The Ramen Chronicles

[TRAVELS] The Day I Met Buakaw, and Lived Happily Ever After

2011-09-26T22:28:00.016+09:00

The Idea

The thought of training in Thailand, even for an afternoon, has lurked in my mind for a while. The thought grew stronger with each of the frequent trips I have had to make to Bangkok for a live deal in recent months. A full slate of Friday meetings and the chance to have the wif swing by after some business of her own made the prospect ineluctable.

And if you were to do it -- to put yourself through the hell and toughness and above all the lack of air conditioning -- why settle for just any of the many, quality Muay Thai gyms sprawling across Bangkok and the rest of the country? Why not make sure you can witness one of your real heroes in action as a result?

So we arranged for transportation, a guide-slash-translator, and confirmed that Buakaw would be training at the Por Pramuk Gym that particular Saturday.

The Trip

Chachoengsao Province, Bang Khla, the Bang Pakong River, all exactly as they have appeared in K-1 promotion videos preceding Buakaw's appearances.

Not much can be said about the journey. Endless highway. Then some not-so-highway, narrower streets through town. A small sign indicating the turn-off for the gym which the unacquainted would surely miss, followed by some dirt roads. Then fresh-water shrimp farms. No gas station, no food stall, no 7-Eleven, just fresh-water shrimp farms.

A few kilometers on the backroads before reaching the gym, we ran into Buakaw and the team running. They were already halfway through their afternoon warm-up run. Chai, our go-between, asked if I wanted to join them. I demurred, thinking (i) it to be excessively awkward for a first encounter, (ii) I was not yet appropriately dressed for the activity, and (iii) it might wear me out a precious little too much before whatever else it was the trainers had in store for me. Wimp.

The Gym

Gym training with Nis. Six pad rounds.

Nis -- whose name is apparently Sanit; go figure -- taught me quite a bit about technique in a short while. Along the way, I had some horribly embarrassing bouts of stage fright, such as dropping the wrong hand on front kicks more than once.

Knee strike: worked on left knee only. Left hand on opponent's head, right on his clavicle. Push down as you strike. Knee comes up, hip juts forward, but head and shoulders arch backward. Plant left foot forward. Always move forward. Use your hands to push opponent backward at the same time to set up the next strike.

Right hook: never used, according to Nis. When striking with the right hand, use cross only. Perhaps because a right-handed opponent will always be able to see the right hook coming?

Power-side mid kick: don't throw too high. Lean head into your blocking arm, which should be straight up and perpendicular to the ground. Teaches approach of throwing the kick-side hand away.

Keep chin tucked always. Including when throwing the elbow. With the right elbow, your elbow points should end up in line with your chin and nose. Throwing the elbow any further exposes your right side to a counter. Chin tucked inside your shoulder, inside the opening of the V made by your right arm.

For a right-hander, stepping forward always means moving the left foot first. Stepping backwards always means stepping backward with the right foot first. Never forget. Drill drill drill.

Nis didn't seem to mind the switching rather than stepping before left kicks. I wasn't quite sure whether he similarly approved of the cross check (e.g., left shin to block opponent's left kick) but I think it was OK.

After 5 pad rounds -- consisting of 2 pad rounds, a break to let Miyuki work out, 2 more and another Miyuki break, and 1 more round -- Nis asked me, "Tired?"

"One more," I responded, pantingly.

"You like Muay Thai?"

"Yes. But I'm no good."

"Nah, you not too bad. You come here train. One week, two week. You get better."

That was heart-warming. And then we set off into our last round.

Obviously, Nis probably just wants my money. That's his job after all. But part of me thinks that, maybe if I were so bad that it wouldn't be worth it to be stuck teaching me again in exchange for my small amount of marginal income to the gym, he would never have said those kind words.

The Man

It's like you can see Buakaw's bricks in 3-D. His hits -- repeated middle kicks and knees on a bag and punches against swinging spare tires -- sound and feel incredibly sharp and painful in live 3-D as well, even when half a gym away.

The downside of working out was having relatively little time to watch Buakaw himself train. We had only a few minutes after we were done to watch him wail interminable, rapid-fire punches into some swinging spare tires.

After his training, Buakaw graciously came by to join us for some pictures. While we waited for the photos to come out of the gym's digital photo printer (the only 21st century convenience we noticed on the entire premises), we chatted.

His English was quite good. Much better than his Japanese, of which he said he could speak "only leeeee-tle bit." We could carry on a pleasant conversation among the three of us, to the exclusion of our guide and go-between Chai.

I think the first thing I said to him was that he had a good fight against Warren Stevelmans in Los Angeles, just a week or two prior for Muay Thai Premier League. He responded with a question in some unprecedented combination of English words (and maybe a hand-and-finger gesture) which somehow indubitably meant, "Did you watch it in person?", to which I had to reply that I saw it on Youtube.

I confess to and professed much bro-love for Buakaw. "To me, even the Andy Souwer fights -- you won all of them." He thanked me a couple of times for that statement.

We also talked haltingly about the movie "Yamada." None of us could figure out whether it had been released yet in Japan on top of Thailand, but Buakaw said that they promoted it in the arena in August when he took on Makino at Thai Fight in Japan.

I asked him twice about how long more he plans to fight. I think he understood the question but chose to ignore it. Just in case it really was a language issue, I asked the question of Chai in Japanese. Rather than translate, Chai responded himself, saying that Buakaw was close to retirement, that he was tired of the training and the grind.

Buakaw's minimum purse, I'm told, is 2 million yen (roughly US$25,000 at current exchange rates). So he can't fight in Thailand anymore; no stadium or local show could possibly pay him that.

According to Chai, for his first fight as a single-digit-years-old child, Buakaw made about 200 yen. And half went to the gym owner.

Buakaw's reticence on the previous query meant I never got the chance to ask my money question: What do you feel that you still need to do, i.e., who do you think you need to fight, in the rest of your career?

Filippo from Yokkao, who was visiting the gym that day and with whom the wif and I chatted before our training session, was not optimistic that his promotion could piece together Buakaw vs Giorgio Petrosyan II. He mumbled that one of them wanted only K-1 rules. I would have to imagine that's Petrosyan; after all, it is Buakaw who left K-1.

Though yet unmarried, his love was of the more typical variety. He made a laughter-filled remark about "1 . . . 2 . . . 3!" Japanese women in response to my wife's question about the presence of any girlfriend, which provoked her equally light-hearted admonishment.

The Future

We also met the future of the gym, in Buabarn Por Pramuk. He sat next to Buakaw, who said he was already "Baby Champion" of Thailand. Miyuki found him to be absolutely adorable. Now she wants to sponsor him.

He trained longer than everyone else that day, the last training day of the week. After Por Pramuk Gym has produced fighters like Namsaknoi, Chokdee, Buakaw, and Ponsawan, it will be worth watching little Buabarn.

[TRAVELS] Best Rides So Far: #1

2008-07-10T08:06:00.008+09:00

I first rode Eejanaika without any idea what it was. Until last year, I had not been on any kind of roller coaster since a winter 2001 trip to Yomiuriland, whose offerings are not exactly heart-pumping. Still, it was more than the wife (I suppose girlfriend at the time) could handle, and in the interest of maximizing the share of our diversions that we could enjoy in common, I honored her preferences thereafter. In fact, mechanical amusements almost never crossed my mind, and I found ample adrenaline fixes through other activities.

I broke my thrill machine fast with a January 2007 visit to Fujikyu Highland, a maneuver that the wife labeled a mid-life crisis. Once I was through the gates, I did what most Fujikyu virgins do: I headed straight for Fujiyama, the park's most famous attraction. I had picked out Dodonpa's name through ambient buzz at some point in the prior few years, so I headed for that one next. Only after exiting Dodonpa did I notice that there was a third big mass of steel. Still, I hadn't heard about any major attraction besides the two I just de-planed, so how important could this third one possibly be?

My thoughts were on the order of, "That red one looks kind of cool. And it's big." Moreover, I selected the left side when I came to the fork in the queue, relying on the Harrods principle of right-side bias in crowd flow. That meant that nearly all of the track was obscured from my view, including the lift hill and elements of the first portion of the ride and all the nice twisty, inversionary bits.

I had no idea that I would be strapped to a massive harness that could have come straight out of “Universal Soldier,” which left my arms and legs free to dangle. I had no idea that the train would leave the station by moving backwards, then flip my seat 120 degrees or so to the rear to point my toes skyward, then right the seat up just in time to climb the lift hill -- again backwards. I had no idea when the lift hill would end, and that when it reached the top, it would crest into an anticipation-filled faux drop, only to rise toward another hump as it rotated my seat until my spine was parallel to, and my eyes were staring straight at, the ground 76 meters (250 feet) below.

The train fell off the ledge into the 90 degree drop with my eyes wide open, and the earth rushed straight up at me. After that point, I really didn’t know what was going on.

To figure out what Eejanaika did on the rest of its course, it took me a ride or two more and some level-headed research and maginations in the bathtub a few days later.

Halfway into the face-first drop, the seats rotate, in the direction of your heels, so that it is now the apex of the rider’s head that points at the earth. The track then bowls and re-ascends into a full, gargantuan loop. At the same time, however, the seats also spin the rider in a complete circle around the axis passing through your hipbones, subjecting you to a few serious forces. Eejanaika rights you upside just as the track races toward the end of the large drop coming out of the loop, and just in time to snap a picture of your face. (After roughly a dozen tries, I have concluded that you will always lose to the wind and the Gs in the war for control over your facial muscles, no matter how cool the customer.)

The cars then hurtle skyward again and enter the ride’s most unique verse, the 360-360. While this is best explained as the spine of the train moving 360 degrees around the hill-shaped track while at the same time the seats rotate in a full circle, in truth the rider is never actually suspended upside down. The combined motion instead results in the rider moving in a large circle with some undulation and moderate variation in the tilt of the vertical axis. But if you can manage to forget the physics and completely relax, the 360-360 is simply a few glorious seconds of weightless, satori-al relaxation.

Coming out of the 360-360, though, the rider would be well-advised to hold on tight for the most rickety part of the track, especially if dangling from the 2nd row, left side, outside seat of the green train. Eejanaika takes on altitude again and makes a large boomerang around the outbound end of the ride station, during which the riders themselves mostly held in a wonderfully ajar angle – legs afloat in front of you, your body aiming somewhat downward in a diagonal, vulture-like way, but with the vector of the train’s progress almost pulling you along by your right shoulder.

The train then screams past the queue made up of those persons who, as I did on my first ride, chose left at the fork. A 180-180 is timed to the next hump, effectively a half-inversion that turns you around in the opposite direction and gives you a view of the track from whence you came. With the cars now on the outside of the track, Eejanaika pulls out its last major trick and momentarily whips the rider around one more loop and straight toward nothing but gravel, unobstructed by track. The rider is saved by the track regaining height to close the circle, but not before you are convinced that your feet are about to be dismembered from you by the ground speeding by just below you. At the conclusion of the loop, Eejanaika pops you violently and painfully into a final half-inversion and slams on the squeaky brakes, and the remainder of the ride’s intense G forces flattening your asscheeks into your seat.

Eejanaika is still my favorite coaster ever, fourteen* rides later. It is certainly not getting any smoother with age, so those who bruise easily – feelings included – are advised to add to the crowds at Disneyland instead. But for the undaunted, you must experience it yourself before this thing kills somebody.

And the rotation of the rider into the face-down first drop is the most “Oh Shit!” moment that tubular steel can offer.

Important resource:
http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~coasters/eejanaika/eejanaika.html

[TRAVELS] Best Rides So Far

2008-07-10T08:00:00.005+09:00

I am just about one year into my personal coaster renaissance -- actually, five quarters is more accurate -- and have done more benign thrillseeking in that time than I would have imagined possible for someone in my lines of work over that period. The park-hopping has come with some regrettable expenses, such as time with children, activities actually enjoyable to the wife, and jiu-jitsu practice time.

Needless to say, the thoughts that follow are mine, and I would like to think that there is much that separates me from a large number of those overactive coaster enthusiasts. For one thing, I am not overly sensitive to the pain that can come from riding coasters. People talk of all manner of headaches, stiff necks, bruises, snapped tendons and broken cartilage from this or that ride, but I frankly can't remember ever suffering any of those ills. We all know I get beat much worse in sparring at the dojo, especially when I'm short on practice and sleep. (The asswhuppings are all the more painful because -- let us not forget -- I still suck, even after all these years.) In fact, I don't really insist on smoothness in a roller coaster. You might say I even enjoy a little roughness on a ride, perhaps if no more than to know that I'm there.

Second, I am not easily impressed by packaging. I guess this is what the connoisseurs call "theming." I admit that well-coordinated packaging can magically transform a mediocre roller coaster into a good one. Space Mountain remains a sentimental favorite of mine, even if it is no longer the same ride I first enjoyed at Tokyo Disneyland about 25 years ago. But let's face it: Space Mountain is basically one part Wild Mouse to two parts other kiddie coaster with a big dark box and Christmas lights thrown over it. Most other attempts to put rides in a nice package meet with far less success, and instead tend to come off about as contrived as Counting Crows. Meanwhile, for a ride that is already fantastic on its own, good packaging may carry negligible marginal value.

Third, I may not covet airtime quite to the extent that other frequent riders do. I certainly enjoy negative G forces, weightlessness, etc. but haven't really thought enough to make distinctions among "floater" or other varieties of airtime. In my view, there are plenty of other things that a ride can be designed for besides airtime and yet be thoroughly entertaining. Speed for its own sake, for example, is fine with me.

And so I submit my simple opinions as to the best thrill rides that I’ve experienced so far.

[TRAVELS] The Anti-Q [Part 4]

2008-04-17T22:49:00.003+09:00

(Time to finish this thing up. This past weekend, I finally had a chance to take a real trip to a real place for the first time in a long while, and it was damn fun. Will try not to waste much more time on this kind of crap.)

So with Indiana Jones fastpasses in hand, we headed for the cantina. Actually, Kayo headed for the little girls' room whereas I headed straight for my long-deserved first beer of the day. We finally reassembled and took spots in one of those 30-minute fast food lines that earns Disney its riches. Guess who in the parallel line? Abuser Dad. He went way out of his way to avoid eye contact, even when I called out to him in my usual friendly way. It was lame.

Food bad. Beer good. Wine bad. What made the lunch was the live mariachi band. It was the best I'd ever felt at a Disney park. I took a five-minute break to pick up Raging Spirits fastpasses as well.

Indiana Jones OK as usual. Raging Spirits horrible.

On to the comically racist Arabian port. The Sindbad ride was fine. What was better was coming out to see the characters in full force taking pictures with the proletariat. Of course, with the crowds we couldn't manage a picture with anyone except the resolutely unattractive, mangy monkey from Aladdin. And then the live actors came out. Jasmine was astounding. I placed her at 17 years old, ASIJ Chofu campus, then walked away from the illegality of it all. Thankfully Kayo snapped a few pictures.

Then another line, this time for the Magic Lamp thing. Behind two girls in full Disney gear: Minnie ears, miniskirts, neon pink tops. Oh wait, scratch that. The two girls' ages added up to 120 or so. The whole line was dry heaving. Oh well, where else can you see this (if you're into that sort of thing) besides Disneyland? Then again, I suppose Exotic Erotic night in the Castro is a viable answer.

Magic Lamp cast was quite poor. Much worse than my first experience, not worth a third.

Boats, popcorn, end of day. A thoroughly memorable Disney visit, complete with a near fight, honest mariachi music, hot Jasmine, and dozens of people dry heaving at the sight of geriatric Minnies. It just doesn't get any better than that.

Which is why I should have stopped there and gone straight back to civilization. Instead, I wheeled by the gift shop and bought my girls the caricatured mini-replica of the Flounder coaster at an irrationally exuberant price. Checked it out at home the next day, and the lift hill didn't work smoothly. Not happy. Disney. Made in China.

In sum, fully satisfied by this visit, and I probably won't need to check the place out again for a long time.

[TRAVELS] The Anti-Q [Part 3]

2008-04-16T22:48:00.002+09:00

We should have walked, but we elected to wait for that utterly pointless electric railway to Port Discovery. By the time we got there and walked a bit more to Central America, it was about a quarter to noon. I knew there would be beer at this part of Disney Sea, but I retained focus and ran for the Indiana Jones fastpasses instead.

We wouldn't be able to use the Indiana Jones fastpasses until 90-120 minutes later or so, so we decided to check out one of them shows. Mystic Rhythms, I believe. We lined up about 25 minutes before the 12:15 curtain, something we would never do if not for the fact that the rest of the Disney fandom seemed to be doing the same, and then the strangest thing happened.

While Kayo was looking at her map, a little being that we the people of Hawaii refer to as a menehune suddenly apparitioned itself right behind us. For those among us who aren't culturally savvy on the old legends of Hawaii, Mr. Menehune is best described as resembling an 84-year-old midget Inca (scratch that, I haven't done any research on average Inca stature during the relevant period).

Mr. Menehune started going off on Mystic Rhythms, saying that it usually clocked in at between 20 and 21 minutes in length, but on one rare occasion it came in at 22, and that he was wont to watch it twice in a day followed by a beer and pork-and-beans at the Yucatan watchamacallit, and that the best seat for first timers was right side, ten rows from the stage, but that because he wanted to touch the butterfly (?), he was going to angle for a left bank aisle seat. He went on and on. This dude was fascinating.

So we asked Mr. Menehune, "It's obvious you come here a lot -- how often?"

Mr. Menehune told us that he has made over 3,000 trips to either Tokyo Disneyland or Disney Sea. We quickly found out that the whole cast knows this guy. They are almost certainly magnetized by his affection for beer, which is the noblest trait of humankind.

This guy is awesome. We tried to get a picture with him after the show, but thought better of it in honor of his privacy, and then he disappeared into the wind.

And finally it was time to honor the menehune with a beer. Or two. And a glass of wine. Which is precisely what I did at that ridiculous excuse for a Mexican joint next door.

[TRAVELS] The Anti-Q [Part 2]

2008-04-15T22:45:00.003+09:00

I dang near got into a fight at Disney Sea.

After a brief stop for some typically horrid and overpriced Oriental Land food, we made it back to Tower of Terror. A few minutes into the fastpass queue, I noticed a fastpass on the ground. I picked it up, perhaps with half a thought to using it myself or donating it to Kayo, provided that no claimants appeared.

Not long thereafter, though, a girl of about seven or eight started backtracking along the line, looking at the ground, followed a few paces back by her father. They had just started getting into one of your run-of-the-mill parent-child arguments, when I guessed what the root of the problem was and stepped forward with the dropped fastpass. The father took it from my hand without a word, compared it against his, and then, with his hand in a fist, rapped his daughter hard on the top of her head. Then they tried to recover a few spots in front of them in the line.

As they were moving along, I yelled at him, saying that there was no reason for him to hit his kid. He turned around and shouted, “We have our own way of educating our children.” I responded that what he was doing bordered on criminal, especially in everybody’s Happy Place, but he kept going and put some distance between us.

So I took off my sunglasses, which were the most expensive but fragile thing I had on me, and handed them off to my queuemate, and then chased old f**kface into the first of the Tower of Terror stalling areas. I caught up to him from behind, laid a very courteous slap on his right shoulder, and (making sure I said this loud enough so that the rest of the docile Tokyo Disneygoers and cast members could hear it) explained, “And you didn’t even thank us for recovering your ticket. Just what kind of education are you talking about?” Of course, there were a few more Japanese F-word equivalents mixed in.

I’d gone through a few candidate initial maneuvers in my head in the preceding few seconds, and because he was wearing a horrible blazer with an oversized lapel, I had been giving more passing thought to Osoto-gari than other approaches. But it was a waste, as he immediately and profusely apologized like a pansy. And unfortunately, the rest of the Tower of Terror experience proceeded without incident.

That was my adrenaline high point of the day, which kind of made everything else anticlimactic.

This goes without saying, but all this time, the only thing the rest of the losers in line could do was wear that “Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!” expression on their silent faces.

But with our second uneventful Tower of Terror ride squared away, it was finally time to enjoy the best of what Tokyo Disney Sea offers: beer.

[TRAVELS] The Anti-Q [Part 1]

2008-04-14T22:39:00.003+09:00

April 12 was sunny and warm, a perfect day to spend at Disney Sea. That's what the other half billion people in the park thought too. OK, to be fair, it was more like 350 million at Disneyland and 150 million at the Sea. Still, it was the first time in about 20 years that I can honestly say I had a good time over there at the old landfill. Best. Disney. Experience. Ever.

On the eve of the trip, I will admit to being a little hesitant to hand over yet more money to the Disney and Oriental Land empire. I have tried to like the place, both Land and Sea, on the four occasions I've visited in the last half-year. In fact, in the space of a mere five weeks, we visited Maihama in a wide variety of every permutation possible: solo visit to Land; wife and kids at Land; all family members (humans, that is) at Land; and me and wife at Sea. Unfortunately, we've always felt empty, broke and disappointed after every visit (but at least the kids' smiles made it almost worth it on those two particular occasions).

But I decided to try again anyway. For one thing, I figured that it would be my last real chance to hit a park before the 12-day work weeks returned with regularity, and my parkhopping partner-in-crime was about to re-enter dance boot camp as well. Besides, I had a few lingering memories of the last time I felt like I wasn't bleeding money to Iger, which was when I timed a visit to Disney Sea to coincide with the arrival of a typhoon. (That time, the storm kept the people at bay for a precious few hours, during which I nabbed multiple rides on everything that remained open. Then the typhoon subsided enough to embolden the masses, which forced us to take refuge with the expensive, not terribly tasty lunch at a Hotel Miracosta restaurant.)

I was going to try to do it the right way this time. I resolved to pay full fare and arrive before the park opening. This wasn't the easiest thing to do on four hours' sleep and a slight hangover, but I was determined to get my money's worth. But once I got to Maihama, and then to the monorail, I started to feel that dark, pithy feeling in my tummy. The crowds everywhere. The faces of frustrated parents and grandparents at 8:30 AM. That "I hate Disneyland" feeling.

Of course, "hate" is going much too overboard but it flows off the tongue better than "dislike." I'm not 100% sure why I dislike Disneyland. Yes, cleanliness, efficiency, and orchestration are all good things. But perhaps it's the same reason I don't like even the best of the Spielberg films. Needless to say, I marvel at his witchcraft and ability to create total immersion, but in general I prefer art to leave me a little breathing room. (Not to say that I'm immune to oppressive pure intensity, though. After all, I think of Richter as the greatest pianist in recorded memory.)

At least the Disney Sea lines weren't a third as bad as the Land lines. At 8:45 or so we were a couple of hundred people deep in one of maybe a dozen lines, waiting for the 9:00 AM opening. We didn't clear the front gates until a good ten minutes past 9, and then I took off with both of our tickets, heading for the Tower of Terror fastpass shack.

I sprinted in the precious few areas where there was enough room to do so, but otherwise had to resort to a poor Barry Sanders impression. At any rate, under no condition was I going to allow myself to come to a walking pace anywhere. I caught a few looks and comments at the edges of my vision and hearing, all conveying some sort of "There's no running at Disneyland" sentiment. Well, I needed some way to get a little exercise at the park to compensate for the ubiquitous junk food, so I'm afraid I didn't have much choice. Besides, I hadn't done any running since a short 3-mile session on the prior Tuesday.

Just as I neared the fastpass shanty, I caught sight of another sprinter trying to overtake me on my right from a different angle. Fat chance, so I accelerated and blocked him out as necessitated by the rules of engagement. Meanwhile, Kayo did her job and had completed her more comfortably paced jog to the regular queue. This was her first Tower of Terror experience. (No point in describing the rides, I guess.) We hit Journey to the Center of the Earth next, then walked back to Tower of Terror to exercise the fastpasses. And finally the fun part of the day began.

[TRAVELS] Fuji 2007

2007-07-23T00:29:00.000+09:00

As a matter of physical exertion, I've found that the Mt. Fuji climb gets easier every time. It's not necessarily because I really know my way around; although I've used the same route to the summit on each occasion, that being the Yoshida-guchi trail from Kawaguchiko-guchi 5-gome, that didn't stop me from almost taking the wrong turn with about a kilometer or two left to go. On my first chance to lead a group of my own, that would have been a disastrous embarrassment.

