More tests
Eizan-ryu jujitsu in New York is having a spate of springtime advancement tests. Monday night, we had a yellow belt test, a second brown belt test and a third brown belt test.
I’ve only been to class a couple of times between my test and this test. I feel I’m out of shape, haven’t been virtually chained in front of the computer over the past month because of a work project. Sensei Coleman noted that long episodes of office work must be similar to what Lovecraftian nightmares are made of: the protagonist has an out of body experience, journeying to unknown Kadath or some other unnatural realm, and returns to find that his body had died and decayed in his consciousness’s absence. Lethargy, lethargy, lethargy.
Anyway, I didn’t know there was going to be a test until I innocently showed up the day before, and people asked if I was going to be there on Monday. I said, probably not. Oh, you’re going to miss the test! Test?!
I uke’d a couple of times during the test. This was the first time I’ve worn my hakama for anything beyond standing around, and almost tripped a couple of times during warm up. On my first uke round, I gave straight punches to Sempai Jenny, and presumably would have done roundhouse also, but my hakama had started to fall apart and I was told to go fix it before it disintegrated completely. Knife with Sempai Jenny worked better: my outfit stayed together.
I didn’t stay for the whole thing and left shortly after the start of knife/stick work: I had to get to work early the next day. Adi, who was on the sidelines, took these pictures with my digital camera. We figured out that using the camera’s SCN mode wasn’t a good thing — just straight, non-color-corrected shots were perfectly good.
