promised, I’m starting to reverse years of hideous neglect in just days.

Day 7
For the first time, we completed the routine and saw the end of the video. I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain. (This is only Basic Training, though. There are 3 more routines…) There are still parts of it I can’t do. Billy can’t train a couch potato to do the splits in just a week. But lasting an hour of full-on working out is a massive achievement for us, and it’s a great way to start the day.

Ninja demonstration in Iga.

If you like all those jidai-geki Kurosawa classics–or even if you don’t–you are sure to like Hiroyuki Nakano’s Samurai Fiction (1998). This is another gem to be found on Crunchyroll.com and pretty well everywhere else too.

The cast includes Morio Kazama, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Tomoyasu Hotei, and the impossibly cute Tamaki Ogawa, among others.

It’s kind of hard to describe but very funny and finally reminds me of Kill Bill only in black and white (after all, Quentin Tarantino did call his other one Pulp Fiction). Here is a description:

A young would-be warrior quests to retrieve his clan’s precious sword in this hilarious rock n’ roll samurai comedy from inventive director Hiroyuki Nakano. With its fun visuals, killer soundtrack and charming cast, Samurai Fiction takes those old jidai-geki and chambara films immortalized by Akira Kurosawa and gives them a delightful postmodern twist.

You can find full reviews in Kung Fu Cinema and Love HK Film (although it isn’t clear what SF has to do with HK). The latter source concludes that:

In the end, Samurai Fiction is a worthy companion piece to the samurai classics audiences have loved for years. Neither a critique nor an out-and-out parody, Hiroyuki Nakano’s flick could be described simply as an old-school classic with a contemporary twist.

Part of the martial art Iaido (drawing the blade) is understanding tamishigiri (cutting technique).

Iaido is a really facinating martial art that differs from Kendo because in Iai, you don’t go against an opponent and you use a blade as opposed to shinai (bamboo sword). I encourage you to look into it. Here is a video my sensei edited and posted. Hope you like it.