Rather, I just seem to be in better shape every time I take the trip. Let's hope that trend continues, even after I enter the resolutely unhealthy hellhole of my next job. The trip in rushed commentary and pictures:

First trip ever made in the Ham-mobile with the usual captain at the helm on three hours' sleep and a full day of lawyerly work. The hike started at 9:15 PM. Summer Associate #1 took an impressively aggressive pace for the first hour, but the group lost gas quickly. 11:47 PM put us at one of these Station 7 huts:

For the uninitiated, the fact that the stations at certain stages are drawn out across several, sometimes far apart shacks can be frustrating. We crossed this regal and important-looking torii at the strike of midnight. But it was still Station 7.

The first sign of Station 8 would not come until almost exactly an hour later.

The temperature started to fall rather quickly at this point, and the wind picked up as usual. The UFC60 T-shirt would not cut it anymore, and I quickly went from long-sleeved rashguard + UFC60 T-shirt, to long-sleeved rashguard + long-sleeved T-shirt, to long-sleeved rashguard + long-sleeved T-shirt + sauna suit top. On the bottom, the surf shorts + Uniqlo cargo pants combo worked well for the most part. I estimated that we would summit with an hour to spare at this rate, so I convinced the group to take shelter for a quick meal at the old Fuji-san "Hotel." The nourished boss ready to move the crew along again at just before 3:00 AM (check the racing stripes!):

At this point that things started to suck. The rain was now in a regular pour. The single-file train of people up to the summit slowed to a crawl which meant no time to sit down and rest, but rather standing in place for minutes at a time to get pelted by cold rain and colder wind. There is no such thing as waterproof, but my gear was less waterproof than most, and for the first time ever on a mountain, I started to get worried. My temperature was dropping quickly, even after I quickly removed my shell to get a fleece, hat and neckwarmer on. I know nothing about hypothermia except how to spell it, but I was nearly convinced I was going to get it. I have no pictures of this miserable part.

Despite the weather and slow trail of zombies, I think we summitted just in time for the sunrise that never appeared behind the thick mist. Instead, this is what you would have found at the time of sunrise:

Trust me, no one looked better in that rest hut. Our group reassembled and finally started to recover after ingesting some hot liquids.

Admittedly, for at least one of us the hot liquid was some bad sake. And a cold beer chaser.

Finally, the sun began to peek out from the clouds on our way down. 7:29 AM:

Two minutes later:

Crushingly handsome mountain man:

The sun still had its work cut out for it in ridding the mist from the Subashiri.

I then decided to use my cheap Arnette sunglasses as a filter. Clouds,

Clouds,

and Sun.

Some ice left on the mountain, which I'd never seen before,

where I risked a little frostbite to leave my signature.

Unexpectedly, my two favorite shots came from my cell phone which, come to think of it, does have a 5 megapixel camera in it.

The other money shot.

8:41 AM. The back that supports a demanding family. Green always goes well with another hue of green.

Total hike time: about 13 hours, 45 minutes. The majority of us had only spent about 27 hours awake in a row. No ceremonial beer at the bottom for me, but instead a grape-flavored soft-serve ice cream cone. The group reboarded the car after submitting to my ironclad anti-skankiness procedures, which involved liberal use of wet sani-wipes and plastic bags.

Needless to say, I tried to convince the rest of the team to go to Fujikyu Highland (click here for the April trip report) on the way home. I even did an up-close drive-by of Eejanaika by the park's rear entrance to convince them, but no dice. They were all tired or something. Pansies. But I didn't complain much, knowing that a massive meal of steak frites and a ham-and-egg omelette awaited me at a nice brasserie back home.

[TRAVELS] Fujikyu Highland

2007-04-07T11:00:00.000+09:00

It may not be obvious from my writings to date, but I am just a little bit of a coaster maniac. So on Thursday, following weeks of planning, I took a trip to the revered Fujikyu Highland. It was a long time coming -- after all, it was only my second visit in roughly as many months.

The trip was fantastic from the very start. I headed out to the old peoples' part of town to pick up my co-venturer Kayo. Maybe two kilometers from the rendezvous spot, I got pulled over by a cop. Driving in a lane reserved for buses from 7:30 AM to 9:30 AM, he said. I had no idea bus lanes existed, and there certainly aren't any in my part of town. Also, I was tailing a big van, so I probably missed any signs on the curb or asphalt. But I just wanted to get to the park as soon as possible, so I copped to everything. It never even occurred to me to try the clueless gaijin card. The officer was a nice enough guy, but he took his sweet time to write out the ticket and advise me of the 6,000 yen fine (that's 1,200 yen more than a day pass at Fujikyu, mind you) before I was let on my merry way.

Now suitably late, I gathered Kayo in the passenger seat and motored onto the expressway. I recommended to Kayo that we keep our juiciest stories for the slow lines at the park (namely Dodonpa), so our tour of the Chuo Expressway was filled with only innocuous conversation. We were making good time despite my run-in with the law, and we were on target for a 9:30 AM arrival, only 30 minutes after the park opening. That's when the empty gas tank indicator light came on.

Cursing my luck and any other recent users of the Ham-mobile, I saw no choice but to pull off at the next exit, the sleepy town of Tsuru. I got a half tank of gas in the car and turned around to get back on the freeway. Except that there's only one on-ramp, and it heads in the opposite direction, back toward Otsuki. I think this explains why the off-ramp toll booth operator had that wry smile on his face when I asked for the nearest gas station.

Our only choice, all the way to Fujiyoshida, was the surface streets. The traffic meandered at a slow country bumpkin pace for a few kilometers, then gridlocked. Ahead of me was a blue-green car whose driver kept craning his neck up and around the traffic jam.

That's when it happened. Captain Insano suddenly yanked his blue-green car onto a small side street and sped off. I thought quickly about his haste and his local Yamanashi license plate, then took off behind him. Thus began Inaka Coaster. Kayo's job was to keep the blue-green car in view as it darted around tight corners and ducked behind old houses. My job was to focus on staying with the many curves in the narrow road while keeping the car from rolling over onto someone's vegetable crop or plowing into a pedestrian grandma. It was tough, and Captain Insano vanished from view after about 6 minutes' chase. Needless to say, it was a blast and we were laughing the entire way. I figured out the rest by using the navigation system and eventually got back onto the main street. It was still crowded but tolerable. I figure that Insano saved us a good 30-40 minutes. We drove through the park's very ugly entrance monument at 10:15 or so, then careened into the nearest reasonable parking spot.

Muhammad Ali jacket: Check.
Sunglasses: Check.
Camera: Check.
Very appropriate silver sneakers: Check.
Money: Check.

And then we went in.

I had our queue strategy all worked out. I expected that first-timers and casual visitors would line up at Fujiyama, the brand name ride of the park. As it turned out, that line was spilling out all the way into the sunshine, several switchbacks past the Fujiyama ticket window. So we stuck to the plan and unhesitatingly headed for Dodonpa. In the car, I asked Kayo whether she'd be OK with going straight for Dodonpa without a warm-up ride. I described the ride dynamics, especially the launch and the large hill, so she could make an educated decision. She said it would be fine; still, I had my concerns because of her lack of prior Dodonpa experience. We got into line just inside of the 60 minute marker, but the ride was running at peak with three cars and our wait was probably only 45-50 minutes. During the wait time, I was able to tell one of my better recent stories, which of course cannot be repeated here in print. Finally, we boarded the Mother car.

I knew what to expect from the ride, and that made it better. The launch was exhilarating. I had my arms up for all of the lightning-quick acceleration to 172 km/h (106.9 mi/h) and then some. The negative Gs at the top of the hill were great too. I tried to amplify the effect by, again, keeping my hands up. Kayo loved it. She said that there was no way she could have conceived what the aircraft carrier-like launch would be like without experiencing it, but it was better than anything she imagined. She is also apparently quite the negative G-addict.

(That's not Kayo, by the way, just some lucky random girl.)

When the car pulled back into the station I caught a peek at the line, and it looked to be about an hour. So the queue strategy next required us to head straight for my favorite, the 2006-built Eejanaika. Several Dodonpa riders shared our view and headed in the same direction. Kayo marvelled from the ground at the beautiful track and the incredible first drop, but I managed to dissuade her from wasting time taking pictures right then and there. We got to the queues, one each to the left and right sides of the track. Social human nature dictated that the right side would be longer, and theory held true to form. We elected the left side for the first Eejanaika ride of the day and waited around 35 minutes.

I gave Kayo the wilder outside seat, and the 90-degree drop stripped her of consciousness. I don't know if I heard another thing out of her for the rest of the ride, and she would later say that she had no idea what was going on. (I suppose that's the way it goes unless you study up on the track details a little bit.) So she didn't realize when we were in the full-full (when the cars rotate 360 degrees around the track while the seats themselves rotate 360 degrees laterally in relation to the track), and there was no way she was prepared for the camera point.

I, on the other hand, was ready. In response to a request by some girls I know from work, I pulled out the Kenju face. For those who have never seen it, it is a semi-famous facial expression in Tokyo business circles, most often seen in connection with busted M&A deals and aborted takeover attempts. Elsewhere, I put my faith into the design of the harness system and spread my arms and legs out as much as possible. It was splendid, and was at least every bit as exciting as my first Eejanaika adventure in January.

Kayo got re-steadied on her land legs in the photo shop and in the souvenirs area, where I picked up a justifiably unattractive Eejanaika T-shirt. We glanced at the Eejanaika queue and noted that it was about the same length as earlier. I asked Kayo whether she wanted to line up for the same ride again or Fujiyama before we grabbed some lunch. She suggested we check out Fujiyama. I had no objections, thinking that the morning's Fujiyama crowd had probably moved further into the park by now.

No one. We raced up the Fujiyama station structure to the top level and boarded car #1 in only about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, we were in the second row. The choice first row seats were occupied by none other than Kim Jong-Il and a large Asian Pat, which was quite contrary to what the media has led us all to believe about his tastes in female (?) companions.

Fujiyama's lift hill and first drop are pretty exciting, and the view of Mt. Fuji as the train slowly crawls around for the second drop is beautiful, but as a ride it has been vastly eclipsed by Dodonpa and Eejanaika. All the same, the length of the ride almost always justifies the relatively short queue time, and if you have strong ribs and neck muscles, the Togo torture section at the end can be somewhat fun.

Back down at the photo shop, it took us more than a few seconds to find our picture. So powerful was the presence of Kim Jong-Il. I was upstaged by the interrigent dictator but undaunted, and when the photo shop girl asked me for my order I did not hesitate in the least.

"One photo . . ."

She nodded and punched away at her machine.

"And three mugs." (Fujiyama is the only ride that offers a souvenir mug.)

She stopped pressing buttons, and looked up at me like I was crazy or something.

"Three?" she said. It wasn't so much a question as her re-stating it to herself in an attempt to comprehend it.

Thanks to my Sherlock Holmes-like powers of perception, I could sense that she was not going to let me have three souvenir photo mugs, for whatever incomprehensible reason. I offered, "Three is impossible?"

She replied, "Well, it takes two hours to make one, and we are only open until 5 PM." I wouldn't exactly call that an answer to my question.

"OK," I said, "How about two?"

"Two?" Again, in the same tone. Photo shop girl gave me no response. "If it would help, I can come back to pick them up tomorrow." More incredulous silence.

I gave. "I can only buy one, huh?" She assented, and that was the end of our fruitful negotiations. Kayo remarked that the only way I was going to get another mug was to ride Fujiyama again. More on that later. But we do have that momentous, life-changing ride with Kim Jong-Il captured on porcelain.

(For those of you that don't quite recognize the rittle ronery Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, keep in mind that the wearing of glasses on Fujiyama is strictly forbidden.)

We went off in search of lunch. We looked at menus one after the other, advertising nothing but the most health-endangering choices. Our quest for healthier fare took us just about around the entire park. It was then that we noticed that the queue at Eejanaika was very short. The right side queue wasn't much longer than the left, and it looked to me like a 20-25 minute wait. We scrambled onto the end of the line and patted ourselves on the back for deciding to do our second Eejanaika run before eating, rather than after.

Then the heavens smiled, and we got the first row, Kayo on the inside, me on the outside. It was astounding. The first row shrieks all the way through the straight drop from the lift hill. All the movements are more violent. I tried to smile for the camera this time but my face muscles wouldn't cooperate due to the intense speed and lurch of the cars. At some point during the latter half of the ride, I hurt my left thigh when my body inadvertently curved into a ball and a sudden direction change whacked me against one of the steel safety handles. It might have been my greatest coaster experience ever.

No mementos this time, so we resumed our lunch hunt. We eventually came to the realization that non-hazardous foods were somehow outlawed on the park grounds, and gave up. We checked into the Lagoon, a cafeteria-like operation in the middle of Fujikyu Highland. I figured that if I was going to eat badly, I was going to max out on badness. I ordered a katsu curry and a melon soda. Of course, there was no way I could finish it. I reasoned that I would have time to digest all that junk while waiting for Dodonpa.

Kayo asked me for the time and I responded that it was 2:15 PM.

Kayo said, "Didn't that girl at the photo shop say that it takes two hours to make a mug?"

Which meant that, if I wanted another mug, I would have to ride Fujiyama by 3:00!

Seconds later, we were back in the Fujiyama line. And not 15 minutes later, way before our 3:00 deadline, we were back in the photo shop. My arch-enemy was still on duty. I think she recognized me. She asked us to select between a photo and stickers.

"No more mugs today?" I politely asked.

She shot me that look again, the same one she wore hours earlier when she said, "Three?"

"No," she replied. "We are done with mugs for today." She was joined behind the counter by another staff member who was making mugs. While Kayo and I discussed whether to get a photo or stickers, I distinctly saw the photo shop succubus walk over to her colleague and do a nudge nudge, wink wink as if to say, "This guy is that serial murderer I was telling you about."

A little forlorn (OK, maybe it was just me), we settled for the stickers. During lunch, I had received a special email request from Geppuko to do the 「アメメ」 (the "Ameme"), Baby Amelie's gesture to convey implacable grief and global suffering, or even just light incontinence or mild confusion. I don't think I could have pulled it off any better, if I do say so myself.

We were nearing our goal of riding the big three of Fujiyama, Dodonpa and Eejanaika twice each. All that was left to do was to get into the hour-long line at Dodonpa. Right behind us in the queue was a white dude, solo. Clearly one of those abhorrent roller coaster dorks. Kayo suggested I strike up a conversation with him. I was offended.

But maybe I should have, because it might have been karma that put us in the last row, this time in the Father car. As soon as the coaster dork realized he would be in the first row of the next car all alone, he lit up like the Death Star. I envied him.

I enjoyed our second Dodonpa ride nonetheless, and it felt just as good as our first in the morning. For the camera shot this time, I re-enacted a special gesture called the koregurai? -- it is meant to indicate how long my long my jet-black locks were way back when I wanted to be a girl. Just kidding.

I checked my watch. We had accomplished our six-ride goal at just past 4:10 PM. That left plenty of time for Fujikyu's famous haunted hospital (a walkthrough of over 600 meters containing nothing but inadvisable things for pregnant persons), or so we thought. The attraction was already shut down for the day, and the zombie doctors wearing blood-stained lab coats were outside smoking cigarettes. Labor regulations, I assume.

We filled out the remaining time by riding the park's version of Drop Zone and the extreme Viking-styled PaniClock. We fought through the crowds to buy last-minute gifts and knick-knacks. And then we were done.

Well, I love Fujikyu Highland. I could even be persuaded to buy a park attendant windbreaker if they sold it.

[MUSIC] Abbey Road

2007-01-24T21:44:00.000+09:00

I met my wife for a quick dinner. We caught up on the events of the day, one that followed an entire pitch-black morning of Maggie tantrums, met in turn with escalating disciplinary methods that began to scare their own designer, namely me, the head of the wolfpack.

What most caught my ear about today's recap was that my wife dug up one of my Beatles albums and popped it into the CD player, giving the kids their first exposure to this genius band, the white Earth, Wind and Fire. It was Abbey Road. I had always pictured that children derived their initial impression of the Beatles through the hold-your-hand early period. But if they are going to learn Beatles, they might as well start with the best.

Well, I guess it is a very close call between Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper's. But I've always suspected myself of attributing too much credit to the reprised theme in Sgt. Pepper's as an unacknowledged progenitor of hip-hop. Abbey Road, by contrast, is fascinating in the number of its pure instances of genius. Both by the collective band and by each of its individual contributors. Walter/Wendy Carlos one moment, amazing sweetness thirty seconds later, unexpected blues a minute after that. Perhaps it is the variety of ideas that is so arresting that it almost never occurs to one how disjointed the menu is.

Let's not forget about Revolver or Rubber Soul though. Maybe that's for another time.

[MUSIC] Strange Days

2007-01-24T12:10:00.001+09:00

I snuck in some semi-serious practice time at the piano, probably for the first time in months. Needless to say, the twins' desire to hammer away at the keys took precedence, so I propped them up on my knees for 10 minutes, give or take. I switched them on my knees about halfway through to make sure that neither of them got too attached to the bass or treble register.

I still can't play with evenness in my hands. So I played through a couple of Chopin's nocturnes. Second up was my personal favorite, the D-Flat Major, Op. 27. I actually nailed the flourish that appears about a quarter from the end. I was astounded. Not bad for my months of zero practice, I thought. But I made a lot of other silly little flubs, marring the experience.

Feeling satisfied, I finally started drinking. Two cans of beer and then I opened up a very mediocre Barolo. A few hours later, I sat with my back propped against the bed, listening to "Sketches of Spain" on the new Denon stereo in our bedroom. Somehow, I spilled four drops of that wine on our white carpet. This would be the first time I've ever dropped any amount of red wine on anyone's carpet, white or not. I wasn't even drunk. Something is seriously wrong here.

[MUSIC] The Sound of L.A.

2007-01-16T02:31:00.000+09:00

On Sunday, I found time to enjoy a rare treat: I wheeled the girls around in their twin-seater MacLaren, up and down Minami-Aoyama 6, 5, and some other chome. Mommy was home alone. It was a cold day, though, with my head freshly shaven back down to 2 millimeters all around, and Elise without a cushy MacLaren sleeping bag for the duration of the ride.

With mostly the latter concern on my mind, I took the girls into the Spiral building to get some warmth. Of course, I was fully aware that this afforded me a great opportunity to listen to some CDs. Spiral, like all record shops, is very hit-or-miss, but I do manage to find something I feel like spending money on about once every 30 tries. That might put the Spiral record shop in the top quartile.

I didn't have much time, but in the 5 minutes I had to listen to new offerings before Amelie woke up and started whining, I got a gander of "The Sound of L.A." compiled by Carlos Nino. The first two tracks won me over, with some great sampling that lazily lagged the drum track on at least half the occasion, but then the CD got a little heavy with overly lazy sample-matching that reeked of affectation, and also a couple of telltale signs of the rave-meets-screwdriver-on-chalkboard Cut Chemist sound that I've never really liked.

I was borderline on this decision when Amelie's whining got a little too intrusive for the other customers. Elise had also managed to pry her eyes open, and had just started her contemplative and confused "Where the hell am I?" thing. So off we went, no CD purchase in hand.

But hey what, I just found a megamix from outtakes of the "Sound of L.A." project, all for free on dublab. So that's downloading on iTunes right this minute. Of course, the megamix isn't quite the same thing as what I was listening to on Sunday, but I'll still give my babies credit for the money-saving exercise. Thanks, kids.

[FIGHT] Taira-sensei

2006-11-14T19:01:00.000+09:00

Seriously, you can find just about anything on the Web these days. Taira Naoyuki was, and still is, a beast. A wonderfully good-natured one, though. Unfortunately, Taira-sensei may have arrived just a few years ahead of his time, leaving us without a satisfactory answer to the timeless Rickson question.

And with that, I am now very excited about the "painful holds" seminar this week.

[FIGHT] Strapple: September 25, 2006

2006-09-26T21:43:00.000+09:00

Recover full guard from half guard

With top guy's right leg trapped in your half guard, your first priority is to control your opponent's left hand, presumably gripping his left wrist or its cuff with your right hand or fingers. Your left forearm needs to find its way under his chin, with your left hand gaining a grip on the cloth over the top of his left shoulder. Keeping your opponent at bay, unhook your legs and position the sole of your left foot on his upper inner right thigh, with the rest of your lower left leg going diagonally across his body in the sword cut angle, i.e., your left knee generally in the direction of top guy's left shoulder. Use this left foot to push off when shrimping on your right side; quickly remove the bent from your right leg, straighten it out and pull it through the opening between your opponent's legs. Straighten out so that you are face to face with your opponent and recover full guard.

Kick off and push away to wheelbarrow position

Always, always get into a small box in the half guard -- shrimp onto your right side, the right side of your head included. Rotate your left leg below the knee to tuck the top of your left foot under top guy's right waist; shrimp a little more if necessary to fit your foot in. Your left forearm again cuts under your opponent's chin, your left hand gripping his left shoulder and your right hand grabbing some pants under his left knee. Feint by pushing off him off to your right side. As he attempts to bring himself back straight over you, push him further along to your left side by lifting his base with your left leg, and pushing him along with both your left hand on his shoulder and your right hand under his left leg. Roll upright onto your left haunch and your opponent should be posting out into a wheelbarrow. Use your left foot to further disturb his base by kicking his right thigh farther out, and shuck his lower left leg onto your right clavicle tucked under the right side of your head. Post out with your left arm and retract your left leg behind you and stand up (柔術立ち). There are a variety of ways to put yourself into an advantageous position after standing up behind a wheelbarrow, including stepping back and pulling on your opponent's right leg, which should force him to flop onto his ass. Cf http://www.grapplearts.com/Andreh-Half-Guard-Crossface-Counter.htm.

Skirt around backside, straightened foot tuck sweep

Trap top guy's right leg in the half guard. Don't let him shunt his right arm under your left armpit; rather, thread your arm under his right armpit. Take the bottom of your opponent's left lapel (where the Atama tag is) and feed it around his back to your left hand.
Foot in skirt; grip pants over opp's left knee or behind it. Kick out your left leg straight while lifting top guy's left leg into the air, rotating to your left for the sweep.

Skirt around backside, rock forward into base

Take a tighter, deeper grip on the lapel (higher up than the Atama tag). Shrimp just enough to tuck the topside of your left foot under top guy's right hip. Lift with that foot and push your opponent moderately away mid-air. Keep your torso and head tight with his body and rock into a squat as he is returning to earth. Be sure to square away your right knee (and use your right hand if it's free) to get a base and keep the momentum moving away from you.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Escapes from Half-Guard Bottom (and Bonus)

2006-09-22T12:45:00.000+09:00

Harada half-guard escape #1

With your left arm against top guy's throat, push up. Your right hand pushes away on top guy's left upper thigh (but be careful to keep five fingers straight together to avoid a thumb injury). It's very important to hook around the back of top guy's right knee with your right leg to keep from getting passed. If necessary, push off with the sole of your left foot and shrimp onto your right ribs to create some space, then slide your left foot inside of top guy's right hip. Lift up while pushing up and to the right with your left forearm and right hand.

Even if your opponent posts his left arm out to avoid getting swept, he's now given you the space to retract your right leg inside of his frame.

Harada half-guard escape #2

Use this escape when your opponent's butt is moving to your right for the pass, i.e., he has rotated his hips and puts weight on his left knee. Put your right hand on his left hip, dig your right elbow into the mat as a stopper. Your left arm is in the same position as Harada half-guard escape #1, digging under top guy's chin. As a wrinkle, squeeze your legs hard on top guy's right thigh, look to the left and rotate your whole body in that direction. Just as your opponent reacts to your feint and lurches back towards your right side, shift your right foot, hitherto hooking his right leg, and instead plant it outside (to the left of his left foot). Plant your left foot as well and bridge to your right, removing the stopgap at exactly the same time.

Skirt tug

Loosen top's lower right skirt, then pull it over to his opposite left shoulder. Your right arm should control the skirt but at the same time be under top guy's left arm or armpit and hoist it up. Bridge over to the direction in which you are pulling the skirt. (Is your left foot planted or hooked under top guy's right thigh or hip?)

Shrimp to basic pull-in sweep

From bottom, shrimp onto your right side (don't forget to push your groin into the air first). Push off with your left hand on top's left shoulder, right hand on his pant leg. Take grips while sneaking your left lower leg into top's tummy. Pull in close and roll him off to your left side.

Kimura from half-guard bottom to sweep

Assuming you are on your back trapping top guy's right leg, go to the opposite arm (his left). Top guy will straighten up his posture to avoid it. Unhook your left leg, plant your left foot into the ground and kick off. Raise the same leg into the air and lift your hip into top guy's torso to get the sweep.

Kimura from half-guard bottom with extra leverage

Start at the same place as the previous position, i.e., look to wrap up top guy's left arm. As top guy defends, thread your left leg through his chest cavity -- if he has posted his right arm out -- then hook the back of your left knee around the left side of his head and push. If this still doesn't force his arm out, bring your left leg all the way down and around the back of your opponent's left shoulder blade, and place your left foot on his left hip to maximize your leverage in pulling the arm free.

BONUS: Finishing katahajime from backmount

If you choke from the left side of his neck (grip on his right lapel), the victim's proper escape is to move to his right, since he never wants to put his neck in closer to the V in his assailant's elbow. Keep control by pulling on him (maybe with the assistance of your right hand tugging on his right pant) enough to shift your base back under him. Keeping a grip on his pants, rotate off to your right side enough to hook your left calf over his left shoulder. You should be in almost T orientation. Thread your right arm through the underside of his right knee from the outside, and hook in the cranny of your bent arm. Pull closer to add pressure to the choke going on on your left side.

[FIGHT] Strapple: August Lessons

2006-09-03T00:56:00.000+09:00

First, a couple of do-not-forgets that have occurred to me lately:

1. Remember to use leverage. You can turn your hips when applying a Kimura or Americana, for example, rather than just relying on your arm strength.

2. V1 armlock with legs: In applying the armlock from kesa-gatame position, don't forget that you can pull up on the back of your opponent's head to cause extra discomfort. Typically, this is done by clasping your hands behind his head and leaning back with your upper body. Your lower body must remain committed to the armlock.

3. Armbar from side position or knee-on-the-belly: In taking the opportunity for an armbar, it may be a good idea to control the susceptible arm with your hand that is farther from bottom guy's head. This frees your other hand (your right hand in the case where you are taking his left arm) to help you out in throwing your leg over bottom guy's face. Once control is established between your thighs, you still have time to consider whether to use your left hand to instead control your opponent's pants.

And as for some recent technique:

Triangle choke trap from half spider guard

A simple but effective set-up. Start with a half or modified spider guard, say, grips on both of upper guy's sleeves, left foot on his right bicep, left on his hip. In a standard spider, you hold your opponent's right sleeve tightly inside your thigh, while your knee comes around the outside of his right forearm and elbow, and your lower leg dips around and back inside his right arm. Usually, your left foot ends up inside his right armpit, but in this trap, you leave it square on his bicep.

The upper guy's typical attempt to free his right arm will result in him rotating his forearm counterclockwise (from his perspective), and at 6 o'clock, bottom guy's grip (with his left hand) will come free. Switching back to bottom guy, who lays the trap in this instance, the moment of freedom is the precise time to shoot your left foot forward such that your knee ends up near your opponent's right ear. To help the set-up along, use your right hand (as well as your left, possibly) to pull on upper guy's left arm to bring him forward into the triangle choke. As usual, your left foot should find its way under the small underside of your right knee in this case to close the triangle.

Resetting the triangle choke against knee-in-asscrack defense

For upper guy, an important defense against the triangle choke is straightening his back to prevent closure, then standing up enough to bring the leg corresponding to the side of his trapped arm forward, say his right. Sitting back down will slide his right shin into the bottom guy's asscrack, creating precious space to work against the triangle. For bottom guy, there is still the chance to reset the choke if you have sufficient devotion. Use the palms of your hands to pull yourself away from upper guy and the shin in your ass; in fact, if you're flexible enough, you may be able to will yourself backward from a rear handspring posture. The battle ensues as upper guy keeps trying to re-insert his shin and as bottom keeps trying to create distance to finish the choke. When trying to regain the triangle, don't forget that you may improve your chances by lifting your hips and straightening your lower back.

Half spider guard with reversed legs to reverse triangle and armlock combo

Now this was cool. Imagine the modified spider guard from bottom discussed above. Keep the hand grips the same, but switch sides on your feet. That is, your left foot goes to upper guy's left shoulder, while your right foot goes to the outside of his right abdomen. A quick and powerful enough pull with both arms brings him in and gives you the chance to close a reverse triangle. In my case, it seemed more comfortable to bring my left leg around the left side and back of upper guy's head, then tuck the top of my left foot under the underside of the knee on my now straightened right leg. This will not result in a tap, but now you have two arms to work against upper guy's left arm.

I found it easy enough to go for the basic 2-arms-to-1 armbar. In other words, tuck his left wrist between my head and right shoulder, then cup his left elbow with two arms, then pull down while nudging the grip closer to his body to find his breaking point. Failing that, a wristlock is an obvious alternative.

Escape from under side position, then to side-back and tackle

From underneath side position and before top guy can establish a great grip and control, lift your hips into the air and get to your side, facing him. Here, assume that you roll onto your right side. Next, stab your right elbow into the ground at the same time you deftly scissor your legs, left foot forward, right foot back. Bring your knees up and you should at least make it onto all fours. This is no time to stop since you could be giving up the backmount. Quickly, your left leg shoulder should get off the ground behind you and shoot across diagonally, in front of your right leg, while you turn at your hips to the open right side. You can leave your left hand between top guy's legs, but fully extent your right arm and sweep a big circle with it, in and away, to clear his left arm. Then shift your frame again, lifting your right knee and leg into the air, counterclockwise and then back into the ground, now behind top guy's butt. Grip his right ankle area with your right hand. Leaning forward with your head and upper torso, combined with your right hand grip and left hand inside his left thigh, will force your opponent into your back and give you a chance for side position.

Reversal from butterfly guard and hands tightly clasped

Assume both you and your opponents are on your butts, feet forward and bent at the knees in your typical natural position, with all four hands jockeying for a good gi grip. Rather than play this game, take the earliest opportunity to shoot both arms under your opponent's armpits and clasp your hands tightly on the other side, on his back. At the same time, your feet should be inside his upper thighs to establish the butterfly guard. Rock back, even if just about on your back, while keeping your opponent close to you. Then rock back forward, lifting your legs while your opponent is still mid-air, putting him back on an unsure base when he gets back to earth. As with the usual warm-up drill, shunt one of your legs, e.g., the top of your right foot and shin sliding along the mat, under the other and under your butt as you sit up. Press forward to create your base, and your opponent will have none. His base gone, you can take top position in the guard or, if you're lucky, the half guard.

If the top guy attempts to sprawl wide to prevent you from rocking him back into a bad base, just continue with it. Resistance is futile, since his feet will eventually touch ground far behind him while you continue to lean forward into the top of his body, leading to a mortal bear hug.

[FIGHT] Strapple: June Lessons

2006-07-20T11:39:00.000+09:00

Getting to half-guard top 1

Down, your right hand on your opponent's hip cloth or upper left pant cloth, your left hand on your opponent's right leg cloth near his knee. Push down with head, raise ass, and take a big step over your opponent's right leg with your left leg. Keep control with left hand, hop over as in the half-leapfrog-in half-leapfrog-out drill. Push opponent's right leg straight as you bring your left leg over. Shut your groin tight to trap his leg before releasing your left hand grip. Now dig your left hand under and through bottom guy's right armpit and crook it out. Similarly, bring your right bicep in tight against his left armpit and post your elbow out for balance and to force his left arm outward, leaving both of his arms helplessly akimbo in snow angel position.

Getting to half-guard top 2

Instead of bringing your head down into his chest as in the above maneuver, keep a good posture and plant your left foot tightly in the space under your opponent's bottom. With some help from your left hand gripping Otherguy's right pant leg as before, bring your left knee down and over your opponent's right thigh to plant it on the ground, leaving your knee and the undersides of your left toes in contact with the mat.

Basic half-guard top position

Assuming your right leg is trapped with your left leg free along bottom guy's right abdomen, use your left hand to pillow under his head and your right hand to dig under his left armpit. With everything close to the ground, post out your right elbow to keep control and force your opponent's left arm into an outward and useless configuration. Grip with both hands on the fabric behind bottom's left shoulder blade if it will bring you in tighter.

Half-guard pass 1

From basic half guard top position, keep head planted on your opponent's chest, grumble your left shoulder into his face, and maintain osaekomi. Raise ass straight into the air, straighten right leg to ease the travel for bottom guy's legs to slip down, and use your free left foot to kick the half guard down until it is below your right knee. Be careful of bridges, which require you to abandon kicking with your left foot and to reestablish balance. When, for example, your enemy attempts to bridge to his right, you shoulder put your left knee back on the mat and shift your hips to the right in the same instant to create counterweight. Kick off with your left leg and free your right leg directly into kesagatame position. Or more likely, put a 90 degree crick in your right leg at the knee, and swing it to the left. Kick the remaining dregs of your opponent's half guard off with your left leg while freeing your right leg.

Half-guard pass 2

If bottom guy establishes a hold under both your armpits before you get to basic half guard top, then reach over his left arm with your right and thread your hand through his legs. Hook your right hand around the upper calf of his left leg. Keep pressure on him by reaching around his back with your left arm and gripping the fabric on his left shoulder, or even further down on his back if your arm length allows it. Swing your hips to the left and get your left butt cheek to the mat. Both the outside of your left leg and outside of his right should be flush against the ground, with your left knee up in his belly or higher, and your left foot on his lower right thigh, ready to kick it away. At roughly the same time, improve your right arm's control of your opponent's left leg by getting the back of his left knee onto your right bicep or in the cranny of your arm. You can plant your right foot at a right angle or otherwise change the angle of your right leg to create the necessary space. Kick away with your left leg and raise your opponent's left leg with power from your right arm to free your right leg. Leave your left foot pinned on the inner kneecap of his left leg as much as possible. Swing the right leg out with emphasis, leaving the left foot in position as a paperweight. Now get to side control by switching your base and bringing both knees up against his right ribcage, or by getting to kesagatame.

Half-guard pass 3

Same as above, except pull his left leg to you with your right arm bent at a right angle, using "jerk" strength. This creates space longways rather than sideways.

[FIGHT] Strapple: May 22, 2006 Masada-Juku Wrestling Practice

2006-07-03T00:33:00.000+09:00

Freeing yourself of the single leg tackle

If your opponent is executing a single leg tackle on your left leg, place your weight on the tackler's right shoulder, then wrench the trapped foot outside to his right hip. At the same time, weave your left arm around the back of your opponent's right shoulder and inside the same upper arm. Put a premium on using your head and upper left torso to add more weight to the top of your tackler's right shoulder blade. If your two knees and his two knees are still above ground, post out with your free right hand to bring the center of gravity lower to the ground. Optimally, this forces the tackler to post out with his left hand as well. With his balance disturbed at that moment, wheel your left leg out from his grip and try to spin to a modest front sprawl position.

Kote-nage

Consider the kote-nage option in a similar situation, but with your trapped leg still near the tackler's groin or between his thighs, and with both you and your opponent on your knees. Post out with your right limbs if necessary, then lift with both your trapped left leg and your left arm. (Maybe the left arm would do better work if it weaves in from the front part of the shoulder and through the tackler's right bicep, rather than around the back?). A sharp enough movement will force the right side of your opponent's body into the air and will roll his back onto the ground, ultimately providing an opportunity for half guard or even side position on his left side.

Lapel grip with single leg tackle

Simple tackle. With standard judo grip, say, your right hand on his left sternum lapel and your left hand deeply gripping the cloth under his right elbow, in one sudden motion release your left hand and drop a level. Your left arm shoots around the back of your opponent's right thigh. Pull it toward you for a potential modified single leg tackle. If it doesn't compromise your balance, you may be able to kick his right leg closer to your range by hooking his calf with your right leg. (Perhaps the left leg will work too.) Falling forward at the same time may not hurt your chances, either.

Spin dive tackle to the opposite side

Switch grips for this explanation, or in other words, assume that your left hand has a grip on his right sternum lapel. Keeping a grip on the lapel, drop levels abruptly while your right arm shoots around to the area just above the outside part of your opponent's left knee. Using your right hand as a pivot point, pull yourself down and around to the rear quarter-half of back of your opponent's left leg, spinning on your knees on the mat. Put pressure forward and stand up to break his balance. Don't forget to lean into your opponent's left hip if it will help.

[FIGHT] Strapple: May 22, 2006 Beginners' Session

2006-05-25T23:29:00.000+09:00

Regrettably, only the parts that I remember:

Reviewing the basics of base

Settle into your opponent's cross guard. Top guy spreads apart his knees, outside of bottom guy's hips, to form his base. Either keep your feet sprawled underneath, with their tops flush against the floor, or stump up with just your ten toes pressed into the mat. A word of caution, as the latter may result in injury in the case of certain sweeps or actions taken from the bottom. Top guy grips both of the lapels near or south of his opponent's sternum with one hand, say, the right. Improve your leverage by digging the heel of your palm into your opponent's torso. No need to straightarm him back to the ground unless and until he tries to sit up. With your free left hand, grip Otherguy's belt or, better yet, some fabric near the top of his trousers. In either case, keep the thumb of your left hand tucked in to prevent bottom guy from wresting it free without expending a little effort, and stunt the heel of your left hand in as well. Use your left elbow to stab into the sensitive area inside his right knee, while retaining a firm grip with your left hand, of course.

Basic pass, arch, and kick out to kesa-gatame

Show some persistence in digging in with your left elbow and his right leg should fall open. Keeping the pressure with your left arm on as long as possible, throw your left knee over his inner right thigh to start the pass. The next priority is to reposition your left forearm under his neck, with his right shoulder trapped under your left armpit. Meanwhile, your right arm darts under Otherguy's left armpit to meet your left hand as you look to complete the pin. Bottom guy will usually try to establish some form of half guard. Keep the pressure on, chest to chest, your left shoulder digging into his chin if possible, and arch your body into an ever-higher triangle, rising at your waist only. With enough space established, your right leg should be clear except for your foot plus alpha. Here the right leg can now sink and bend at the knee outside your opponent, or farther out than his right hip. Post your left foot out and somewhere in front temporarily to create space for the right to follow. If your opponent insists on trapping your right foot, you can use the bottom of your left foot against his left thigh to help gain freedom. You can now shoot your right leg straight out and forward past bottom guy's right head to take kesa-gatame.

Push off reversal from guard bottom

Shrimp to straight legs and use your hands to fend off the top guy's advancing left shoulder and arm. Pull up your left leg and blade it diagonally across your opponent's torso, generally from his right hip to his left shoulder. Your left hand switches from fending off his left shoulder to grabbing the fabric around it. Your right leg (still trapped between top guy's legs, I think) should have room to bend enough such that your right leg can tuck in front of Otherguy's right thigh. Now pull your opponent toward, on top of, and past you with your left hand, with some help from your legs lifting him into a more precarious altitude. Once past, Otherguy will post his arms out for balance. Continue to alienate your opponent by bringing your left palm into contact with his left rib cage and pushing off with further assistance from your legs, while your right hand moles under his left tibialis anterior. You can push off a bit with your right hand on his posterior also. As you crawl out from under your opponent and get to your feet or a kneel, you should be able to catch the front ankle part of his left foot in the cranny of your right elbow. Using your free right hand to grab your upper left lapel can help secure control of his right foot. Some motion here and there, in particular moving backward and pulling his left leg toward you, should convince your opponent to flop to his butt.

German suplex control, single leg grapevine to kata-hajime

With the above maneuver, there's a possibility that your opponent will not flop to guard, choosing instead to wheelbarrow himself away for as long as he can do so. Rather than waste time chasing him around, you can make a quick forward move and get the German suplex position. From there, you can yank him to the floor to one side (say, his right) after placing the instep of your right foot outside his right heel. In the alternative, you can re-secure your grips on your opponent's mid-lapels, then hop one foot (say, your left) over his left foot. Grapevine just his left leg by tucking the top of your left foot under your right inside knee, then hooking the front of your right foot behind his lower left calf to finish the levitation trick. Now, you can work either hand over the top of one of Otherguy's shoulders to get a cleaner grip on his upper lapel on the opposite side. First, if you go for his upper left lapel by passing your right hand over his right shoulder, you can reach for the mat with your left hand to bring your opponent down, then snake your left arm around his and then to the back of his neck to get a kata-hajime. Second, if you go for your opponent's upper right lapel with your left hand over his left shoulder, you can snake your right arm around for the kata-hajime and then lean earthward on your right side to obtain some good leverage. A successful choke in this situation likely means that you'll have to let go in mid-air as your partner taps out. In summary, lean off to the same side as the opponent's lapel that you have trapped.

And somewhere along the while, I got this for my troubles. Or, perhaps more likely, I got it during the wrestling portion of Masada-juku, with details to follow.

[TWINS] The Tag Team Arrives (February 28, 2006)

2006-04-25T23:55:00.000+09:00

Back by popular demand, more Laus. Elise Nana (奈々) was first to enter the ring at 9:31 AM, weighing 3,056 grams. Amelie Chacha (茶々) followed at 9:33 AM, weighing 2,266 grams.

OK, so maybe this note is almost two months late. There's a little more to see at http://www.djham.com/pictures/preludio.html.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Variations on a Theme by Minotauro

2006-04-24T23:15:00.000+09:00

As you can imagine, things have been very busy at home with the tag team. Work also sucks donkey. So I won't even pretend to attend jiu-jitsu classes regularly, let alone keep a journal thereof. But I did manage to attend Masada-juku on April 19, 2006. Technique drills focused on top guy sprawling against a failed shoot with both parties ending up on their knees.

Haul forward and take back

After sprawling, top guy can trap bottom guy's inside arm with the semblance of an arm-in guillotine. Assuming that your opponent's shoot was for a single leg, his inside arm (say, his right) will be the arm between your knees. Trap the left side of his head with your right bicep and clasp your hands together outside the armpit of his right arm. Keeping a tight palm-on-palm grip, slide back and draw bottom guy's extended right arm forward. In effect, you disrupt his base by sprawling him forward against his will. If his inside arm is sufficiently swept away, vectoring diagonally away from its original position between your knees, you can switch your grip to hold his right armpit with only your right hand, palm up (and the very tip of his upper right tricep with your fingertips). Clench a little bit of his gi if necessary. While extending your opponent, at the exact moment that the right side of his body is in a down dog position from yoga, you can pivot fully to his right side just as your free left hand reaches across bottom guy's back to grab his left mid-lapel.

Spinning choke sleeper

Masada-sensei witnessed my less-than-perfect attempts to pull off the technique above, and he told me to try the spinning choke sleeper. The choke works best for guys with long arms, and I'm just a regular orangutan. From the haul forward to half-down dog, the top guy switches to a sleeper grip instead of the armpit hold. Your right hand grabs your left bicep, with your open left palm on the mid- to lower back of your opponent's right side for leverage. Drop to your left side, where bottom guy's trapped arm is. With your body resting on your left ribs and your opponent on his right, start walking along the mat toward him to tighten the choke.

Unfinished spinning choke sleeper to mount

Working off of the spinning choke sleeper after dropping to the left side, as an alternative you can roll all the way onto your back. To get the other guy onto his, keep your sleeper grip tight and then bridge. Unfortunately, I was not too clear on the mechanics of moving to mount (or side position) from here. Thrust your legs and hips into the air and hope for the best, I suppose.

Ushikoroshi

Start with the sprawl and failed shoot, with top guy securing a modest palm-on-palm clasp but having trouble hauling bottom guy forward. On top, you want to pass to the side of the trapped arm. Your opponent below knows this, and crawls with you in the same direction, say, clockwise. With some good timing, you can plant your left foot to the outside at a stiff, almost right angle, and throw bottom guy in the opposite direction with your left hand, which is under his right armpit and outstretched arm. That should reorient your opponent on all fours but at two or three hours counterclockwise, vulnerable to a back-taking. Crawling and tip-toeing to the other direction, then with a shuck with your right hand, may also be worth a try.

Free arm lift helicopter sweep

What's a body to do from the bottom? We were only treated to one technique on this end. From the failed sprawl, keep your right arm jerked back at a 90-degree angle to prevent the half-down dog. Since top guy's right arm is swooping down from up top, use your right hand to knot up some cloth around his right elbow. In the tight space available, step forward across your body with your right foot. It should end up a fair bit outside your opponent's right knee, or hamstring, even. Your left arm strikes out like a board and lifts from inside top guy's right thigh. Use your right foot, perhaps the flat, broad topside (the peroneus longus tendon, maybe?) to leverage and push off. If all goes to plan, top guy will flop onto his back after rotating on the imaginary axis en the top of his head and the great cornholio. Keep moving in direction of the forward right foot. Free your head first and work to a close osaekomi from the side position. Think like a judoka, I was told, but I don't quite get that.

We ended Masada-juku with restless sparring. OK, so maybe I sat out one round. I sparred with Sato first, but he is just heads and shoulders above everyone else right now, even in light of the fact that he got his long overdue blue belt promotion. My next partner was Yagihashi. I got to sidemount on his left side quickly and worked reasonably fervently for a V1 with my legs on one side, and either a Kimura, Americana or straight armbar on the other. Fumi-san then chimed in with some advice about tying up Yagihashi's right wrist with his own gi, and when I got focused on that endeavor I got caught in an armbar (left, I think) for my trouble. And for the finale, Little Blue Araki asked me to spar from my back for once. Sure. From there, I caught him with a little-bit-short-of-textbook basic scissors sweep to my right side, which I followed up with a quick Kimura attempt from mount that Araki tapped out of very early. On his next try from inside my guard, I caught him and his left arm in a triangle. I shifted position in a lose, errant way but still clamped it on again and toppled Araki to the mat on his left side, which brought forth the tapping. Araki might have been better off with his usual Spider or Rubber Guard game, because to be frank, he doesn't have much of a shot of putting me under except with a triangle from the bottom.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Tales from the Mat (Gi and No-Gi)

2006-01-31T12:12:00.000+09:00

The Fall of 2005

Three to four months into my jiu-jitsu experience, I was attending classes at a good pace. But then my back went screwy. I guess it all started sometime in early September when I sparred Mizuno-san, one of the blue belts and also a very experienced judo practitioner, so he likes the rough stuff and is strong as hell. By the way, it didn't help that he is considering going pro. Among the several things he tapped me with in our two minutes of rolling, he caught me in an omoplata (from our knees!) so fast that I didn't have time to tap before I felt that bad twinging, the one that accompanies that high-pitched crescendo in the brain. At the time, I thought that only my shoulder was messed up from that so I iced it, but only long after sucking it up and staying at practice for two hours. That turned out OK but I developed an increasingly worsening upper back pain, right down the middle of the top half of my spine, like between my shoulder blades. The Kawasaki Witch Doctor called it at around "D-4," if I recall correctly.

The pain peaked over the first succeeding weekend but subsided enough that I thought I could go to no-gi practice on September the 13th [dum-Dum-DUM]. That turned out to be a bit of a mistake. My back already felt a nagging little pain during stretching, but that quickly changed into the pulsing, sharp kind, especially since we sparred starting from our feet for a while, and my tackle defense already sucks ass. Pretty soon I had zero power. Couldn't bridge, couldn't get off my back, couldn't do pretty much jack. Even got tapped by a beginner. That pissed me off royally, but in my back's condition I couldn't do much about it. (What's worse, I thought I had a kata-gatame on pretty tight, but the dude is a famous non-tapper. I'll get him some time.)

The only highlight was that I triangled a much more experienced guy after getting tapped by that beginner. But to be honest, I must have just surprised him with it, since he probably couldn't imagine that I could pull it off. After all, in the first 3 minutes of our roll, I was essentially showing him that I had nothing because of my crippled ass.

Christmas Eve: Night of Tapping

I sparred blue belt, Tsuyoshi plus alpha. I took his back (or rather, he let me take it) but only had shallow hooks in. Luckily, my right hand had cleanly fed his right lapel to my left hand, which crept in over his left shoulder undeterred just outside his neck. He shook me off to his right side but I kept my grip on his lapel. I ended up three-quarters at rest on my right backside, not flush to the floor, keeping my left hand insistently tight right behind the left side of his throat, my left forearm across the back of his neck. With my free right hand, I took a modest hold of some loose fabric on his left shoulder and scrunched it toward me. Tsuyoshi +a tapped, eliciting noise from some observers from the MMA team.

Admittedly, this account isn't entirely fair. I probably caught Tsuyoshi +a in a rare spell of carelessness that was precipitated, again, by my less-than-compelling performance up to that point. Several months ago I put a tight triangle on Tsuyoshi +a, and I recall thinking at that time that he mostly let me have it. Anyway, in our last couple of rolls I suspect that I was as good as dead on two occasions, including one triangle, and then Tsuyoshi +a kindly let go. But what the hell, I still tapped a blue.

I sparred Yogi, a reasonably advanced white belt but one who frequently gives up a compromising position. I scored my first RNC. Not tight around the throat but I secured a good enough hold around his jaw. That was followed by a few minutes with Tall Chicken Little -- lots of huffing and puffing, Herculean effort in a tall but skinny frame. I caught him twice. Once with an armbar from guard, and a little over a minute later with a V1 from sidemount. There were a lot of firsts on that night.

January

I was a good student in January. I even made it to the first session of the year. And there was some good sparring in that first month of 2006.

For example, I put two guillotines on Yogi. Believe it or not, the first one I got was with both of us on our knees. He also had one arm in but I guess I still managed to tighten the hold. I had such little expectation for that guillotine that I didn't hear or feel him tapping for a few seconds. Sorry about that.

The second came a couple of minutes later and Yogi had no arms in. I tried to pull him into guard but he passed one leg on the way down. But I had the other leg (my left) high up on his back and the guillotine was pretty tight (under my right armpit) so he tapped. I suppose that when I settled for the beer paunch, the Creator gave me thin forearms as compensation.

I sparred Graybeard Twinspawn, and although I failed to get him to tap, I am pleased to say that it was an unexpectedly dominating performance. "Did you get fatter? From eating too much ramen?" No, dude, I weigh the same as I did last month, and the month before that. It's just that I am still better and stronger than you are. I realize that, the first time we sparred, I tried all kinds of stupid shit from the guard and got tapped in the last minute for my troubles, but just think of that as a gift.

And finally on Saturday, January 7, I was able to finish my sometimes rival from the July 1, 2005 account (hint: foppish hair and a hi-NRG style) from kesagatame position, with a V1 on his left arm with my legs.

[OTHER] Die, Sweaty Pig

2006-01-16T22:30:00.000+09:00

On January 16, 2006, authorities raided Livedoor and the residence of its fatass, media whore president. My first encounter with this fraudulent company led by the evil personification of slightly wet farting came when in my tenure with my eminent previous employer. The criminality of what these bozos were up to was immediately evident not just to me, but to a lot of my colleagues. Well, at least the ones with IQs over 100. And in many conversations in the years since, I have explained to friends, co-workers, and unsuspecting taxi drivers my contempt for Japanese Cartman and, in case they were interested, the mechanics behind the wealth-amassing fraud machine. Now it would be overstating things to say that I foretold today's events, exactly, but that doesn't make them any less satisfying.

Hopefully, the pig will be dancing no more.

Unfortunately, duty prevents me from repeating my detailed hatreds in writing. As luck would have it, my first major project upon switching jobs involved Livedoor's kidnapping of NBS. And as we know, fatshit and company made out like bandits yet again in that caper. Gradually, I began to lose hope that people would get wise to this walking bag of liposuction aftermath. In fact, in a mild act of desperation, I was in the middle of planning a blog in Japanese on Livedoor's own site, tentatively entitled, "Horie-pig, I challenge you to fight me on New Year's Eve!" (「堀江豚、大晦日俺と戦って来いや！」） So really, Lard of the Flies has only the investigators and possibly his soon-to-be prison beyatch tormentors to thank for saving him from a widely televised ass-whooping.

I decided that I'd like to capture some of this historic moment on video. There are a lot of news programs, each one skewering Sweatpig as its lead story. What should I pick? I just set a reservation on my DVD recorder for the 11:00 PM TBS broadcast. (My initial preference was for a Nittele program -- according to people in the TV business, Horie once famously threw a tantrum while taping a TV show for Channel 4 when faced with a line of questions he didn't like -- but they're probably showing some SMAPpish thing instead.) I only wish that I'd remembered to do this back when he started crying in front of his shareholders' meeting.

Like Ice Cube said, today was a good day.

[RAMEN] The Sapporo Chronicles [Part I] (from November 29, 2002)

2006-01-06T23:34:00.000+09:00

The Sapporo Chronicles [Part I]

Sapporo and Otaru, actually. This one deserves to be told in rich, chronological narrative. DJ Ham mixing up fast, free, and fresh lifestyle choices just for you.

SUNDAY

The Plane Trip

This was my first trip to Hokkaido, but solely on the basis of this isolated experience, I will wager this: on any plane heading north, there are 120 guys sitting in your cabin who were cloned from Yoshi Ikuzo. We also had one of those really, brutally pissed off flight attendants. In fact, her eyes rolled into the back of her skull when we asked for oolong tea. She was nonetheless a welcome substitute for that huge, fat person inevitably named Ruth, Cheryl, or Meredith found on Continental or Delta flights. You know, the uniform three sizes too small for the Humvee-like butt that can't navigate narrow aisles, and the hoarse, three-packs-a-day Marlboro Man voice that cracks, "You want some CAUGHFEE?"

Alas, things were not to go as planned. A heavy fog over Sapporo, no doubt caused by our flight attendant's constipation, forced our 747 to circle in the air for about 30 minutes. Then, in typical Japanese form, our plane -- did I mention that it was a 747? -- ran out of fuel and headed for Hakodate Airport instead. So much for the let's-take-the-early-morning-plane-so-we-have-more-time-in-Hokkaido theory. We spent the better part of an hour in the terminal, admiring how the Japanese always jack up the heating in public spaces to Trinidadian conditions despite complaining about energy prices. And at long last, it was time to reboard the plane to complete our journey to New Chitose. The 120 Yoshi Ikuzos, now thoroughly drunk at the ripe hour of 10 AM, broke out in song: "Mou ichido, mou ichido . . ."

[120 of these guys on your plane.]

Otaru

A beautiful train ride along the sea took us to Otaru. This lovely coastal town is famed for stained glass, romantic walks along the canal, and the Ishihara Yujiro museum. Whatever. Time to eat. When you say Otaru, you think of sushi, and we promptly set about asking the townsfolk. We climbed into a coffin curiously shaped like a taxi cab with a driver whose name loosely translates as Great Halitosis of the North. He recommended a place popular with young locals, and asked if that would be all right with us. Shit, man, just get us out of here.

We hit this joint named Oyamada or something near Sushiya-Dori. Harboring our doubts, we ordered an omakase course for just one person. Evidently G.H.O.T.N. has no sense of taste, his tongue lost years ago to that gaseous plague in his mouth. So we fled and jumped into a bookstore tended by a kindly old lady. "There are eighty sushi places on Sushiya-Dori," she said, "and they all suck." We successfully pressed her for a tip and sealed the deal by buying a crap magazine. "Still, there's nothing as good as Tsukiji," she added.

True to form, the old lady's recommendation was a bit off the beaten path. We had some trouble finding the right alley and asked a fishmonger for directions. "Huh?" He sounded surprised. "That place is REALLY good, you know." Aw shucks, like we were looking for another place that served rodent droppings. There seemed to be the slightest resigned tone in his voice, as if the townspeople had betrayed a treasured secret. "Take that left, then take a right."

To Heaven. It was a well-kept, clean counter and restaurant. The second and third generations worked side-by-side behind the glass showcasing the day's limited but flawless offerings. In perhaps the regional fashion, the rice was molded into rather small packets of somewhat hard grains, not 100% to our liking. However, the neta were superb. The scallops and fresh salmon were odorless except for a thin brushing of Edomae-style tare, but delivered sweet and vivid flavors. The best squid I have ever had bore the marks of the old master's unseen, skillful knife; finely, slenderly spaced grooves teased the mouth like ika somen, as the wash of rice and gentle vinegar followed. Likewise, his knife gave the botan ebi shape and volume, an indescribable crunch and tickling sensation at the same time. For good measure, the old man gave each of us an otoro on the house. Voluptuous and fatty, not stringy, and the perfect way to end a meal with a stupid smile on your face.

No, I'm not telling where. Finding one for yourself is half the fun, after all.

[To be continued.]

Yesterday I went to church. Tall spires of blue laserlight, religious icons and elements floating through the air, and a gospel recited in operatic, sweeping grand soul style. The Modern Church of Earth Wind & Fire. The unmistakable presence of God was in the house; the miraculous appearance of visionary leader Maurice White was ample proof of that. When Maurice walked in with the band, I was simultaneously overcome with shock and joy. Here is a man, almost 60 years old, who has been wracked by Parkinson's disease for a decade. And despite the fact that we couldn't see anything from the rear of the Tokyo International Forum (our seats were actually located in Chiba prefecture), we could sense that every step Maurice took was excruciating. His performance was drawn from pure will and adrenaline, but when he sang -- oh that voice! His suffering limited him to one or two songs at a time and to only about a third of the entire program. Maurice constantly retreated backstage, probably to get a booster shot or some other desperate treatment.

He has always moved with some of that Bernie Kosar clumsiness, though the pain was obvious. But last night he was Donovan McNabb. The broken body propelled only by the unravaged spirit. Two Sundays ago, playing on a snapped ankle, McNabb passed for four touchdowns. Maurice White on stage was still more legendary.

It was a few hours later when the Earth Wind & Fire concert reminded me uncomfortably of the time I saw Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the Greek in Berkeley. From his oppressively heavy, debilitated frame rang out his true and clear, astounding voice. He died that same year, I think.

In case you were wondering, Verdine White is still crazy. Yes, Verdine. The guy who looks like the "Beast," as in Beauty and the . . .

FANTASY FOOTBALL LAST WEEK

Coach Ham's tastefully named fantasy football team, the Peking Ducks, entered Week 12 of the season tied for the league lead at 8-3. Never a believer in tinkering with the lineup, Coach made only one change: benching 49ers running back Garrison Hearst for insensitive comments he made to the Fresno Bee newspaper regarding gays. Then Coach Ham went on the trip.

Even without Hearst, the Ducks were sure to have plenty of firepower. However, our offensive core of quarterback Peyton Manning (Colts), running backs Ahman Green (Packers) and Antowain Smith (Pats), and stud receiver Eric Moulds (Bills) produced a stupefying ZERO touchdowns. Bit-part players tight end Billy Miller (Texans), kicker Ryan Longwell (Packers), and the Rams defense also contributed nothing. Like the skies in snowy Sapporo, my mood gradually grew grey, dark, and cold. After Sunday's games, the high-flying Ducks found themselves losing to the pitiful Sendai Lawson Riceball Finger-Packers (real name withheld to protect the innocent) by the fantasy football score of 34 to 58.

Enter Monday Night Football, and Terrell Owens, T.O., his ownself. In the first half, a 32-yard reception. Three minutes later, touchdown. In the second half, receptions of 26 and 21 yards, and a touchdown from 18 yards out with 1:06 remaining in the third quarter. All told, 13 catches for 166 yards. Ducks win in the clutch, 62 to 58.

Finally, in keeping with my reputation as a man of the people, I am willing to audition any recommendations you may have for the name of Coach Ham's 2003 fantasy football team. Please note that it is common practice to use a city name followed by a pluralized mascot or nickname. Were it not for this convention, I would certainly call my guys the Red-Assed Baboons. Incidentally, my friend came up with the following immortal verse in elementary school:

Baboon, Baboon, oh why do you moon?
With your ass so red, as big as a bed

I think there's a potentially great fight song in here. I also have a matching sweater.

In another all-time flash of brilliance, some buddies and I once named a friend's squad the Manila Envelopes, in honor of his Filipino heritage. At any rate, I am presently mulling over these candidates:

Seoul Train Dancers
Ura-Harajuku Kogals
Dogenzaka Rotating Beds

Is there a theme here? I think not.

[RAMEN] Il Returno de Hercules [Part II] (from November 22, 2002)

2006-01-05T22:16:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: Il Returno de Hercules [Part II]

喜楽 Kiraku

Tucked away on the hill just above the vomitous Debi and among the Dogenzaka consummation hotels, Kiraku is a classic. Its master is the archetype for the ekimae ramenist in "Tampopo," a ball of energy but with zero wasted motion. Customers mosey in and holler their orders, often with slight adjustments. Without missing a beat, the ball acknowledges the order with barely a glance and a varied grunt. He boils several servings of noodles in a heavy wok; he prepares two dozen bowls of tare and precariously balances them on the edges of counters and chopping boards; and he repeatedly slams a metric ton of wonton filling into an oversized mixing bowl. When it is all done, the twenty or more orders of ramen are dished out precisely in the order of the hollerin'. This guy is the best dance-and-dinner show in Tokyo not involving Flipino bamboo stick performers. (A primer for the uninitiated: the Tinikling is in minuet tempo, the Singkil primordial hip-hop.)

His creation -- the Kaotan motherland formula made complete, with superior execution and polish. Dark but clear soy broth, the patient brewing of the pigs and chickens, and the hearty bite from flakes of roasted garlic. In the highly recommended wonton men, the chaw of the charsiu almost in the Chinese way plays well with the surprisingly good dumplings wrapped with lush, extra-long tails. Furthermore, the satisfying and thick noodles are cooked in the same water that once boiled the wontons; it does a body good. An oily, almost overwhelming Thanksgiving come early. And the grimy counter, the walls and doorways that scream for the fire marshal, and the old lady who just stepped out of the Time-Life A Day in the Life of China (Where Starving Kids There Are) photo album just fade, fade, fade into the distance.

"Some water you want is it?"

On the bookshelf:

A Dead Man in Deptford, Anthony Burgess.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera. Again!
Straight No Chaser: Spring/Summer Issue. With Swinscoe on the cover. A great, frequently ungrammatical and misspelled magazine dedicated to straight jazz, club jazz, African and Latin music. Finally back in my hands thanks to a kind friend who pointed me to Tower Records Shibuya.

In the CD changer:

Sakura, Yokota Susumu. It took me about a year, but I finally realized that this is an amazing album.
Motion and Every Day, Cinematic Orchestra. I have searched far and wide for the true new jazz, the necessary fluidity and irreverence and sly thumping between MIDI, the Mad Professor's dub, and organic instruments. I think Every Day has finally achieved it.
Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," Sviatoslav Richter. Oh. My. I love the missed notes in the finale.
The Colored Section, Donnie. Special of the week. Donnie was evidently raised on a strict diet of non-formula natural mother's milk, pork parts fried in butter, and endless encounters with Stevie Wonder records. This is absolutely brilliant. If you are uncomfortable with race-conscious music, however, you best run back to your Shania Twain collection. If you're not, then know this: the genius behind the next Innervisions or What's Going On will not be named Maxwell.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 13th, I rode on bus number F456 along the 都01 route. There was a tubercular on board. Please, people, cover your mouth when you cough. It's disgusting. Now, if I die of TB, you know whom to sue.

Next week, I will be touring Sapporo and later checking in with Earth Wind & Fire, probably sans Maurice.

SPECIAL NON-HUMOR CORNER

In order to cure you of any notions you may have about the firm being all fun and games, I have excerpted some weighty passages from an official Human Capital Management memo.

"We wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that the 2002 Flu Immunization Program has started last week and proceed according to the schedule below.

"November 12, Tuesday: 13:30 - 15:00, 15:30 - 18:00
November 18, Monday: 13:30 - 15:00, 15:30 - 18:00
November 19, Tuesday: 13:30 - 15:00, 15:30 - 18:00

"The influenza vaccine provides immunization against the flu strains that have been identified by the World Health Organization as prevalent strains for the coming winter. Since new strains are identified each year, last year’s vaccination will not provide protection for this coming flu season. The optimal time to receive a flu vaccine is now through the end of November.

"The side effects are generally mild in adults and occur infrequently, with the possibility of experiencing tenderness at the injection site, fever, chills, or muscular aches that may last up to 48 hours."

My interest piqued, I submitted the following query:

"Just asking out of curiosity -- If you expect employees who receive the vaccination to feel sick for up to 48 hours, then why don't you schedule more of these sessions on Thursdays or Fridays, when it's less likely that employees will miss work because of side effects?"

(All in black. I am so unimaginative.)

Twenty-four hours later, HCM Official his ownself sent me this official reply:

"Hamilton,

Thank you for your thoughtful idea. Due to the vendor's schedule, we only could book the below indicated dates this year. Although Fridays may not be good since people tend to go out and have drinks after work, we will consider your suggestion for the next year's flu immunization."

Wow, this firm is awesome! So in the spirit of my motto -- "Be Prepared" -- I have proactively drafted my out-of-office notice for next season's vaccination:

Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: Next week

I will be out of the office for much of next week and will have limited access to email and voicemail. Please refer to my schedule below:

Monday: Flu shot
Tuesday: I will be sick with fever and chills
Wednesday: I will be sick with muscular aches

Should you have any urgent questions, please find my drunk ass at the local pub that Friday night.

And can someone explain this to me? http://yoga.tripod.co.jp/flash/kikkomaso.swf

[MOVIES] Nagurimono

2005-10-18T22:11:00.000+09:00

I managed to finish my weekend work by Sunday morning, hallelujah, and took in an afternoon screening of the Dream Stage Entertainment-backed "Nagurimono" with the wif. This movie is of the nerds, for the nerds, and by the nerds, who were about nine strong in the movie theater, excluding ourselves. Fight scenes were fine, but the main reason why is because the filmmakers chose to have the combatants in two contests -- Sakuraba v. Rampage, Takayama v. Frye -- for the most part re-enact their real world battles. The third, between Wanderlei and a no-name chibikkotare, is hopelessly separated from reality given its predictable, fairy tale ending.

The director's only stroke of genius was recognizing the fact that anybody shelling out the high Japanese ticket price for this thing was only in it for the fights anyway. Therefore the fights are cut and stretched out rather capably, interspliced with the necessary expository sequences withheld from the outset of the film. However, this requires yet another exercise in non-linear storytelling, something bound to confound those who were confused at times during "Pulp Fiction," let alone something like "Memento" (which, I fear, might include at least a plurality of the population of http://www.mma.tv/TUF).

On to things that the viewer is not paying for. First, the script. It won't win any awards, but the story held together unexpectedly well. At the very least the fluff that bridges one action scene to the next is more plausible than that found in an average Shannon Tweed feature. Curiously, the content of the non-fighting scenes is so ultraviolent that I found myself craving the peace and solace of watching the fisticuffs. Second, the characters. Too many of them to begin with, and the only memorable one is a cheap rip-off of Nakadai Tatsuya's character from "Yojimbo." The memorable rip-off role is played by Jinnai Takanori wrestling with another bout of severe overacting. This guy is Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Christian Slater rolled into one.

In the end, it was entertaining enough but probably not worth 1800 yen a head. A note of caution as well, since the Japanese language used in the film can be difficult at times. I'll go out on a limb and say it's better than the Mirko Cro Cop movie, which I have not yet seen. Actually, the highlight of our trip to the theater may have come in the form of one of the trailers, for "Tokyo Zombie," ostensibly the story of two guys who seek to defeat a multiplying army of zombies and who are armed with nothing more than Brazilian jiu-jitsu. George Romero meets "Brazilian Brawl," perhaps.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Lessons 6-15 [Part 2]

2005-10-05T14:50:00.000+09:00

Tales from the Mat

My highlight of the late summer was putting two guillotines in a row on Yagihashi, a reasonably advanced white belt. Unbelievably, the first one I got happened with both of us on our knees. He also had one arm in but I still managed to secure a nice, compact hold. I had such little expectation for that guillotine that I didn't hear or feel him tapping for a few seconds. The second guillotine came a couple of minutes later and he had no arms in. I tried to pull him into guard but he passed one leg on the way down. But I had the other leg (my left) high up on Yagihashi's back and the guillotine was pretty tight (under my right armpit) so he tapped. I suppose that when I settled for the beer paunch, the Creator gave me thin forearms as compensation. Masada-sensei seemed to enjoy the second choke, remarking, "I didn't know you knew that kind of technique."

I think that it was during the same session that I dominated Nihei. Even though I could not get him to submit, I found myself either in mount or on his back with hooks in all day long. Afterward Nihei asked, "Did you get fatter? From eating too much ramen?" No, Nihei, I weigh the same as I did last month, and the month before that. It's just that I am still better and stronger than you are. I realize that, the first time we sparred, I tried all kinds of stupid shit from the guard and got tapped in the last minute for my troubles, but just think of that as a gift. And practically all of our rolls since then have followed the same pattern.

Then my back went screwy. I guess it all started sometime in early September when I sparred Mizuno-san, a blue belt and also a very experienced judo practitioner, so he likes the rough stuff and is strong as hell. (By the way, it didn't help that he is considering going pro.) Among several things he tapped me with in our two minutes of rolling, he caught me in an omoplata (from our knees!) so fast that I didn't have time to tap before I felt that bad twinging, the one that accompanies that high-pitched crescendo in the brain. At the time, I thought just my shoulder was messed up from that so I iced it, but only long after sucking it up and staying at practice for another two hours. That evening turned out OK but I started to develop an increasingly worsening upper back pain, right down the middle of the top half of my spine, like between my shoulder blades. The Kawasaki Witch Doctor called it at around "D-4," if I recall correctly.

The pain peaked over the first succeeding weekend but subsided enough that I thought I could go to no-gi practice on September the 13th [dum-Dum-DUM]. That turned out to be a bit of a mistake. My back already felt a nagging little pain during stretching, but that quickly changed into the pulsing, sharp kind, especially since we sparred starting from our feet for a while, and my tackle defense sucks ass. Pretty soon I had zero power. Couldn't bridge, couldn't get off my back, couldn't do pretty much jack. Even got tapped by a beginner. That pissed me off royally, but in my back's condition I couldn't do much about it. (What's worse, I thought I had a kata-gatame on pretty tight, but the dude is a famous non-tapper. I'll get you next time, kiddo.)

The only joy from that painful no-gi session was that I triangled a much more experienced guy after getting tapped by that beginner. But to be honest, I must have just surprised him with it, since he probably couldn't imagine that I could pull it off. After all, in the first 3 minutes of our roll, I was essentially showing him that I had nothing because of my crippled ass.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Lessons 6-15 [Part 1]

2005-09-16T18:00:00.000+09:00

The last couple of months of jiu-jitsu lessons have been rather a blur. To be frank, I've actually lost count of them. Nonetheless, there's no time like the present to jot down the little left remaining in my head.

Hip choke

One of a series of maneuvers you can employ when you have trouble getting a choke from the opponent's back. Get a grip on the collar to one side (here, your left hand on the opponent's right lapel), forearm over the bottom guy's throat; a totally tight seal is not necessary. Hop off the opponent's left side and take hold of the pant leg inside your opponent's right knee to prevent an escape. (In the alternative, slip your right hand under his torso to grip the material around his right wrist.) Rotate your base at the hips, as in kesa-gatame position, with your right leg thrust forward and left leg behind. Keep your butt off the ground and crawl forward, sitting your right hip on your opponent's upper left arm. If done correctly, the tap should come.

Side RNC

There are several attacks when the opponent is on all fours and you are to one side, say, his left. The first priority is to immobilize his left arm by trapping it between your legs. Then slip your left arm under his chin and grip your right bicep in typical RNC fashion, finishing by curling your hands into fists and leaning your chin into the back of the bottom guy's head if necessary.

Side straight armbar with legs

Very confusing, so nothing more than an incomplete, likely errant note here. From the same starting position as above in the side RNC, focus on the position of your legs. Bottom guy's left elbow should be pointed upward. Keep your pivot point (i.e., your crotch) higher up his arm, above his elbow. Your left leg crooks 90 degrees and crosses the pale part of his forearm. Your left ankle or foot meets the back of your right calf or knee. Optimally your right heel pushes on his left hand or palm to create more pressure. Lean your tummy into his elbow to complete the submission.

Half-Nelson collar choke

First, a word about a bad habit of mine. When I get over the back of a turtled opponent, I tend to sit straight onto his back and start looking for a submission. Even worse, I will often ride too far ahead on his back, making it difficult to stay balanced; if the turtle jerks back quickly, I end up with my hands sprawled forward and a very poor base. Masada-sensei's advice: If I can get the hooks in on a turtled opponent (keeping in mind that tugging on the turtle's back collar can sometimes create a world of space), then my goal should be to pull him back into a seated position, as I will have more opportunities and control if I play the koala.

One such opportunity is the half-Nelson collar choke. Assuming here that your left arm is free over his left shoulder and your right arm is caught under his right armpit, use your right hand to tug on his right lapel and feed a sweeter spot of his collar to your left hand. Once the left hand is deep, release the right hand grip and use your entire right arm to pull your opponent's bent right arm backwards; your right hand should move around the right side of his head all the way until it nears the base of his rear skull, thus suspending his right hand in mid-air somewhere directly behind his head. At the same time, your left hand should be doing the Pepsi bottle top motion, counter-clockwise and at all times with a firm grip. Very useful from a wide variety of positions and against many reactions, once you get comfortable with it.

[FIGHT] August 28, 2005

2005-09-06T22:50:00.000+09:00

My lasting impression from the PRIDE 2005 Grand Prix Final Round.

[OTHER] Worst Meal in Tokyo: Candidate #1

2005-07-23T18:30:00.000+09:00

My old barber, Sato-chan, knows all the grimes of life in town. So when she fingered the Dosanko Ramen in Tsukishima for the Worst Meal in Tokyo contest, we instantly knew that we had a front-runner. Undaunted by an earlier attempt to test out Sato-chan's verdict that met with shuttered doors on a Sunday, Mrs. Ramen and I set out again today, now equipped with a getaway vehicle in the form of our brand new used car.

I scanned the excessive menu for the most vile offerings. The most criminal choices appeared to be a Ankake Curry Ramen -- which I really can't even imagine -- and a Kimchee Chige Ramen. As it turns out I wasn't so brave after all, so I ordered something from the next level down on the barf-o-meter and asked the deaf old lady for a Curry Butter Ramen. Apparently no one had ever ordered this dish, since she had to discuss the request with the other deaf old ladies in the kitchen. As best as I can figure, the soup was made up of the curry roux used for "standard" curry dishes, mixed with a little bit of chicken stock and a lot of hot tap water. It came topped with menma and brussel sprouts. No charsiu or any other meat to break the monotony. For some reason the noodles were brown. There was too much stuff in the bowl. And after a while the soup took on a flavor like green copper. By the way, for all that I think they forgot my butter, but on the other hand maybe it was just obscured by all the other atrocities.

Mrs. Ramen knew before walking in that she would have Sato-chan's recommendation, the Corn Soup Ramen. This classic seems to rely heavily on Knorr corn potage powder soup mix. In contrast to my brown noodles, Mrs. Ramen's were yellow and gloopy; they appeared to have been cooked in the Knorr corn potage powder soup mix and -- what else -- hot tap water. The boiling liquid was never "cut" from the noodles, as is standard practice. The soup had a smoky, revolting taste.

In between suppressing alternating waves of shock, disgust, and laughter, we argued with each other about which of us had ordered the worse food. One thing is for certain, however: Both entries qualify for the four piles of shit rating. In case you need to verify this madness for yourself, here's a picture of the culprit.

We had also ordered a plate of gyoza as a change-of-pace fallback, but it never made it to our table. As we were leaving, the deaf old ladies realized that they had left them sitting on the dumpling grill.

Lastly, since we were in the general area, we decided to spin by to take a picture of the locus of a prior horrid meal. Many months ago, we had a late lunch at Sushi Kadzuki near Kiyosumi Shirakawa station for no other reason than it was the only place open in that area around that time of day. I had a nigiri set and Mrs. Ramen had a kaisen-don. Peculiarly, the raw fish neta was fine. The problem was in the rice, which had a very strange, excessively sweet and excessively sour quality to it, and each grain had a frighteningly tough texture. However, even though the raw ingredients were fresh and therefore this place probably poses no health risks, I do own up to having explicitly barred sushi restaurants from the Worst Meal contest. At any rate, edible neta makes for no worse than a three piles of shit score.

In brighter news, the wife and I went to see Paco de Lucia play last night. I hadn't seen the guy in about 10 years, since his reunion with Al di Meola and John McLaughlin at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. The old man's still got the magic.

[FIGHT] My First Triangle

2005-07-20T17:05:00.000+09:00

On the evening of Monday, July 4, I triangled Nagata from the guard. My first one ever. An excellent feeling, even if it was only against another white belt with just a few weeks more experience. Maybe I was fueled by the "All-Fried, All-the-Time" menu at T.G.I. Friday's from my Independence Day lunch with the guys.

Once sparring time started up, Masada-sensei pointed to me and Osada to mix it up, reasoning that we were roughly the same size. We wrestled around for a minute but I felt that I was the stronger, and then I caught him in transition. I was able to take his back and get some hooks in, though I again ran into some trouble securing either an RNC or collar choke from the back. I then tried the feint clock choke we had learned recently, but Nagata turtled while holding onto my extended left arm, stretching it out into an uncomfortable position.

I ignored the discomfort in my left arm and eventually got it free, all the while keeping on his back. Looking for a new option, I rolled off his back to try to get an armbar. My head slid to the mat while I tried to pull out his right wrist. Unfortunately, Osada defended and got a bend back in his right arm, and stayed on his knees. I settled into some sort of guard position, except that only the right half of my back was really flush on the mat; my left leg was now around Osada's right shoulder while my right leg was near his left ribcage.

I still held on halfheartedly to my opponent's right wrist. He was concerned enough to try to pull it back out of my grasp. I offered a little bit of resistance. Then Osada pulled his right hand out completely and I quickly switched to the triangle choke; I now trapped his left arm, with my left leg snaking around the back of his neck until it met the back of my right knee. My legs were set so I took the time to do everything else properly. I yanked his left arm as far across my body as possible, sharpened the angles where my legs met and swung the right leg out and away, then pulled Osada's head down and lifted my hips. It took a while to lock in, but then the tapping came.

Now all I have to do is tap his compadre Nagataki.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Lessons 1-5 [Part 3]

2005-07-01T18:55:00.000+09:00

Tales from the Mat

I guess I like sparring. At my level I certainly don't finish a lot of people. I can avoid submissions against most white belts, including several with a lot more experience than me, although admittedly in a number of cases I have a size advantage and can just power out of bad situations. All the same, I don't really mind getting caught in an armbar or a triangle or a guillotine. Not that I like to lose, but I'd rather blue belts put some genuine effort into beating on me rather than just letting me pass the guard, for example. I guess I like sparring.

If memory serves me correctly, the first person I ever sparred at Strapple was Generic Dude (I don't know his name yet), he of the white-yet-brownish gi and matching belt with absolutely no trademarks on it. I noticed this guy previously when I sat in to watch a session two weeks earlier. He seemed to be one of those guys that crank maneuvers on too hard during technique practice and go a little too turbo during sparring. So I asked Generic Dude to spar, and he managed to force me to sit on my butt pretty quickly. From there I gripped both of his inside sleeves and kept him away by putting my feet on his inside elbows. Generic Dude tried to stand up and force his way out of my grips in order to pass, but I managed to hook my left leg around the back of his right leg, followed him up and yanked him down onto his back. I was working to pass Generic Dude's guard when he scrambled somehow to put his feet behind him and start standing up. As I got to my feet as well, I took the half guillotine that I saw (with his right arm in). I briefly considered Nogueira's Anaconda Choke which Phil taught me once, but I concluded that (i) it would look presumptuous of a first-timer to try it and (ii) I would probably get it wrong. Instead, I cranked on the headlock, I think to the point where I made some loud grunting noise. After a bit, Yonezawa-sensei came over and broke it up, saying that I wasn't going to get it. Damn.

Right after that I sparred Sato, a guy close to my weight if not a little bigger and, as it turns out, with two years of white belt experience. I don't remember this well since it was a blur of submission attempts by Sato from his guard and my free hand grabbing the wrist of the target arm every which way to prevent the armbar. In the last minute or so Sato finally got it on my right arm when he was upside down. I believe I could have taken a little more but, as a first-timer, decided to tap early.

I sparred Sato again this past Monday, with Hyodo acting graciously as my unsolicited chief second. I made the mistake of letting Sato get ahold of my right collar immediately, from which he could work for a twisted head crank, pull me in for a triangle, and readjust from the same triangle position into an armbar with my right arm going out the other way. I tapped twice in the first minute. Terrible. But from there things got better. I got more careful about keeping my right hand on Sato's belt or below as I passed behind his right leg, also making sure to get a grip on his left collar. Once I got to side control, Sato obviously started flapping around like a fish, but I was able to stay with him. I worked for a collar choke with my right hand deep in his right collar, four fingers in, and the left hand going over for the left collar, four fingers out. However, it took me too long, Sato shuffled a bit, and I had to start over. I wasn't able to secure a good attempt before the bell rang.

Osada and Nagataki, the Juniper engineer boys, almost always show up together with matching Adidas gi. I sparred Osada on my first night. He must have been tired because I mostly lowered my head and pushed him around until I ended up with his neck in an unobstructed full guillotine. I suppose I jumped to guard too quickly and his head popped out thanks at least in part to all the sweat on his hair. Then I got out of that predicament and ended up on his back with hooks in. I worked for the RNC which he fended off by holding onto my sleeves. I tried to switch to a collar choke, but the lesson, as always: I don't know what I'm doing. Time ran out.

I have sparred Nagataki twice, once with gi on and once without. He is a pretty tough cookie who is generally happy to pull me into his guard and go for a lot of submissions. From his guard, Nagataki has gone for a Kimura and a triangle choke, neither of which were close to being deeply sunk. He has put me in compromising positions twice, once with a roll away armbar on my right arm (Sakuraba versus Randleman, for example) and once with a RNC attempt, his back on the ground and hooks around my hips. I stayed patient and eventually got out on both occasions. In addition, Nagataki is pretty energetic at putting me back into at least his half guard when I try to pass. In our no-gi roll, it took me forever to figure out what to do to break the interlocking feet in his cross guard; I finally decided to just stand up while pushing his hips down. I need to figure out a way to submit this guy in the near future.

Hyodo is a very good guy, near my weight and a fluent speaker of English despite spending most of his youth abroad in the state of Georgia. When I first sparred Hyodo I tapped to a triangle. I kept leaving one arm ripe for the taking when passing behind one leg with the other arm, and I am still working my way out of that bad habit. I have been lucky enough to avoid getting submitted by him since, including at least one occasion when Hyodo was on my back working for a choke, and I invested a lot of strength in slipping him off my left shoulder and putting his back on the mat.

Some little guy in a blue Isami with a shaved head and six months of experience loves to get it on. We have sparred four times, and I have formed the opinion that he is out to prove to himself the technique-over-size sentiment born of UFC 1 and 2. In our first spar, I got to side control, locked his left arm in a Kimura and stepped over his head with my left foot. To this day I think he gave me a free pass there, but then again, he is small. Most recently, I muscled Little Blue onto the ground and eventually got past his guard. As usual, I was perplexed as to how to finish him and he regained a half guard. I still had my left foot caught in his half guard when I heard "30 seconds left!," thought to myself "Fuck it," and took his left arm for the armbar; he tapped. Perhaps Little Blue's best chance came when he asked me to spar 2 seconds after I got manhandled by Harada-sensei, then promptly stood up and caught me in a guillotine with his skinny blade-like wrists. It hurt for a while, but I relaxed, tucked just a little bit of my chin, then grabbed his legs (mostly my right hand on his upper right leg) and dumped him onto the ground, which loosened the guillotine.

Lastly, a 90 kg somewhat squishy dude showed up for his very first class this past Monday. When asked by Harada-sensei if he had done any combat sports, he said absolutely none. Didn't fool me. His ukemi rolls were too good. Sato sparred with him first and let the inexperienced first-timer progress to side control. 90 Kilo then took the mount and proceeded to put a sode-guruma on a very shocked Sato. Suddenly seeing his life and pride flashing before his eyes, Sato bridged for dear God to get out. I sparred with 90 Kilo at the end too. Before I knew what happened, he just pushed me down and walked over me into a mount, 198 squishy pounds on my chest. So of course, I bridged for dear God to get out. Soon enough I got him on the ground and passed one leg with my right leg trapped in his half guard, then I did a John Travolta thing and hopped and pivoted 180 degrees and back again. Time ran out with no finish.

And I'm not even going to talk about getting smashed by Harada-sensei and Masada-sensei yet.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Lessons 1-5 [Part 2]

2005-06-30T19:00:00.000+09:00

Basic reversal from cross guard

This is the same first reversal I learned from Kotani way back before I had bronchitis. From cross guard with your back on the floor, create space to fit a bent leg (here, your right) into the top guy's belly, maybe optimally at the sword-slashing angle (a line running roughly from his right shoulder to his left waist) or below. The grips: right hand grabbing a rich amount of cloth below your opponent's right tricep, left hand pulling on the sleeve at his right wrist. In one motion, jerk your hands hard with counterclockwise English, stab your free left heel into his lower right leg, and kick through and extend with your right leg for the sweep. Kotani taught it with a quick sit-up first and then kicking through as you fall back, but blue belt Harada-sensei at Strapple said this wasn't necessary.

Kuzushi to all fours from guard

The practical application of this may be a little questionable. With your back on the mat, shift to open guard and create space with your feet on the top guy's hips, pivoting a little bit to your diagonal upper left. Now you can break your opponent's balance by taking his right sleeve with your right hand, then jerking it back while simultaneously using your right foot to kick out his left leg at a spot above his knee. Keep a hold of his right sleeve but use the time created by your opponent's loss of balance to crawl out from under him to the right side of his body, ending up in a squat or on your knees. Get your left hand a grip on the pants outside his left ankle.

In practice, once this position was established, the guy on all fours then forward rolls over his right shoulder, wheels out both legs high and wide in the air, then places his opponent in his guard at the end of the circle. The roles in the exercise now reverse.

Kimura from guard

The mechanics were the same as those taught to me at Abe Ani Combat Club. Strapple's Harada-sensei and brown belt Masada-sensei helped out with a few more points of emphasis. First, the arm (assume your left) flying over your opponent's shoulder should snake around and meet your right wrist at just about the same time you establish your grip on the top guy's wrist. This is because establishing your grip first would telegraph your intentions to your opponent. Second, focus on maintaining the 90-degree bend in your opponent's arm and pull it straight into the air behind him, then start forcing his hand toward his opposite shoulder blade at the end. A flexible opponent can endure quite a bit when the hammer lock is kept close to his back.

Sitting upright in shrimp v. in guard position with back on the floor

On Monday after class, Masada-sensei took four of us aside to expound on one of his favorite tactics. Sato paired up with Hyodo and I paired up with Sugimori. During kumiwaza on the floor, the key is keeping you back off the mat when you can. Legs are in a relaxed shrimp position, here the left leg bent and resting on the ground, the right leg bent and propped up, both feet inside the space between the top guy's knees. Take a deep grip on the opponent's right collar with your right hand with four fingers in, control the fabric near his right ankle with your left hand.

This creates several options. If you tug on his collar and your opponent reacts by jerking his head up, use his momentum against him and push him forward while picking up his right leg. Don't forget to step over his right leg with your left and work toward side control. If you tug on his pants and your opponent reacts by jetting his foot back, his balance will be compromised and you can pull his head down closer to your ribs using his collar. The opponent is more vulnerable if you can use your newly freed left hand to yank his right arm prone across your body, his right hand ending up in the open space under your right armpit. From here, you can work a collar choke by stringing your opponent's right collar across his throat, and then reaching over his back with your left hand and pulling on the gi near his left shoulder. (Not sure about this; I have to work this part out next time.) Lastly, with his head down you can slip your right hand under his left armpit and use your left arm to keep his upper body in tight to your right chest. Your feet should be hooked under his inner thighs. Kick straight up with more power in the right leg and take him onto his back for the reversal.

Feint clock choke to switched hands choke

If I'm not mistaken, this choke came to Harada-sensei only a couple of weeks ago by a white belt girl. Pretty impressive. Your opponent is seated and you koala behind him, your feet hooked around his hips. Work for the clock choke, say with your right hand gripped on your opponent's left collar. (Need to figure out whether it makes a difference that your right arm goes over or under the opponent's.) Your grip will be loose and down on the collar, perhaps because of the way your opponent is defending the choke. From here, pivot away to your right with your right leg sinking in deeper across your opponent's abdomen, unhooking your left foot. Bring your left hand over the right side of the opponent's neck and take the deep grip in the space higher up on the collar above your right hand, four fingers out. Release the right hand and bring it back while shifting your pivot to the left, this time your left leg sinking in across your opponent's abdomen and right foot almost unhooking. To finish, use your right hand to grab the fabric over your opponent's left shoulder and pull.

Single leg tackle with opposite feet forward

This came up in the beginner wrestling class taught by blue belt Yonezawa-sensei. Start with opposite feet forward (in this case, your opponent's right foot forward near your left foot forward). Look for the opening, or create it by slapping down and away if your opponent posts a keep-away arm on your shoulder. Lower your center of gravity and dive in, your left hand coming around your opponent's upper right thigh, your right hand swooping a big circle along the ground and then up towards the crochet, if you know what I mean. Your left leg moves to his right side but don't drag your right leg or leave it behind. The hand hooking around goes on top, lock it in high and deep. The left hand grips the wrist of your right hand; this way, even if your opponent can pull the top hand off, your hands remain in a favorable position close to each other.

This is a look-in tackle, not a look-out one; your head will drive into the opponent's body, your left ear on his right ribs, the rest of the left side of your face as flush as possible. Keep pushing through your left shoulder and head while lifting your opponent's right leg off the ground. Create a new angle to break his balance by shifting the orientation of your feet, pulling your left foot backward while dragging the goods back with you, leaving your right foot forward. Masada-sensei pointed out that sometimes it helps to sandwich your opponent's lower right leg between your own legs somewhat tightly. In the alternative, you can hook your opponent's right angle into the small of your elbow, or then heft it onto your shoulder -- taking a momentary quick dip with your hips if necessary -- and then stand straight up. Push forward or trip with your legs to finish the takedown. Tenacity is the key to all tackling.

[FIGHT] Strapple: Lessons 1-5 [Part 1]

2005-06-29T15:07:00.000+09:00

I have kind of settled down. A few months ago, I realized that learning both striking and grappling would not work on my schedule. Shooto was out, and I decided on jiu-jitsu. I took my brand spanking new blue Atama gi for a free two-hour test drive at Scramble Shibuya. The class was fun, but I admit to being a little lost when the teacher, brown belt Kotani Satoshi, went through some reversals. On top of that, the mat area was tiny. After shopping around some more, paying attention to class schedules, commuting distances, and meticulousness of instruction, I signed up in Otsuka with the Gold's Gym North Tokyo branch of Strapple, the school founded by Taira Naoyuki, a Carley Gracie black belt, Shootboxing champion, and MMA pioneer.

So now that I have had five sessions at Strapple (admittedly, one of those was a wrestling class), it's probably high time to write down as much of what I've learned as possible before I forget. Besides, this is the first time in over a month that I can take some sort of breather from work. Unfortunately, due to failing memory in my old age coupled with overexposure to the smell of printer toner, these techniques are described in no particular order.

Guard pass behind one leg

First, the basics. Maintain good posture: head up and back straight; otherwise the bottom guy will find it to easy bring your head down for a guillotine or jerk it down by tugging on the collar. Don't extend hands past your opponent's belt line; otherwise the triangle is coming. Keep your legs bent and based on the ground; stepping into a crouch invites a reversal.

Second, on to the pass. Focus initially on prying the legs open, generally by keeping your hands together and spiking your elbows into the your opponent's thighs, then on getting control of one leg (assume his left) generally by pinning the opponent's inside thigh with your right knee. If this proves elusive, at the very least keep your non-passing right hand back and tucked near the upper part of the open leg.

In one quick motion, hook your left arm under his skyward right leg, first cradling it in the small of your elbow and then hefting it onto your left shoulder. Lean and dart in to establish control of his left lapel with your left hand, thumb in. As you pull forward and shorten up the distance between your opponent's head and his right knee, get into a sprawl and force your weight into the job. When the bottom guy is uncomfortably boxed up and if your right hand is somewhat free, pick up the backside of his drawers and lift. His right leg should fall away and you can work to establish side control. Again, keep legs bent and flush to the ground.

Guard pass behind two legs

After spiking your elbows into the bottom guy's thighs, quickly scoop both your arms under the back of his knees. Shift your opponent's ankles to your shoulders. Grab the pants on the inside part of one of his legs with your opposite hand -- for illustration, let's go with your right hand clasping the cloth on his inside right thigh. Sprawl up, keeping your legs behind you for safety, and lean your weight in, collapsing his legs. Keep his legs together and grasp the cloth on his inside left leg with your left hand, now releasing your right hand as you pass to the right side of your opponent's body.

Thumb knuckles choke between thighs

A great defense for the bottom guy while his opponent attempts to pass guard. In this case, guard top attempts to pass behind two legs. Bottom shoots his hands up, each to one side of his opponent's neck. Both hands grip top guy's collar, four fingers out. Drive the base knuckles on both your thumbs into the sides of your opponent's neck. Pull top guy's head down by jerking on his collar, get both your hands between your thighs and squeeze. This hurts like the dickens.

Leg wraparound opponent's near arm, kick stretch

Another good defense from guard bottom. If the top guy is passing behind one leg with his arm down near the ground or your waist, attack with that leg (assume the right). If not in a pass, you can try to create space by shifting to open guard and kicking off of his hips. The key is to control his left arm and hold his wrist at your right hip. Swing your right leg around the front of top guy's left arm and tuck your right foot and shin into his belly. Lunge over the top and grip his belt with your free left hand while your right foot makes it out to the far side of your opponent's ribs. Keeping his left hand trapped, pull his belt toward you and extend out your legs. This will cause pressure on his left shoulder or upper arm.

[FIGHT] Still the Greatest

2005-06-28T11:30:00.000+09:00

Deep funk Monday. The image of Sakuraba's face was hard to ignore.

We were there live, row 17 on the ground level east side just a few meters from the post-fight exit lane for the blue corner. But Mrs. Ramen had to leave three minutes into Sakuraba v. Arona, so there went the good luck charm. The fight worked out pretty much as expected. Considering what Saku was giving up in size, strength, age, and maybe vitamins and minerals, I don't think he did half bad.

People will now complain again that he should hang up the gloves. Yes, he got totaled in there. Maybe he should quit, but he won't. His body is in worse shape than most of the cars Xzibit hauls into West Coast Customs for "Pimp My Ride," but he is still a capable fighter, and more than capable when fighting opponents near his natural weight.

Perhaps most importantly, the man won't let himself quit. Some of his fans may wish better for his wife and three kids, but his will is still there. If he wants to go out his way, even if it means, for example, a fourth match against an ever-enlarging Axe Murderer, then we probably owe him that, however insane. He is, after all, a legend and a pop cartoon. He is Eddy the Eagle, the Jamaican Bobsled Team, Johnny Unitas and Muhammad Ali at the same time.

In the premiere fightsport market that is Japan, if Takada Nobuhiko was the man who made mixed martial arts an event, Sakuraba Kazushi was the man who made it a viable industry. And to a further few thousand believers, Sakuraba made it a faith.

[OTHER] New Contest

2005-04-22T17:27:00.000+09:00

The truth is, we all eat too well.

I mean, I love good food as much as anyone, but after a while the hunt for culinary epiphanies becomes a silly exercise in splitting hairs. Fine meals gain or lose an inordinate share of their luster simply because of the smallest shifts in seasons, moods, dining company, fresh drinking water, perfumes, B.O. and O.P.P. And really, aside from my annual bout of food poisoning, I should have no room to complain about the things I can afford to wolf down.

So every so often, we should need to recalibrate. Hence, the game is now "Worst Meal in Tokyo."

Here are the rules:

1. The limit is 1000 yen per meal. This is intended to capture the proletarian ambience of the quest, and to prevent anybody from whining about something like mislabeled beluga caviar, for example.

2. Sushi, sashimi, other raw foods, and strongly suspected sanitation code violators are excepted. We don't want an E. Coli or botulism breakout just for the sake of good fun.

3. The criterion is simple. The food must be bad. Not necessarily like "bad for unagi" or "bad for a Caesar salad," but just bad. Like a foodstuffs manifestation of "Searching for Debra Winger." Use the piles of shit rating system, if you will.

4. Ideally, when someone comes up with a 4 pile of shit contender, we should like to have someone else verify it. I will work this out later.

5. With the need for verification in mind, the meal should be located somewhere in the 23 wards.

Of course, I'm happy to take any suggested revisions to the rules and ideas about the timeframe.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

I think this all started when BSD Reilly had a bunch of people do some research regarding a cancer on the face of pop music called Atomic Kitten. So I located their greatest hits album on Amazon and scrolled through the reader comments posted by the 8-year-olds trapped in their strange uncles' basements. One of them read something like, "If you don't want to get one of their albums, this is what you have to get!!!"

I said to Kekke-san, "What type of fucked up logic is that?"

And Kekke-san responded, "I guess it must be related to, 'This food is terrible . . . You should try it.'"

Hence, the contest.

[RAMEN] Il Returno de Hercules [Part I] (from October 18, 2002)

2005-03-20T16:00:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: Il Returno de Hercules [Part I]

The weather has cooled and ramen is in the air. But no, this is no ordinary ramen column. From today, I will rant about everything. I am sure that comes as a surprise to many of you.

山頭火・明治通り店 Santoka Ebisu

Tonkotsu meets fish broth and a hearty helping of garlic. Quite savory, as a matter of fact. But the charsiu and other features are softish, and as you know that's not my style. Meanwhile, the standout noodles -- kinky and frizzy like Jim Kelly. Unfortunately, the similarities to Jim Kelly do not end there, and are not all positive. Like this master thespian who gave us such performances as Black Belt Jones and Black Samurai, the ramen is "too busy looking good." No doubt that there's more than a smattering of soul in this bowl, but it is ultimately too sleek, too manufactured, and too much of a nod to the pop mainstream. The conveyer belt-like atmosphere of the store operation does not help. And in the end, it's no Bruce Lee.

All this talk of Jim Kelly and the late 70s reminds me of one of the albums I’ve been listening to lately: Daft Punk's Discovery. If you can suppress the image of Juliette Lewis dancing in a Gap commercial [shudder], Daft Punk's work offers a few enchantments. Their music immediately recalls the disco era Stevie Wondrous sensibilities of Jamiroquai. Evidently, these Frenchmen also went wild collecting Casio keyboards and other equipment at the Zapp garage sale. All the same, it would be a bit inaccurate to call Daft Punk the intellectual offspring of YMO, since they have done little to take discotechno beyond the grandmasters.

All this talk of YMO reminds of the story about Michael Jackson's remake of "Behind the Mask." Apparently the Gloved One went through all the trouble of rearranging the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic and penning some of his usual stately lyrics. Everything was in place for the song's inclusion on one of those albums -- Thriller, Bad, or Nauseating, I'm not sure which. There was but one problem, a little-known concept called "intellectual property law." Now, of course MJ could simply have asked nicely, but he decided to demand that YMO surrender all copyright ownership rights to "Behind the Mask." After all, the Gloved One thought, he was on the verge of unleashing the most influential contribution to modern civilization since the color-changing mood ring. To which Hosono Haruomi reportedly replied, “Go get yourself a nose job, you chimp-fondling freak.”

By the way, I just looked at what Amazon has newly recommended to me, an esoteric list encompassing Glenn Gould's first recording of the Goldberg Variations (yes please, I need a fourth copy), the Dixie Chicks, and the soundtrack to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I hate that company. Strictly P.O.S., as Henry Blodget would say.

L'Osier

Through the regal front doors on Namiki-dori, up the glistening stairs, and straight into Bud Fox and Darrien Taylor's living room from "Wall Street." It was all I could do to stop myself from rummaging around the restaurant to look for the automatic sushi roller.

All of L'Osier was indeed amazing. We quickly opted for the prix fixe diner de saison, while pleading with the waiter to replace the first dish with the duck foie gras. Since the thoroughly delicious cooking here is generally suited towards kinder, Japanese tastes, it was wonderful to be able to start the night off with something truly pulverizing. In case you haven't noticed, everything about duck tastes like, well, "duck," for lack of a better description. Whether you eat the skin, the breast, or the liver, it all tastes like duck. One of these days, I will test out my theory by nibbling on an eyeball. It was also the only dish that paired well with the 1998 Cotes du Rhone El Cheapo de les Pierres, which was all I could afford.

(By the way, you may have realized at this point that I seem to be talking about a non-ramen foodstuff. You would be correct, were it not for the fact that I meticulously considered and imagined the taste of every morsel as if it adorned a shoyu ramen from Meguro's Men Tamagawa -- the bouillabaise of ramen. Next time, take along some slices of that duck liver and throw those babies on a tama-charsiu, and tell me that's not the most fantastic thing you've ever tasted.)

Next came a delicate, flaky yet moist kinmedai snapper served with an elegant artichoke "vapeur." The meat dish carried two drumsticks of robust, grilled lamb packed together with minced vegetables and excessively minced truffles in what was probably those unspeakable intestinal sausage casings. A terrific assortment of cheeses. Lastly, I'm not in the best position to comment on the desserts since I'm not a fan of sweets, but let's just say that you can choose from a couple dozen of them. Good coffee, and free refills (what a concept).

Then there was Le Bill Royale. The bill is enough to remind you why you don't dine in Ginza more often. In this truly international neighborhood, you also get to pay consumption taxes to several principalities all at once. But hey, it's not every day that the wife turns fifteen. (Japanese Trader: "I said fiputeen. FIVE-OH.") And the wife indeed looked radiant, with fetching diamond earrings and her neck swathed in some dead animal's fur. Still, there was no confusing the wife with ace Ginza hostesses Hana and Kana, who sat with Old Man Embezzler Funamura at the corner table.

In all, not good for a guy who lost his wallet. By the way, if any of you stole my it's-actually-a-business-card-holder, give it back or else. I've been practicing at the gym, and I will kill you.

[FIGHT] Abe Ani Combat Club: Lesson 1 [Part II]

2005-01-08T15:30:00.000+09:00

So now that everybody was nice and sweaty, it was time for several technique drills. I am pretty sure that classes do not typically proceed this way. The guys might have been indulging me by going over so many of the fundamental submissions, and I am grateful for that. In general, the Tori worked each maneuver at least five times, or five times on each side, right and left. For brevity, descriptions below are for one side only.

Armbar from guard

With your back on the ground, open your guard. Push off against your opponent's right thigh with your left foot at the same time you plant and lever away on your right elbow. Keep control of Otherguy's left arm, bring your right leg around his shoulder, and settle into armbar position.

Kimura from cross guard

Keeping feet locked around your opponent's waist, secure your Otherguy's right wrist with your left hand. Your hand should meet his wrist straight-ahead; that is, with your thumb, if straightened out, pointing to his right elbow. Take off veering to your left, moving your right shoulder toward your opponent's right shoulder. As you push forward with your left arm and force Otherguy's right arm behind his frame, your right arm should snake around his right shoulder until you can clasp your own left wrist with your right hand. Leaning outside of his inside frame, push with your left hand and pull with your right into Kimura territory.

By the way, when I played Uke and volunteered my right arm for this exercise, my right shoulder showed an insane amount of give. Abe and Otherguy were pretty disturbed. The instructor asked me several times if I was indeed okay, and my opponent reached a point at which he was hesitant to crank it any further. Abe then mentioned that it was a good opportunity for Otherguy to learn how to deal with an extraordinarily flexible rival, and explained to him how to tighten the angle and change the direction of the armlock. I probably could have taken a little more pressure but I tapped charitably. Then it hurt like the dickens the next day.

Sweep from guard

As with the Kimura from cross guard, secure Otherguy's right wrist with your left hand. A lot of things must be accomplished in the same motion. Release guard and plant left foot. Plant free hand, post up and push off with right arm. Your right shoulder vectors diagonally toward Otherguy's. Bring right leg up and tight against the sides of the high part of your opponent's left rib cage to aid momentum. Like in the Kimura, your right arm loops over Otherguy's right shoulder and helps your left hand to drag out his right arm. If done properly, you should end up in mount position. I did . . . about twice.

Triangle choke

Abe: "Do you know what a triangle choke is?"

Me: "Yes."

Abe: "Have you ever been in a triangle choke?"

Me: "No."

Abe: "Okay, then you should experience it at full force so you know how it feels and when to tap."

Me: "Sure."

At that, Otherguy was instructed to put me in a triangle choke. After he fiddled around with it for a little bit, I felt the vacuum quickly engulfing me. I soon decided to tap. My brain probably sent the signal to my hand to tap the customary three times, but I think I only got out one-and-a-half before I went into a half-black, half-lightheaded state. That was really fun.

With the opponent in your guard, either wait for him to attempt to pass, or use your arms to suddenly shove one of his arms (in this case, Otherguy's left) behind your leg (here, right) while you bring your right leg around and atop his shoulder. With your free left leg in this case, slide it up Otherguy's back until the front hinge of your left foot fits snugly in the pit underneath your right knee; use your right hand to help fix the proper placement if necessary. As much as possible at the same time, use one or more of your hands to sweep the opponent's right arm out of the way and across your abdomen. A lot of things can create pressure, the most important in your legs. Make sure that the left leg is cocked at a right angle or more acutely, the front tendons taut. Swing the trapping right leg out so that it fishtails away from your opponent's center -- Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira versus Mark Coleman is the textbook. Cradle Otherguy's head in and crunch, arch, and lift your abdomen into the choke.

At this point, it became evident that Otherguy was in the middle of training for what was probably an amateur fight. So when it came my turn to triangle him instead, my buddy wanted to see how much he could take. The dude kept asking for a tighter and tighter choke until he finally tapped and emerged, his face beet red, veins popping, eyes busting out of his head, coughing like those tubercular oyaji on the bus about whom I once wrote. Then we did it again. A lot of work goes into the triangle and it can take time to set up, but once locked in this submission is awesome. Shoji v. Lister.

Achilles hold

Leg submissions can cause significant damage with relatively little pressure, so an abundance of caution is needed in a training scenario. "In a fight, though," said Abe, "you just crank it." Start in the opponent's guard. While forcing his thighs up and together, move into a squat position with your left knee ready to push into the space between his legs. Lock your arm around the area where Otherguy's left leg meets his foot, with the front hinge just about under your right armpit. Use your legs to immobilize his left thigh. Grab your right hand with your left to add pressure and secure the hold. Your wrist needs to really axe into the Achilles tendon. Keep the same pressure and position and lean back to encourage a tap.

Heel hook

If the opponent is defending or trying to roll out of the Achilles hold, one can switch to the even more destructive heel hook. You must release the Achilles, lean back, dip under and resurface with Otherguy's left leg now laying across your torso to your left. Snare Otherguy's left foot inside your left armpit and catch his heel in the small of your left elbow. Making sure your legs still trap his left thigh, rotate your upper body to your right. Snap. Due to its dangerous nature, the heel hook is prohibited in many amateur fights, but not Otherguy's upcoming bout. Save it in case you run into Valentijn Overeem.

That was it for the crash course in groundwork. But there was still some jumping around to do.

A hip, hop, a hip it to tha hippity hip hip hop and you don't stop rockin'

Not as formidable as my arch-nemesis the jump rope, but still not easy. Your buddy lies down straight with his back on the floor and stacks his legs atop each other at the foot hinges. First, hop over and across his legs from left to right over and over, keeping your feet together. Second, hop in a repeated crisscross pattern, landing on one foot at a time, with your right foot touching down outside Otherguy's right calf, then your left outside his left.

That was all she wrote, so it was stretch and banter time. Among other things, the instructor talked about the big year-end Shooto show coming up, and then the year-end AACC holiday party. He invited me along too, but I took it to be no more than an excessively polite formality. Otherguy and I helped Abe disassemble and stow away the mats. Finally, I continued to yap with Abe all the out to the gym exit on Omotesando while Otherguy stayed behind to hit the heavy bag.

Simply put, my little stint with the AACC was buckets of fun. Admittedly one session does not make for an infallible sample size, but the people were nice and the pedagogy more than sound. This was my front-runner, were it not for the fact that Abe told me that they were probably shutting down the Harajuku classes and moving everything to the main hub at the Gold's Gym South Tokyo Annex in Omori. The STA facility is well-known to be fantastic, complete with its own ring, and Abe said that classes there were better for beginners anyway. However, Omori is probably a bit too hard for me to get to, either from work or home.

So for now, the adventures continue.

[FIGHT] Abe Ani Combat Club: Lesson 1 [Part I]

2004-12-31T13:39:00.000+09:00

On the evening of Wednesday, December 9, I headed over to the Gold's Gym in Harajuku to check out a regular installment of the Abe Ani Combat Club. The AACC holds sessions all over town in a variety of disciplines; this one was scheduled for Shooto and "Girlfight." And at any rate, this was the closest spot to my apartment.

I stuffed a spare T-shirt, my open-finger gloves, and blue shorts in a backpack and arrived at Gold's a little bit early. I was leaning toward doing only a sit-in, but I asked the gym staff for a chance to speak with the instructor before the class. Abe Hiroyuki was presumably busy preparing for a fight, so his little brother Abe Masatoshi showed up. As a 56 kilogram class fighter, Masatoshi is clearly not a big guy. Nonetheless he is a world-class bantamweight with Johnny's Jimusho looks to boot, like Takizawa Hideaki in a rashguard. I assume this guy can get chicks.

So we shot the shit for a while and I explained that I am a complete beginner. The astoundingly friendly Abe replied that novices are welcome and well-represented at the AACC, but that Wednesday nights in Harajuku tended to attract the harder-core. Especially the women. At least that's what he was saying before 20 minutes had passed with no students in sight. One other guy appeared then, and that was it.

The instructor seemed to be at a loss since he probably wasn't intending to roll that night, and a shooto class starring one student is just silly. That's when I muttered that I had brought my gear and that I would be happy to give it a go, provided that they didn't kill me. Abe said, "OK, let's go easy," and I changed and stretched.

The workout started with some mat exercises. Actually to be precise, Otherguy did some warm-ups while I just flopped around on the floor like a walrus plied with Jagermeister. To the best of my recollection, the exercises included the following:

Ukemi rolling

Just a shorter version of what is done in judo or aikido class. Tumbling forward and backward along the spaces between your head and shoulders.

Defensive crawling from Loungey-Yuppie-Sitting-on-the-Floor stance

The first step: Butt and sole of your left foot on the mat, left forearm resting on the left knee -- think Pig Vomit in "Sideways"; right palm on the ground behind you; with left foot and right hand planted, elevate your butt while keeping right leg cocked in half stag beetle position; lurch forward and land. The second step: Replace left for right and right for left.

Looking-for-Charlie crawling

"Get the f**k off my obstacle." Stay low to the ground, Marine. The right elbow scrapes forward in conjunction with the left knee, the left elbow with the right knee.

Superman baby lifts

Your back on the floor, arms straight up in the air, legs up and perpendicular everywhere. Otherguy goes spread-eagle and acts as a dead weight. Your hands support his armpits, your knees support his thights. Push up briskly and repeatedly with all four limbs. An easily misinterpreted, potentially homoerotic Shooto favorite.

Over and under the table

Face down, back level in the air, palms and knees on the mat. Your goal is to withstand it as Otherguy climbs barrels around, under, and behind your torso. Return the favor, keeping arms wrapped around your buddy as much as possible and hefting yourself along the ground with the help of your elbows.

[RAMEN] 一風堂・六本木店 Ippudo Roppongi (from May 30, 2002)

2004-12-20T13:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: 一風堂・六本木店 Ippudo Roppongi

DO NOT DISTRIBUTE. CONTAINS INSIDE JOKES.

It all had to end sometime. Between Koshinbo, Erubisu, and Masutani [review next week], I had been on a good run. Leave it to the newest outpost of a legendary has-been ramen institution to disappoint.

一風堂・六本木店 Ippudo Roppongi

Where to begin? The abhorrent decor. The outside show window is lined with mannequin busts sporting not-so-nifty Ippudo T-shirts. Part Frederick's of Hollywood, part AUM Shinrikyo hideout, and part Kim Jong-Il love nest. Then there's the interior, decorated from floor to ceiling with an endless, nauseating pattern of that fried-dried or dried-fried "ramen." (Remember when you thought that ramen meant Sapporo Ichi-ban and Cup O' Noodles? The Seafood Curry flavor was always particularly revolting.) You've really got to see this crap yourself.

The tasteless display prompted my lovely assistant to inquire, "Won't the rats eat it?" At that point, my memory hurdled back towards my final months in the steamy summer of New York, when a rat decided to share my studio apartment while I studied for the bar exam. My pet, whom I eventually named Frolic, was likely of the Norway variety, not to be confused with the Indian Rat: Norway Rats climb walls, you see.

Although we met only by chance when he sampled my takeout order of rice & beans, we would see much of each other in the weeks to come. In fact, one bleary-eyed early morning, the full weight of Frolic -- his body, not including the tail, was about as long and heavy as one of those 250 milliLiter soda cans -- raced across my right foot. Boy, I screamed like a little Nappy Naritomi. Even after the exterminator guy (played by Christopher Walken, but Puerto Rican) helped me out, the rat continued to visit. Looking for another way in, Frolic once stuck his snivelling little head through the opening beneath one of the electric coils on my cooking range. Moreover, a week after his aborted attempt at re-entry, I came home to find the light on my answering machine blinking. I pressed the playback button, only to be greeted with an otherworldly nibbling sound. Nasty.

But I digress. The food itself was mediocre. The flavor of the Akamaru was remotely smoky, suggesting the pork bones had been grilled in advance rather than parboiled; not necessarily a bad thing. The charsiu surfaced out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly, without reaction. The noodles were good yet equally uneventful. And the egg could have enjoyed another couple of minutes in the bath. Overall, what should have been basic Hakata tonkotsu hosomen was overly contrived, and there was simply too much going on. After a while, I just didn't care. (We regretted not going to our old standby Azabu Ramen instead. Despite failing the test of an all-time classic, Azabu is a comfortable, happy ramen that doesn't try too hard to impress.) Finally, the peculiar cold tea -- hinting of mint, spice, and cyanide -- had me thinking it was Jonestown Juice. Not a good chaser for the ramen.

Still, there is hope. We're meeting up with the Ramen Professor on Sunday. Prepare to be amazed.

[Nappy Puyi from "The Last Emperor": "Why can I not leave the Forbidden City? And why am I surrounded by Eunuchs?"]

[RAMEN] Deluxe Edition (from May 23, 2002)

2004-12-15T13:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: Deluxe Edition

大宝 Taihou (Near Furukawabashi Intersection) [Kekke-san's Review]

This place is more a neighborhood Chinese restaurant than a noodlery. I'd guess it's run more as a hobby by a couple, who are the only people working there. That means they have eratic hours & not enough business scale to ensure smooth operation: they are open only from 12noon for lunch, and only between 8PM-10PM (or earlier, if they run out of Men). But they are pretty pleasant people. I tried a bowl of their Tanmen and gyoza, which were recommended on the internet. Tanmen was essentially a small-sized bowl of shio-flavored noodle, topped with a huge serving of crunchy 'yasai itame.' The noodle was thin, flat, white type; it looked fragile but it had surprisingly good firmness, and had good hang time (I had to work through the veggies first). I thought it was tasty, but I wish I had ordered extra charsiu, which I saw one of the "regulars" do. (The standard tanmen comes with no charsiu, unless I missed it.) Gyoza...they were fairly conventional, but the negi/nira in the filling were nice and crunchy. I would like to go back to try some of their other bowls of noodle, which looked & smelled interesting. It's curious how good this place is relative to Nokata Hope just across the Furukawabashi intersection.

In the Sannohashi-Furukawabashi area, I would rate Taiho second after Azabu Ramen Honten. Hana-no-hana (the underachieving franchize shop) comes third. I refuse to rate Syono-ya bacause of low client service orientation. I don't go near Nokata Hope; the rotten-carrot stench makes me ill just driving by the place.

[Kekke-san's Review ten minutes later] You know, I think the review I gave Tenhou is too easy. I think I was just hungry. Overall it's more an "OK+" place.

ラーメン亭たまき Tamaki [Suguri-Ienaga Analysis]

[J]ust for your information, this ramen is "cho- kotteri" as it says on the menu, but it doesn't give you that disgusting aftertaste you would get from a really overly-kotteri ramen. Some shops attempt to set off the kotteri-ness by mixing fat with fish broth which I think is absolutely the worst combination, but, as Ienaga-san mentioned, the bits of yuzu help make the broth achieve the perfect level of kotteri-ness. . . . . We haven't tried the other types of ramen, like miso and shio, but we are hoping that they are just as good as the Tamaki ramen, so that we won't get bored after many visits.

By the way, Tamaki is not a "trendy" kind of ramen shop - it's a very traditional, small but cozy kind of place - you will like it :-)

らあめん英 (ひで) Hide [Mine]

In truth, we hit this joint in the unsuspecting ramen hotbed of Kyodo during Golden Week. But I remember the meal quite vividly. Pure pig. From deep inside the handsome shack, the vat of pig makes love calls of "Oink." Trapped among the desperate throng outside, your large intestine responds, "Buu~."

Fifteen minutes later -- when at last you're face to face with the kakuni ramen at the counter and side by side with the other gorging feeders at the trough -- is when the pleasurable and visceral squealing, snorting, and grunting really begins. This is a refined and clever tonkotsu solution, wonderfully free of stench; smooth, rich, and just shy of pork syrup. The soup is softly browned and marbled by a shoyu-based tare, debunking those fraudulent claims that Hakata ramen is without exception set in white broth. And for better or worse, there are no acids or vinegars to vary from the captured essence of the One True Hog. But don't believe everything you might hear that this ramen is sappari or won't sit in your stomach. Maybe the soup is cleaner and goes down easier than crude oil or week-old Dr. Pepper Matcha Crappucino, but this is still tonkotsu. (By the way, they have a female Oompa Loompa working here. Too.)

Elsewhere, the slowly stewed pork kakuni is Rumpletumpskin to the menma's Polly Prissy Pants. Your chopsticks are more than adequate tools to delicately draw-and-quarter the tender but ravishing cubes of meat. As for the menma, at the precise moment when your teeth are fooled into thinking they have come upon absolute rubber, the bamboo shoot between them snaps and crunches with immense satisfaction. Lastly, the usual wan and pale men, here flown in from Kyushu, brings together and completes the classic Hakata preparation.

This is probably close to a work of art for tonkotsu hosomen lovers. The problem is that I'm not one of them. Moreover, I thought there was an over-reliance on pepper. Then there's the other question: Is it worth hauling my ass out to Setagaya-ku just for this? I think you can find comparable Hakata ramen achievement at Akanoren near the Nishi-Azabu crossing, a scant ten minutes from the office.

["You are the coolest guy in the world, this is tremendous tea."]

[FIGHT] Back in Suidobashi

2004-12-09T03:09:00.000+09:00

For several days, we had been trying to get someone on the phone from Academia AZ. We failed every time. So at noon on Saturday, I threw some shorts and an extra T-shirt into a backpack and biked down to Suidobashi. Even though I got a little lost around the border between the Iidabashi and Misaki addresses, I made it there in plenty of time for the beginner jiu-jitsu class scheduled at 1:30 PM. I found the front door to the decrepit Koken building wide open behind a sign that said, "Come up and watch."

As soon as I went up one flight of stairs, everything was pitch dark. Not good. I went up one more flight to the jiu-jitsu floor. There was a little bit of natural light here but no electricity. The door was halfway ajar and exposed the blue mats, with rubbish liberally strewn about the corners. All windows were closed, preserving a palpable smell of sweat and things slightly more foul. Again, not good.

So much for that. I took a walk. It was the day of the K-1 Grand Prix at the Tokyo Dome next door, and there was a certain buzz around the neighborhood. I hopped in and out of the pro wrestling and fight gear merchants before ending up at the old Fitness Shop Kakutogi, where I purchased a pair of Harbinger gloves and my arch-nemesis, the jump rope. Before heading back home, I ate at the well-heeled Men Hitosuji for the first time. I may post a review of the standard Tamashi Ramen sometime, under separate cover.

Last on today's agenda is a great post made by one amlee to http://www.adcombat.com/ADCC_Forum/index.html. I had a hard time reaching this gentleman, especially since I am not an active internet forum troll. The Diseased Monkey Island Theory. Nonetheless, I made a good faith effort to reach him to secure his permission. Moreover, I am assuming that someone this lucid and reasonable also happens to be a nice guy. Many thanks to amlee in advance.

Topic: Saku/Silva 4 is being blown out of proportion. My take on the fight.
Most people on this forum, Sherdog, and the MMA Underground are saying that Silva is going to end Sakuraba for good, the fight is unethical, it should never happen, etc...
I beg to differ.
Now, first of all, let me say that I don't really believe that this fight should be taking place.a. Sakuraba should focus (for the first time in 4 years) on someone in his damn weight class. Instead of fighting Igor, Rampage, CroCop, Silva, Randleman, etc, he should fight B.J. Penn, Henderson, Bustamante, Rodrigo Gracie, or someone like thisb. Silva needs to continue to prove that he is the #1 LHW in the world. Fighting Sakuraba for a fourth time isn't going to prove much.
That being said, I train with someone who works for Pride in the U.S. and this is what he has told me (he is an insider). Contrary to popular belief, Sakuraba is not the only one asking for the fight. Silva wants it too. They both want to fight each other again. In addition to this, Pride (being the ultimate protector's [sic] of Silva's somewhat padded record) did not want to put him up against someone like Henderson, Arona, Couture, etc. two months after he fought a very tough match in the form of Rampage "I've found God" Jackson. So DSE sees this as an easier fight for Silva.
What is to say of all of this information? Well, for starters, call Saku what you want, nuts, obsessed, batty, or whatever, but one thing is for sure, this guy has balls. He literally asked for this fight. I mean he wants to fight Silva.
I am also very sick of people completely trashing Sakuraba just because he is no longer the fighter than he was five years ago. Well, simply put, he is a fighter, and more than any other MMA fighter in the world, he challenged himself. He has told this to dozens of Japanese reporters. He wanted to challenge himself. People ask him why he has lost so much of late and he says that he wants to challenge himself. This whole notion of DSE trying to kill him is basically false. Yes, they are setting up the fights, but he is willing doing them. He is a Japanese fighter and as such, he doesn't have a "Tito Ortiz" mentality whereby a fighter picks, chooses, and ducks fights as he sees fit. Sakuraba more than any other fighter has gone up against the top dogs and never stopped doing that. Believe me, unlike some fighters we know, he's not going to take huge paychecks to fight old washed Japanese pro-wrestlers.
People say over and over, "If Saku would have stayed in his weight class, he never would have been beaten." Perhaps this would have been true, but he wanted to do something else,...Silva is trying to do the same thing now. If Silva goes after Nog, Fedor, or CroCop again and loses, will he be considered a lesser fighter?...I doubt it.
Finally, people are overexagerrating how "terrible" Sakuraba is. Some people are talking as if he is a completely inept MMA fighter. That's ridiculous. In the past year, he submitted Randleman, beat Schembri, and went toe-to-toe with Lil Nog, and lost by decision. Yes, he is not the same fighter, but yes, he is going to continue to keep fighting.
People keep saying "look at his other fights with Silva...he got killed!" Um, did you see Silva's two fights with Rampage? Rampage got more beat up in his two fights than Sakuraba did in his three. Sakuraba lost in big ways all three times, but his defeats did not look like Rampage's. Silva destroys people. That's what he does. But Sakuraba is not a B-class fighter. He has a shot, just like any other top fighter.
Perhaps this will be the defining fight for Sakuraba, but way too many people have forgotten that 1. Sakuraba made Pride what it is today; 2. He is a true pioneer of the sport in term of his ring presence and grappling innovations; 3. He was the first person to completely debunk the myth of the Gracies by tooling four of their best fighters in succession; 4. He is one of the most humble and classy fighters that the sport will ever see. The same cannot be said of the Titos, Baronis and Gilbert Yvels of the game; and 5. Finally, there will never be another Sakuraba. He is classic and that can never be taken away from him. He is a fighter that actually had a real fighting career and has done it with humor, pride, and excitement the whole way through. His role in the sport makes other so-called pioneers' contributions' [sic] (those of Rickson, Frank Shamrock, etc.) look pretty minor. He is the Japanese Royce Gracie, the one who influenced so many people to get involved in the game as a fan or as an athlete. When 39 retires (even if it is after his 4th fight with Silva), the MMA world will never be the same. Period.

[posted 12-01-2004 12:30 by amlee]

[RAMEN] えるびす西口店 Erubisu (from May 16, 2002)

2004-12-07T13:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: えるびす西口店 Erubisu

えるびす西口店 Erubisu

So I'm not feeling too inspired lately. Too bad. My faculties have been dulled by the vagaries of transfer accounting systems and mysterious one-off HCM recruiting function charges for les demitasses styrofoammes at Taillevent Robuchon. Also, I've been investing far too much creativity in things like producing a J-Rap version of that already annoying Fish Song.

It had come time to trek to the so-called Ramen Capital. To secure safe passage without incident, I gave up all traces of my Kanto 893 (not 吐くぞ) heritage. Off came my customary gold-plated stainless steel wire-rim tinted fade sunglasses, the punchy perm, and the plaid-patterned pocketless golf trousers. I even took time to shave the wispy hairs at either corner of my grin . . . WHILE SMOKING! Ikebukuro. Nishi 3-30-2. Plus on Monday I had a little bit of a limp on the left side.

(Needless to say, I also removed all Goldman Sachs business cards and paraphernalia from my person, since I really didn't want to be caught doing anything that would reflect poorly on the firm, other than my usual work.)

The shoyu ramen is at heart a clear-colored soup, with precious philtrum-sized globules of gentle fat on the surface, one Cupid's Bow for every spoonful of broth. The overall blend -- I think pork rib, tonkotsu, and torigara -- whelms the senses nicely, with varying gruffness and season. Homemade noodles just this side of ultra-thin were fragrant and faintly roasty. In addition, the must-order egg extra was perfectly luscious. I found myself puzzled by how they infused the hard-boiled white with so much taste while the yolk was left so positively creamy, not at all sticky or adhesive on the lips. On the other hand, the meat-to-fat ratio in the charsiu is less than optimal. There was the vaguest murmuring of chaos between the charsiu and the other elements, but that soon passed over. Perhaps a meatier cut would have saved the pork.

The flavor of the whole is spiky and tinny in places. Inhale deeply while carrying some soup and noodles on your tongue, and you will sense the slightest hint of iron at the roof of your mouth. The effect is unmistakably ducky, which bears promise for the Higashi-guchi branch and its lure of an actual duck broth! But the shoyu ramen is certainly very salty. Between the two sorts of pork bones and the chicken, there's already a lot of sodium on that them there ranch; the soy sauce tare does not help the matter and is probably unneeded.

In all, this place is a winner. And I would be first in line if anyone wants to venture in search of the duck broth ramen.

[RAMEN] 虚心房 Koshinbo (from May 1, 2002)

2004-12-07T01:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen Golden Week: 虚心房 Koshinbo

Finally.

虚心房 Koshinbo

For months and months, I have contended that Sul Long Tang (Korean oxtail soup) would be a sure-fire, can't-miss inspiration for splendid ramen. In fact, I remember screaming this very fact while watching an episode of TV Champion in which two ramenists battled fiercely to create a ramen that would "please women's palates." Whatever. Instead, these jokers toiled around breeding purple vegetables and using brown rice as a soup base. But one visit to Gam Mee Ok on 32nd Street in Manhattan reveals Sul Long Tang's mysteries, its gut-warming and healing properties, the unforced and fleeting but impressive elegance of its flavor, and thus its promise as a foundation for ramen.

However, testing my theory would require me to end my seven-month abstinence of Wagyu, the feared Japanese Mad Cow (not to be confused with Wagyaru). I had already passed up Daigo near Omotesando, Genkotsuya in Mita (a Kekke-san dig), and the mythic stamina ramen at Genkai in Mito city. But to tell you the truth, we had no clue walking into the place that the beef was already in the pot. And since Koshinbo is miles from nowhere, hopping along to another joint was not an option.

In any case, we ordered the house Koshinmen. My my my, what a find! This is mojo in a prom dress. The whitish broth is slowly drawn from the bones of three animals: cows, pigs, and chickens. Very sensual and loving soup, yet somehow light to the touch. A daring formula but hardly overwrought, no ingredient insistent or distinct, though I surmise that the smoothness is mediated by the cow.

The noodles are wonderful vessels for the broth. The standard men come in thick or thin and have a nice, easy chewiness. In addition, Koshinbo offers a remarkable noodle made from tofu milk (?). I gnawed at a few skeptically and was surprised by their consistency; these, too, would pleasantly complement the soup. Perhaps another homage to Sul Long Tang, the charsiu is thin but savory and refuses to be considered alone. The nori and slightly cooked, julienned white negi were wise additions. And the egg was delectable, mild and just orange enough.

Dan Leone of the San Francisco Bay Guardian would say, "The burps taste good too," but I am not so crass.

We pushed on and played badminton on the same Tama River bank where the country folk were playing baseball and trying to get drunk, rode bicycles up to the hills where Kamen Rider used to fight the Shockers, and watched Pride 20 for dinner. What a great day.

Incidentally, I should note that the feel-good story does not end there. As it turns out, the women who run Koshinbo were once on the television show "Ai no Binbo Dasshutsu Daisakusen," or "The Mission to Set the Poor Bastards Free." The shop is just a few steps from Yanokuchi station in Inagi-shi on the JR Nanbu Line. Go spend some money.

[FIGHT] In Search of Zhoo-Zhitsoo

2004-11-23T18:00:00.000+09:00

Takada Dojo was fun. I had a good time, albeit a painful one. But from I saw, I got the feeling that something was slightly remiss in the training. For example, experienced students rolling on the mat would have trouble locking in a triangle choke and could not understand why, yet would receive little detailed guidance from Yamamoto or Matsui. Moreover, participation in the mixed martial arts class requires some foundation in one or more of boxing, muay thai, amateur wrestling, or submission wrestling, but most of the time slots for the basic classes are beyond the reach of my work schedule. I also reasoned that, given my lack of experience, I should seek to establish some comfort with one aspect of fighting.

So I decided to check out some jiu-jitsu gyms. The first stop was Axis Jiu-Jitsu in Meidaimae, mainly because I had heard good things about this gym and its friendly training environment. It was not the easiest place to find, but the missus and I managed to arrive just a few minutes before the start of a Sunday afternoon session. A gi-clad dude at the front desk welcomed us warmly, confirmed that we were there to watch, and offered us a couple of chairs. The class was composed of a several white and blue belts and two purples. Light stretching was followed by a technique demonstration by the front desk dude. To me, it looked like an escape from a wristhold followed by a transition to a German suplex position. The mats were definitely crowded. After a few minutes, front desk dude took the lead again and demonstrated a takedown from the prior suplex position, including the optimal center of gravity and proper grasp of the opponent's gi.

The techniques seemed to be taught well and in ample detail. The purple and blue belts offered courteous guidance to the beginners, and no Sunday or stinky barbarians reared their ugly heads. The mats looked clean and kempt, though I didn't get a chance to check the showers. But there were no heavy bags or mitts or any equipment related to striking practice. Not that any of this concerned the missus, who was playing with a fellow female spectator's blonde long-haired dachshund.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to stay very long before getting home to our other, normal fitness club. We had a few words with the successor to the front desk dude, who happened to be the prior incarnation's twin brother, sans gi. No free trial. Gi on sale from about 13,000 yen, but no particular gym rules about make and model -- Naga, Mizuno, Atama were all on display in white and blue versions on the mats. That sort of thing. My feeling about the place is very positive, but Meidaimae really is kind of far.

Tuesday marks Labor Thanksgiving day in Japan. Who says people here work too hard? The plan for the day began, at Mrs. Ramen's urging, with a free introduction to Pilates. Open-minded as always, I got up for this, even though I was a little dehydrated from beers, football, and an aesthetician the prior evening.

I am not one for the Cobra-Snares-the-Aardvark mumbo jumbo of yoga-like exercises, but the instructor made it all worth it. She was certifiably hot. Somewhat Iijima Naoko under brunette hair with a few more cigarettes in her voice. After the free class, she walked over to me -- for real -- and complimented me on my flexibility (I get that a lot), told me I appear active in sports, and asked me if I do martial arts. This is a sign, I'm telling you. Of course, this is the part where the missus swings by and inserts herself into the conversation. She also spoke with the instructor at length in the women's locker room afterward; Mrs. Ramen found out that the Cobra is 40 -- unbelievable -- and married with two kids, the oldest being 20. In return, the missus took the liberty of informing our instructor that I have a short temper. Awesome blossom.

Once we showered and got redone, we set out on the second part of our plan for the day, which was to check out a couple of zhoo-zhitsoo parlors. The first was Hayakawa Mitsuyoshi's Tri-Force in Sugamo, but it was closed. We had an unfathomably horrible maguro lunch along the way in the Old Ladies' Harajuku (オバタリアンの原宿). Moreover, since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped by to offer prayer at Oiwa-san's final resting place. The second gym on the itinerary was Academia AZ, further south on the Mita line, but that was closed for the day as well. I'll have to try again sometime.

So here I am in Suidobashi, the spiritual center of fightsport in Tokyo, checking out gear shops for jiu-jitsu gi prices and trying on open-finger gloves. However, the craziest smack around here is the pro wrestling geek store. There are tons of them, selling everything from old magazines and T-shirts to figurines and replica Ultimo Dragon masks. Probably the most maniacal is Battle Royal, located on the second floor at Misaki-cho 2-20-5 (東京都千代田区三崎町2丁目20-5). There is a pro wrestling mania shop across the street, with an unmistakable Tiger Mask on the signage. Lastly, nearby in Misaki-cho 2-13-7 (東京都千代田区三崎町2丁目13-7) is Ambition, which is not as well stocked, but hey, at least they've got the Saku Mask parka and can fix up any Takayama Yoshihiro fan.

Next month: My neighbor constantly collapses under the enormity of little things.

[RAMEN] 旭王 Kyoku-O and ホープ軒 Hope-ken (from April 18, 2002)

2004-11-19T13:02:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: 旭王 Kyoku-O and ホープ軒 Hope-ken

旭王 Kyoku-O

[Our first guest review! Kekke-san on the miso ramen:]

The men was a few minutes over the preferred al dente, and rather characterless ("traditional" in a bad sense). The miso soup was good, strong presence of miso and fish broth, sprinkled with right dose of shichimi pepper. The absence of moyashi was a definite plus, as I've found them to sweeten and subdue the soup in many an otherwise-good bowl of Hokkaido ramen. Corn, on the other hand, is generally less damaging and Kyokuo had the right amount of it. The egg and charsiu were pretty good, but didn't have their own appeal to rise above the strong soup.

Overall, Kyokuo Miso was a solid above-average ramen, with nothing particularly wrong with it (except maybe the noodle). The flavor of the soup is definitely on the "shikkari" side, which I like; however, it overpowers other moderately flavored ingredients (charsiu, egg, etc.) and the only thing you come out remembering is the soup. Having said that, the soup IS pretty good, and I would go back to try Shio (w/ butter if they offer it) next time I'm in the Oyaji Wonderland [Shimbashi].

[Ditto for the shoyu ramen, although it was very salty.]

ホープ軒 Hope-ken

Like its close cousin at Ramen Jiro, this ramen is crude, unapologetic, and brutish. The overflowing, oily bowl -- don't touch it! -- grows stubby arms and legs before your very eyes and starts calling itself Buriburizaemon. Then Buriburizaemon takes you into a back alley, slaps you around and does all sorts of ribald and un-Christian things involving facial hair. And in the end, it won't even leave you with enough to catch the bus.

The soup: they spilled five barrels of this stuff at Tokaimura in 1999 and sixteen people died. Three unfortunate survivors -- having lost their noses, a few fingernails, and their personalities -- now work at Hope-ken. (Hey, if you want free smiles, go to McDonalds. Or that peppy little Oompa Loompa-looking guy at Starbucks with the short shorts on.)

The noodles have a squarish, Japanese soba-like appearance. But there is a noticeable lack of spring water or soda in the noodles, making them seem coarse and heavy while not remarkably chewy. Meanwhile, the almost obscured moyashi and carrots are good. The charsiu are decidedly average and can become rather tiresome. The sulphur bomb supahard-boiled egg should be avoided.

I really do enjoy this kind of ramen once in a while. On the other hand, Mrs. Ramen doesn't appreciate the mystery ramen nature of the place: since the ramen is prepared well out of your view, it's unclear exactly how much of your meal was inspired by the Cats and Roadkill Chinese Cookbook.

Incidentally, Hope-ken was a great chance to meet up with Ienaga-san and Suguri-san, the original Ramen Taicho. As always, I was speechless.

APPENDIX: Cultural Glossary

Oompa Loompa:

Buriburizaemon:

[RAMEN] でび Debi and Important Announcement (from April 9, 2002)

2004-11-19T13:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: でび Debi and Important Announcement

This report forms Part XVI of our ongoing series, "Totally Rethinking Japanese Ramen Quality." An important announcement follows this report.

Apologies for the recent glut of reviews. I'm terribly backlogged.

でび Debi

We arrived in line 15 people deep and in the rain. As we painfully waited in line for some 20 minutes behind three certified members of the Dork Patrol -- who were desperately hungry after splitting their all-too-short day between the Chutes and Ladders Convention and the bi-monthly Tokyo installment of Magic: The Gathering -- I, too, felt like a loser.

The story behind this place is as follows: TV personality David Itoh cooked up some ramen for some media stunt. After being encouraged by the comments and praises of his equally inane peers, David announced that he would leave the celebrity world to earn his living as a ramen master. At first, the geinokai thought David was joking.

Let me tell you what the real joke is. This is ramen without any character or characteristics whatsoever. The soup is overblended and unenjoyable. The egg is completely underdone. The noodles are soft and slimy, covered with a filmy substance that forced me against my will to recall the unwashed and unshampooed head of my Ordinary Differential Equations TA in college. Meanwhile, Mrs. Ramen had the "Autumn" ramen to my "Spring." The "Autumn" tasted like ochazuke covered with a helping of plain oil drawn from old, bad garlic. Once home, Mrs. Ramen promptly punted -- heaved, welched, booted, what have you.

Too fancy for its own good, and not worth the wait. I promise that next time I will have something good to say for change.

ANNOUNCEMENT: For quite some time now, I have been considering exigency plans in the event that I fall short of realizing my childhood ambitions of fighting Martians or going back in time to meet the woman (?) who infected Schubert with syphilis. I also think that my original ramen recipe for a veal shank, torigara, and vegetable broth, coupled with charsiu broiled not boiled on the bone with a slight nod towards sweet and spicy Korean-style seasonings and sesame, and chewy chewy curly golden noodles, might stand a chance even in ramen-riddled Tokyo. Therefore, the name I have chosen for my ramen hut is

第六感 Dairokkan

(I will give some thought to dedicating one stool to a life-size Haley Joel Osment wax figurine, and possibly semi-realistic holographic images of American Revolutionary War-era soldiers with shrapnel in the head.)

I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Comments and criticism will be appreciated.

By the way, here are the other names under consideration:

オレは人殺しなんかしてないよ！ Ore wa hitogoroshi nanka shitenaiyo!
友達以上恋人未満 Tomodachi Ijou, Koibito Miman
だったらどうすればいいの？ Dattara, dou sureba iino?
五十七っぱい Gojuunanappai

[RAMEN] Totally Rethinking Japanese Ramen Quality XV (from April 8, 2002)

2004-11-18T01:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: Totally Rethinking Japanese Ramen Quality XV

This report forms Part XV of our ongoing series, "Totally Rethinking Japanese Ramen Quality." Important disclosures appear at the back of this report.

いっぷく亭 Ippuku-tei

We spent the larger part of Saturday touring Tochigi prefecture. However, maps and Mrs. Ramen most certainly do not mix, and as I watched the occasional giraffe and zebra go by I wondered if we hadn't somehow ended up in Kenya. Anyway, lured by the promise of its reputation for gyoza, we headed to the city of Utsunomiya for dinner. (We had originally thought about going to Imaichi city for ramen, but decided that it was likely that we would only be able to locate Imaichi ramen. [寒ー. . . ]) After securing a handy Gyoza Map of Utsunomiya -- I kid you not -- we selected our target: Ippuku-tei, with big, fat, and juicy dumplings . . .

. . . full of cabbage. These gyoza were pathetic. Was this a fair representative of Utsunomiya's esteemed gyoza cuisine? Even more abhorrent was the fact that they do yaki-gyoza and soup gyoza using THE SAME DUMPLINGS! Sure, the yaki-gyoza were crispy. And they lined up together on the plate. But I don't even remember what these things taste like. Perhaps that's the worst thing I can say.

Incidentally, we also ordered the ramen. I don't remember what this tastes like either. Nevertheless, I do recall having the following telepathic conversation with the cook at Seppuku-tei:

Ham: Did you even try?

Him: What?

Ham: This ramen.

Him: We serve that?

Ham: Well, it's right in front of me.

Him: Oh yeah . . . . No.

That's the last time I ask for advice from a cop. Charsiu was pretty good, though.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: Don't go there.

[RAMEN] 6 Days of Ramen (from March 29, 2002)

2004-11-17T13:03:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: 6 Days of Ramen

From Thursday to Wednesday, I had ramen almost every damn day.

Thursday: 天下一品･六本木店 Tenka-Ippin Roppongi
Friday: 西安刀削麺 Xi'an Toshoumen
Saturday: 西安刀削麺 Xi'an Toshoumen (again!)
Sunday: かおたんらーめん Kaotan Ramen
Monday: 茂助 Mosuke
Tuesday: [定休日] The Day of Rest (Thank God.)
Wednesday: 西安刀削麺 Xi'an Toshoumen (AGAIN!!)

But as I've noted before, Toshoumen is not ramen. Taking this fact into consideration, I therefore ate ramen only three times over that 7-day period, which is a completely normal pace. Furthermore, on Saturday and Wednesday I had half- and quarter- bowls. (I believe the restaurant expanded its menu of serving sizes to accommodate people like me whom Lindy ruthlessly refers to as "halfies.") Screw me for talking up a place and then being asked to go there fifty more times.

Everything else was rather unspectacular. No new places.

天下一品･六本木店 Tenka-Ippin Roppongi

The Tenka-Ippin formula for kotteri is well known. Tonkotsu and remarkably obvious torigara flavor reduced to a deadly gloop. As you pull noodles from the bowl, the thick gloop hangs on to the noodle for dear life. Perfect ramen for drunk bastards, because even if you knock the damn thing over you have about 10 seconds to right the bowl before anything actually spills out. Bad charsiu. Bad gyoza. Really bad "seasonal specials."

That said, the original Tenka-Ippin is heaven. The 本店 is in Kyoto, near the corner of Shirakawa-dori and Kitaoji. It is also across the street from the sculpture school of Kyoto Geidai, so you can make a day trip out of gazing at beautiful things. (Well, at least I did. I love art schools.) But what sets the honten apart is the strong torigara flavor. It's as if the purest essence of a whole chicken was strangled, hacked, mangled, folded in thirds, crammed, blended, melted, and liquified into your soup. Beak, eyeballs, feathers, nails and all. Fantastic.

By contrast, the Roppongi outfit is not very good. I suspect too much sesame oil makes the soup seem peanutty. Among the Tokyo outposts, I think Meguro is the closest in flavor to the honten. I have no idea what the Honolulu branch tastes like.

かおたんらーめん Kaotan Ramen

I guess I just don't get it. The noodles are nice, and it is a dandy place to swing by if you just so happen to be walking around the Aoyama graveyard with nothing else to do. But to me, this is just sour soup with roasted garlic. This is more plain than your first girlfriend. There is little in the way of depth, nothing in the soup that will force you to ponder the mysteries of the universe. I mean, just look at those guys behind the counter. They don't look like they've sat around stewing 24 hours of anything except their gambling debts.

And the gyoza is barf.

茂助 Mosuke

Speaking of barf-alicious gyoza, I hit this joint again -- some amateur friends of mine wanted to give it a try after they learned it was named to #22 on the Nittele scam list. Don't let it ever be said that I'm not fair.

Anyway, I've published my thoughts on this matter before. The gyoza is not barf. It's just far from spectacular. This time, I even tried a different soup, opting for the shio. Boring, boring, boring. This ramen was meant to complement Bloomberg seminars, morning research calls, and Emma Thompson movies. I almost fell asleep mid-noodle. I actually woke up in a rage later that night while having a nightmare about intensely boring ramen.

But again, the lunch set is very filling. And as long as this place attracts amateurs away from the places where I really want to go, I'm happy.

And a quick shout-out to Kekke-san, who has entered the world of marriage, hence calorie and sodium paranoia. Congratulations!

[RAMEN] 西安刀削麺 Xi'an Toshoumen (from March 22, 2002)

2004-11-17T13:02:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: 西安刀削麺 Xi'an Toshoumen

After the Nittele special on Thursday night ranking the top 99 ramen shops (www.ntv.co.jp/ramen), there was no way we were getting out of a Friday run. First and foremost, however, it should be noted that I'm never a sucker for these TV shows, and last night's was flawed in at least two critical respects:

1. The show was organized along the lines of a voting system. Now this in and of itself is unobjectionable, since ramen is ordinary food for ordinary people (Tampopo). However, this system also rewards Disney Sea syndrome. The respondents themselves are more likely than not members of the Japanese population who inscrutably enjoy the comfort of waiting in line with 200 of their friends and neighbors. They do this with their kids so they can enjoy that one thrill ride per five hours at some pathetic theme park. And then after ramen they go wait in line at Beard Papa's to get some puffy buns with fatty s**t in it. It's also highly unlikely that after waiting in line for an hour that they'll cap their meal with a resounding exclamation of "that sucked." (Unfortunately, I tend to do that too often. In front of the cook.)

Also, as Abe Saori-san pointed out, Nittele didn't disclose its methodology, leaving us helpless in determining whether some good old Ferdinand Marcos ballot-stuffing was going on. In particular, looking at the Top 10 it seems like Nishi-Ikebukuro people lead very very boring lives. Good catch!

2. Nittele is a Yomiuri company, which means it's always a scam. See also: Giants, Tokyo/Kawasaki/Inagi Verdy, "news" paper.

西安刀削麺 Xi'an Toshoumen

So we hit #36 on the scam list, largely because of its proximity (Roppongi 6-8-17). This is not ramen. This is Chinese food. And it was good.

The spareribs noodles -- just like grandpa used to make. The spareribs are sparingly spiced, and the meat and fat fall right off of those adorable little bones. The broth is all about simple, brightly clear flavors with a mild amount of chili. The noodles themselves are grated and sliced and hurled from a solid block of zhang fan/chow fun/wonton wrapper fuwa fuwa joy. As a matter of fact, in some tribal cultures this solid block of fuwa fuwa joy is worshipped as the fertility god Chief Running Water.

Moreover, Xi'an Toshoumen obtained its respectable scam rating purely on the strength of its noodles. But, as Chris pointed out, if one were to rate it for the combination of noodles and teppan gyoza, Xi'an Tohoumen would skyrocket. This is real gyoza; in other words, there's stuff besides cabbage in it. I would go further, such as describe the wonderful crispiness in all the right places and the mere handful of bold and tasty fillings, but I'll leave these for Chris's purported attempt at writing a gyoza treatise.

You know, sometimes it's just good to be Chinese.

[RAMEN] 金龍菜館 Kinryusaikan and 砦 Toride (from March 18, 2002)

2004-11-17T13:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: 金龍菜館 Kinryusaikan and 砦 Toride

This is going out in spite of Hideki Ishibashi's warnings. Man, this distribution list is getting big.

金龍菜館 Kinryusaikan

The theme for this week is simple, simple, simple. First of all, I have to comment on my visit to this honorable Mito (Ibaragi prefecture) establishment two weekends ago.

Kinryusaikan is the foremost proponent of Mito-han ramen. To put some historical context behind this, apparently Kyushu and Ibaragi have been warring for years over which is the Japanese birthplace of ramen. Kyushu's earliest example is a serving of chinese soba in a plain broth, which is about as close to the current state of ramen as the chimpanzee is to a human being. Ibaragi counters with a version brought to Japan by the legendary Mito Komon. (As a matter of fact, within Ibaragi's borders, Mito Komon is responsible for just about everything. He also discovered electricity, unearthed the lost city of Troy, sparked the American civil rights movement, and manufactured the first portable multi-region DVD player -- all after the age of 85!)

The Mito-han ramen at Kinryusaikan is presented in a wide but shallow bowl, with five small dishes organized somewhat decoratively carrying garlic, ginger, and spring onions, among other things. These can be added to your liking, which in my case means throw the whole damn thing in there. The noodles are standard but good, very smooth and yellow with ample firmness (there's something I like about that phrase). The charsiu is one nice slab that -- thankfully -- does not fall apart or melt away. The soup is a very simple, clear and extremely assari torigara broth with some pine nuts and those little red micro-tomato-looking things they put in Chinese food. By the way, the broth would be equally suited to the task of complementing some equally simple but delicious suigyoza (which would be only pork, nira, and onion); the extra order of Mito-han gyoza is a good substitute. This is suigyoza with a hint of ume -- a great idea.

I find this all very tasty. The flavors in every element are extremely subtle, but everything blends together quite nicely. Ironically, this kind of assari ramen is almost an acquired taste after the many dense bowls of tonkotsu and 55-ingredient boilfests one encounters in Tokyo. All in all, I like the place and have been there 4 times.

That said, the last time I went I had the tsukemen instead. But tsukemen is always lukewarm and I've never really liked it all that much. Stick with the regular.

砦 Toride

Toride is on the original list prepared by the TV Champion Ramen-O Assistant Professor guy from Tokyo University. I finally broke my 7-day ramen probation by walking into this good-looking and spacious wooden interior with some nice design accents, such as the artificial grasses shooting out from the middle of one of the dining tables. Nonetheless, in the Homer Simpson spirit of "less artsy, more fartsy" (from the Springfield Chili Cook-Off episode), we got right to ordering. On the menu you can get (i) a Toride Ramen, (ii) nori and moyashi, (iii) extra veggies and half-boiled egg, or (iv) the more meat. This ramen expedition of four people opted for one of each.

This is no-frills, milky white tonkotsu. This was one well-sized bowl of simple pleasure. Take advantage of the beni-shoga, tsukemono, and the garlic press (one medium-sized clove should be perfect). You can also select thickness and firmness of noodle, and I went with the firmer version of the standard thin noodle. This was right on, baby. The charsiu did not stand out by any means. Nonetheless, there is only one way I can only describe the wholesome feeling of walking back to the station after our meal:

Num num num num num.

It's not all that crowded, and looks like a nice place to hang back later at night. Beer and cocktails (?!) too. 神泉町 20-23. The professor wins again.

[RAMEN] 茂助 Mosuke and 一蘭 Ichi-ran (from March 11, 2002)

2004-11-17T01:03:00.000+09:00

Ramen This Week: 茂助 Mosuke and 一蘭 Ichi-ran

On Wednesday, it had been 10 days since my last bowl (at the false Aoba in Nakano), and I was approaching manic depression. Therefore I swore off my usual Wednesday night antics and went hunting for something new.

茂助 Mosuke

My guess is that this is supposed to be one of those ramen places that is fine for a date. Wrong.

The place is spotless and beautiful, with 60s era jazz playing in the background (I think it was Chet Baker when I was in there). You can surely be thankful that you won't stink when you walk out of there. Then again, that's because you can't smell anything in there. That's what I call a bad sign.

I went with the standard offering, Mosuke Ramen with an onsen tamago on the side. The cook took his sweet time to give me a bowl full of a reliable but unimpressive soup, a nameless, faceless mix of tonkotsu, niboshi, and some other fish extract (also sesame seeds). The flavor was subtle but soulless. In fact, I think you could probably come up with something similar by accident using hondashi, shoyu, and sugar. But I'm just being mean; despite being unmemorable, the soup was in fact passable. The noodles had great color and a reasonably good consistency and chewiness, but the surface area of the noodles were "rougher" and more frictional than I like. These noodles too were tasteless, which matches up perfectly with the establishment's commitment to having no guts. In fact, there were too many noodles. I say they should take some of that stuff back and just make it a free kaedama option.

Gu: The charsiu was not good. The onsen tamago was a bit overdone, and didn't do anything with the rest of the ingredients. They also sell a kakuni ramen, but I have a hard time imagining how the kakuni would taste good with the broth.

Gyoza: I tried this. There was shiso in the gyoza. No thank you.

Other comments: Compared to a lot of the crap around the office, this joint was actually above average. But the bastard was damn expensive. However, what makes this place almost worth it is the lunch set, which is a Mosuke ramen, rice, a few pieces of gyoza, and some dessert for less than 1000 yen.

一蘭 Ichi-ran

We finally went to this gimmicky joint for Friday lunch. Kekke-san is still recovering (although he insists he liked it). Anyway, for those of you who haven't been watching TV in the last 2 years, this place is a collection of isolated booths, where you can be at one with your ramen. (They originally marketed themselves as a 女性が入りやすいラーメン屋. Give me a break.) As a result, you don't see anyone -- not the person taking your order, not the person making your food, not the person next to you.

It is also "your ramen" in the sense that you choose everything about it. You select the taste intensity of the soup and its thickness or gloopiness. You select how much hot pepper and garlic you want. You can select charsiu or not, negi or not. And you choose the firmness of the noodles.

The result is that there's probably some decent tasting pot of tonkotsu goodness somewhere in this gimmicky shop, but then they add all these things to it because you told them to. That's what screws it up, because none of these ingredients have been adequately integrated and incorporated into the broth. Nonetheless, I left just enough of this stuff so I could order a half-kaedama. Instead of the first time, when I ordered the noodles katame, I got these kihon. It was the same.

Anyway, the joint looks and tastes like something out of "Blade Runner." (Deckard didn't look like he was enjoying his noodles all that much either, mind you.) All told, however, you could do worse in Roppongi, and this place is open 24 hours.

P.S. I had some Mito-han tsukemen at 金龍菜館 in Mito yesterday, too. But the wife has put me on another 7-day ramen probation, so I'll have to get back to you guys on this one.

[RAMEN] Aoba in Nakano (from February 27, 2002)

2004-11-17T01:02:00.000+09:00

Aoba in Nakano

This past weekend Eoyang gave me a ride in the Ferrari, so we went to get ramen at the supposedly world-famous Aoba in Nakano. Unfortunately, we made a mistake and went to the wrong Aoba in Nakano. I guess there are two. Weird, because the car navi in Chris's Ferrari said we were at the right joint.

Anyway, I don't know if any of you have been there but it wasn't very good. I know it wasn't the honten but I can't picture it being all that different. The soup was mostly katsuo and very very salty. Eggs were good, charsiu OK. The menma had too much goma-abura to it, don't know why. BUT THE SHOCKER IS they use noodles from a package! Can you believe it? Since they don't make their own fresh noodles, the noodles come out gloopy and slimy and not chewy at all.

From last Monday to this past Sunday, I ate 4 bowls of ramen (2 Tamagawa, 1 Jangara, 1 Aoba). I think I am going to die.

[RAMEN] Ramen-kai update (from February 19, 2002)

2004-11-17T01:01:00.000+09:00

Ramen-kai update -- unwise use of firm network resources

I just went again for the second time (sorry Chris, couldn't find you in the office), and now I'm sure of it. Tamagawa in Meguro is great ramen. Except that if you start eating that thing expecting it to taste like ramen, you'll probably be disappointed. It seems that the broth is a unique mix of various seafoods and vegetables. At the same time, much like my other great favorite Takechan Niboshi Ramen (in Chofu, Jindaiji Moto-machi 5-chome) the soup is not at all stinky. Your basic shoyu broth here is indulgent and rich but the flavors are roundly balanced, without tasting fatty or greasy -- Chris likened it to bouillabaise, and I'm inclined to agree.

The noodles have a good koshi-koshi-sa and are close to what I think is optimal chewiness. Medium thickness. The combination of noodles and soup doesn't exactly glide through the lips, though, if you know what I mean.

Gu: The charsiu is merely okay. But those half-boiled ajitama are unbelievable; they practically have an orange glow around the yolk. Most importantly, the combination of the gu with the broth and the noodles is superior, and no individual flavor or texture seems out of place.

We also gave the sesame broth a try. This thing was extremely tasty, but I could imagine the soup becoming overwhelming over the course of an entire bowl.

Bonus: You can get beer in the ticket machine.

Location: Meguro, follow Gonnosuke-zaka down the slope, past the local Tenka-ippin. Keep following down the right side of the street, crossing to the other side by the pharmacy on the corner. Across the street from Ramen Tora.

[RAMEN] The Ramen Chronicles

2004-11-16T14:18:00.000+09:00

Over the next several weeks, I will be posting every one of the Famous Original Ramen Chronicles (sarcasm intended) to djham.blogspot.com, in order. I began with short reports to a small handful of friends and connoisseurs in February 2002, but the email distribution list continued to grow until the first series' sign-off in March 2004. Some of the work at the beginning does not stand up to the writing at the end, and some of the writing at the end does not stand up to the stuff in the middle. Nevertheless I need to archive all of it somewhere.

[FIGHT] Takada Dojo: Lesson 1

2004-11-13T16:23:00.000+09:00

I arrived about 30 minutes early for the 7 P.M. mixed martial arts class. The ground floor staffer handed me a flyer and told me to head straight downstairs to the basement gym. The first dude I saw wore glasses with a thick, black plastic frame on his beaky features. Yes, he was thick in the upper body and was doing his very least to conceal a tough guy attitude. Another guy sporting a more kindly disposition and the black Masked Saku T-shirt guided me to the locker and changing area. I had to walk across the mats, where submission wrestling class was in session under the direction of Matsui Daijiro.

[Unless otherwise specified, in this particular train of thought as in the other themes of djham.blogspot.com, I will present Japanese names as surname first, or in their most popular usage.]

Mixed martial arts class convened on schedule at the hour. The instructor was Yamamoto Yoshihisa, Rickson Gracie fodder circa 1995, and most recently a victim of Choi Mu Bae, 230-pound disco dancer extraordinaire. I expected that someone on such a string of hideous losses interrupted only by an accidental "DDT" win over "The Specimen" Mark Kerr would have a massive chip on his shoulder, but he was a nice-enough guy and declined to really work anybody over, fresh meat or not.

http://www.sherdog.com/fightfinder/fightfinder.asp?fighterID=454

However, I was immediately and simultaneously shocked and crestfallen when confronted with the first 10 minute segment of the class: my lifelong arch-nemesis, jump rope. Whatever part of the brain or whatever genome sequence there is that enables the human body to jump rope, well I don't have it. Obviously, the whole display was embarrassing, ludicrous, and traumatic for the 100th time, but I kept starting and tripping, over and over again, with severe intensity and determination for the full 10 minutes. If you've never thought you'd ever hear some retard say the words, "Hey, I need to practice jump rope," well, give me a call. Let's move on.

[I can understand readers finding the attached descriptions boring, yet these serve a crucial purpose as reminders to myself. In the meantime, should anyone have a differing point of view as to the execution of any of these maneuvers, I would be glad to hear it.]

Basic tackle

As I was taught it, the basic tackle form begins with legs spaced apart at about the shoulders, with the right leg slightly forward for a right-hander. The tackler lowers his or her center of gravity and shoots from the crouch. Step forward with the right foot with the head moving and looking straight ahead, pushing through the back of the target. Force your right shoulder into the middle of the target's beltline -- in vertical position, more Britney Spears's than Oscar de la Hoya's -- while your head courses just past the opponent's hip, and your hands move to clasp both smalls behind the opponent's knees. Maintaining forward progress, your left leg steps forward just beyond the target's frame as you secure your grips behind the target's legs. Your right foot and left foot should step through in a tidy one-two rhythm. Keep driving.

Points of emphasis: Drop to your crouch level first and then push in. Look through your opponent to a space a few yards behind the target. Do not stare at the ground because doing so will change the direction of the shoot into a diagonally down, awkward and easily defended angle. And keep driving.

Basic one-two

The basic one-two: feet apart; shoulders square; knees bent; right foot for a righty back between one or two shoes, in line with the shoulder. Power comes from the hips -- think Brian Viloria -- and a thrust in the general area around the shoulder. Throw the left jab straight with a slight twitch in the left hip while tightly guarding the face with the right. Throw the right with more power in the hips as the left returns and guards the left side of your face. Recoil the left with some crisp to generate a small extra margin of power in your right hand. The hips rotate but movement of the torso should be limited. Twirling the ankles, calves or legs is also not good. Upright posture throughout the entire delivery.

The goal is your opponent's chin. Strikes to the heavy sandbag should be snappy, not pushy. The left and right in the one-two should hit the same spot on the bag. Good practice away from the bag includes standing several feet in front of a mirror and punching to your own chin. Posture and balance.

One-two, hook

The attacker performs the basic one-two to just about full completion, or back to the initial position. The left hook is thrown with more swivel in the left hip than in the case of the left jab. The hook should land coming straight in horizontally; you throw out the left arm straight from the shoulder just as the right settles into protective position on your right cheek. The arm shapes into the hook form as soon as possible, while the left hip has already started its work. On a heavy bag, the hook angle means that the outside knuckles behind the third, fourth, and fifth fingers welt into the sand.

Points of emphasis: Do not loop the left hand or throw the hook from behind your body. The upper body is moving forward at contact.

Right mid-kick

In general, a right-hander owns a natural right leg, but as we shall see below, this is not always the case. From the same position as the basic one-two, step slightly and quickly to the outside with the left foot, with the toes now pointed northwest. There is a jutting little boney point on the side of your hip, just below the waist; this spot shoots out first and generates power for the kick. The right leg should not travel upwards from the ground to land near the opponent's lower ribs, rather the right leg should come in at roughly the same elevation. Nonetheless, the kicker should still feel an overall sensation of mid-lift at the time of the strike. Floating upwards and leaning forward at the same time. Guard your face with your left fist; you can throw the right hand back as the right leg fires by. The right leg smacks into the sandbag and everything returns to the start position, defensively minded.

Left mid-kick

Kicking from the left requires the attacker to assume the initial position at a further distance from the target. Take a full step out with the right leg, toes pointing northeast, then unleash the left. Not stepping towards the target, but rather cutting a path across the front of your opponent. In all other respects, the principles behind the delivery are identical to those for the right. Still, I found myself more comfortable kicking with the left, with vastly better balance and more power, and my coach (the black Masked Saku T-shirt) noted this several times. Naturally, this could have been merely a rare, well-placed compliment whose meaning actually translates to "hurry up and pay the tuition already," but the left mid-kicks did feel good.

When I inquired further, black Masked Saku T-shirt replied that it's definitely possible that one's natural hand and natural leg are on different sides of one's body. Hence a right-handed puncher can kick more instinctively with the left leg, conceivably. I can't lie. This was probably my high point of the session.

One more thing: after contact, the standard position for a left kick is left foot forward, on the ground. Against a statue, your left foot ends up just outside the edge of your opponent's right foot; the curves on the striker's and target's feet in effect spoon each other.

One-two, right mid-kick

One-two from the standard, closed distance, seamlessly followed by the right mid-kick. Mind the details so far. Left jab: small hip twitch, block face with right. Right straight: recoil the jab, larger hip twitch, block face with left, pull right back. Right mid-kick: keep left fist on cheek, step out short with the left foot, throw out right bony hip point, drop the right hand, the leg travels laterally, lift and lean into it.

One-two, left mid-kick

From the farther distance, the same one-two followed by a full step out with the right foot and the left mid-kick. Again, your left foot customarily ends outside the statue's right foot. And again, I like this.

Right low-kick

The low-kick begins with a slightly bigger step-out for the left leg. The left leg bends liberally at the knee. Throw your weight onto your left leg, crouch but lean into the knee as you strike with the right leg. The right leg is not really led here by the small boney point on your hip, but by a somewhat more generalized area around that point. The lower right shin should club or swipe in below the target's knee at a marked downsloping angle.

Double right low-kick

After the first strike, draw back the right leg as much as possible, but quickly, to its original position. Step out again with the left foot, further to your opponent's perimeter, just before the right leg is slung in.

Left low-kick

A large step out with the right foot, moving diagonally across the front of your target, then sling your left leg in.

Double left low-kick

Step out, sling, step out further, sling again. Heed the rhythm; think Crunch, Crunch.

Combination 1: One-two, hook, right low-kick

The foci are straight to the chin, straight to the chin, snapping in at 90 degrees from the side, and low slug below the opponent's left knee. The waist twitches go small left, more right, big left. Then the low step-out, throw your weight through the bent knee, and thwack it. The several changes of direction and balance make this combination difficult. Smoothly executed, though, and it is in theory a reasonable way to put some offense together against a flat-footed or only straight-counterpunching opponent.

POSTSCRIPT

Lesson 1 was on Friday evening. On Sunday I was still hurting. In particular, whenever I so much as sneezed, the whole of the right side of my body seized up. Now, I have punched and kicked before, but (i) it's been awhile and (ii) the punching and kicking techniques were somewhat different from what I had learned in my prior experiences with more traditional forms. As far as I could tell, the mixed martial arts approach dictated some measure of conservatism, of always considering some level of defensive posture at the conclusion of every maneuver. Shoulders often remain square instead of gone-for-broke, for example. As a result, I undoubtedly ended up using parts and pieces that I just haven't needed for jogging, or spinning, or drinking.

On Sunday I was still hurting, but I took a trip out there again anyway, this time with Mrs. Ramen as wingperson. Not because I was ready to sign up in full, and not because the Mrs. wanted to have a go, but because we like to check out kooky neighborhoods, and by the way we're thinking of moving. There's no chance in hell that the Mrs. would deign to live in Musashi-Koyama, but the super-long trashy strip mall was cool as kitsch. We found a place that bakes exclusively soft, fluffy melon bread, easy on the sweetness and with a piping-hot texture halfway between cotton candy and chiffon cake. Then there was a gratin and doria place where I, predictably, had pork chops. Also lots of chicken-on-a-stick and conveyor belt sushi everywhere.

I decided to head back to the Dojo, since we were in town, and buy a T-shirt. For one thing, I could keep it in the closet as a good emergency gift for a fellow bloodsport fan. For another, I was pretty much the only guy on the mats that night without an official Dojo, Pride, or Saku T-shirt, and if I eventually decide to sign up in full I don't want to be without uniform again. So we winded our way out of the super-long trashy strip mall and made our way toward the gym. Just as we neared it, I saw a guy walk in through the back door of the ground-level Dojo office. From a distance, about my height and with terrible posture. Sakuraba?

We went into the Dojo office through the front door and started scanning the goods. As we were doing so, the front desk staff person (non-fighting female) went just behind an opaque plastic partition to talk some business. The man's voice was unmistakable. Hey, I am a fan. I would know the raspy, Akita hick voice of Sakuraba Kazushi, the man I consider to be the greatest fighter, pound-for-pound, so far in the young history of mixed martial arts. And so there he was, just 7 or 8 feet away, the closest in proximity I have ever been to this legend . . . but there was that opaque plastic partition thing!

So I just picked out the classic, ordinary white Dojo T-shirt in extra-large, paid for it, and left. Mrs. Ramen said, "If you're so sure that was Sakuraba, why didn't you say something?"

"I'm not worthy, yet."

We walked a few more steps.

"Besides," I continued, "if I called out, 'Good luck on New Year's Eve, Sakuraba-san,' and it turned out to be Matsui Daijiro, he would have kicked my ass."

My very own Tomato Dojo T-shirt! (Unless I give it to Phil.) Mrs. Ramen declared, "やきとりの町、武蔵小山," ("Chicken-on-a-stick town, Musashi-Koyama") and we got back on the train.

[FIGHT] Takada Dojo

2004-11-13T10:47:00.000+09:00

My love for bloodsport.

Although I have been a big fan of MMA and shootfighting since UFC 1 (or maybe since Maeda vs. Tiger I), I don't train. [But] I'd like to get into some beginner stuff. The problem is that my job keeps me very busy, so I could really only hit mats on weekends and holidays. I also haven't done much since a belts-for-sale karate program in elementary school, and taking a stab at aikido in college. In the meantime, I try to stay in shape by going to the local fitness joint, riding my bicycle, and running a little.

So as you can tell, it sounds presumptuous but I am looking for a casual program. A shooto for busy people or something. No interest in taking to the streets and testing newfound skills out on SMAP look-alikes or anything. I just dig all MMA and think that working on it myself a little bit will deepen my understanding of it. By the way, I am also past my 20s and not getting any younger.

[Copied from a post I made to the Japan forum on the MMA.tv Underground.]

Step one in my journey from spectator to fresh meat: the mixed martial arts class at Takada Dojo, which I attended on a shoshinsha muryo-taiken (初心者無料体験, complete beginner free trial) basis.