A Very Ninja Christmas

Seasons greetings to you all. It has been almost five months since my last post and I have been training very hard. Five months is a long time though and I found Christmas coming around again very quickly. I have moved on, as has my training, so much so that Ninjutsu is now a taboo word in the Ninja Banker house. I love it, but beautiful wife and Daughters One and Two are sick of it to the extent that Ninjutsu is banned for Christmas. It went something like this...

Sarah: So what do you actually want for Christmas?
Me: a wooden naginata, I found a good supplier, look [shows her a web page]

(a wooden naginata. For more info please see my earlier blog here)

Sarah: I am not spending £100 on a pointy stick, choose something else.
Me: Okay, a Kyogetsu Shoge then, look [another web page]

Sarah: no. Its a bit of string with a toy knife on the end.
Me: and a rubber ring.
Sarah: don't be silly.
Me: okay, so how about a Jig saw and a portable work bench then? That would be useful for all kinds of stuff around the house.

Sarah looks suspiciously at me for a moment, she is doing the eyebrow thing so I know I've been rumbled.

Sarah: you're going to make more ninja stuff with it aren't you?
Me: No, of course not...maybe.

Sarah sighs and walks away.

So that didn't go well, The kids were no better.
Daughter number one just held her hand up shielding me from her view.

Daughter Number One: I'm not allowed to even talk to you about ninja stuff.

She is smirking.

Me: mum?
Daughter Number One: yep.

Then Daughter Number Two chirps up: Ninja is banned for Christmas, Mummy said.

So that's it. Ninjutsu is banned for Christmas.


I went to my last training session before Christmas last night and it was therefore with a heavy heart. Not only because of the Christmas ban, but also because Daughter Number Two has been coming home lately with a cloud of doom hanging over her. She thinks, like a lot of other ten year olds that the world will end today "because the Mayans said".

I threw myself into training with my usual vigour and good humour though, and was soon enjoying myself, perhaps more so than normal. Bo staffs and swords flying, Yaris prodding, and fists pounding. I seemed to just do it, everything just seemed to fall into place and the time just ticked on.

When I got home I was full of smiles, and because of that everyone seemed to smile back. the Ninja Household was at peace. It did not seem to matter that my life has been banned for Christmas, nobody spoke about it, and we all went to bed happy.

This morning the air seemed heavier.
Clouds of doom had gathered again overnight around little Daughter Number Two, and she appeared ragged hair and frown in our bedroom doorway, a little goth in the making. I did not need to ask what was the matter as she stuck to Sarah and I like glue all morning, giving an extra long squeeze when it was time for school. I watched her walking down the school path, heavy footed and almost dragging her bag behind her, in front of her children skipped and ran, all of them conscious of the approaching apocalypse, but oblivious to it at the same time.

I know that she will be watching the clock all morning, watching 11am approach tick by tock. I wish I could be there to see her relief when the hands sweep past 11:11, but I will be there to see her big smile when she comes home from school.

Maybe there is a lesson here. If the world ends today at 11:11am would I have made it a better place, even in a small way? I don't know. But from 11:12am onwards I am dam sure I will try. Perhaps that is what the Mayans were thinking, maybe that is the new age.

Shikin Haramitau Daikomyo, and Merry Christmas to you all.

A tool is a tool

I thought that given I have now been training in ninjutsu for two years that I should invest in some of my own training tools. For those of you who don't know a training tool is any non lethal item modeled on a weapon. The tools we train with in ninjutsu include the following:

Bokken (wooden curved sword)

bo (6 foot wooden staff)

Hanbo (3 foot wooden staff)

Naginata (wooden spear with a curved wooden 'blade')

Yari (long spear with wooden 'blade')

Kusarifundo (3' length of rope, knotted at both ends)

Shoto bokken (wooden short sword)

Kyogetsu-shoge (9-12 foot rope with a wooden sickle at one end and hoop at the other)

Wooden/rubber knife

Rope

Sarah, of course thinks all of this is hilarious. "it's like a bunch of ten year old's playing with wooden swords".

Whatever.

"Didn't real ninjas use real swords?"

Like I said: whatever.

 

Some of my training tools.

Anyway my instructors keep telling me that the best way to obtain these training tools is to make them. As you can see above I have already 'made' my kusarifundo, if you can call knotting two ends of a short rope 'making', so how hard could this be? I decided to make a bo staff.

The bo staff was easy enough. A 6 foot broom handle, sheet of sandpaper,and three hours later I had a respectable bo staff. I tried it out in the garden.

All went well, the sanding had smoothed out the staff and rounded both ends, it was the right length, and strong enough with just the right amount of give. A few bofuries and katas later I was a very happy ninja. I looked up to see Sarah and the two girls staring at me from the kitchen window. I smiled back but all three of them frowned, then Sarah opened the window.

"People can see you through the hedge you know".

I shrugged, pretending not to care, like a 12 year old caught singing in the bathroom. "Can they?"

"Evening." a wry voice from the other side of the hedge as someone walked his dog past our garden. Probably best to call it a night.

For my next project I chose a naginata.

A maniac wielding a wooden naginata, 

some day I hope to be that maniac...

Okay so this is a little more ambitious and may well be out of my reach, but I thought I would give it a try.

I got hold of a huge piece of wood, a hand plane and started at it. Trouble is it has to be a piece of wood as thick as the curve on the blade. That is very thick.

five days later I was still going. The naginata is starting to take shape, but still way too thick to hold and too heavy to use. Still, proud of myself the next time I found myself at ninjutsu training I mentioned it to our shidoshi.

okay so maybe I underestimated the task, and maybe I underestimated the length. I have ended up with a 6 foot, too thick to hold and too heavy to use naginata that should be 7 or 8 feet long. I will give it another try. In the mean time Sarah and the girls surprised me. I have a birthday soon and they have bought me a (blunt) folded carbon steel katana. It is from china, it is not Japanese, but it is hand made, folded, did not cost the earth and importantly is totally blunt.

The perfect training tool.

 My birthday present from my 

thoughtful and very lovely wife.

The sweat and sawdust paid off. Thanks babe, that is the perfect birthday present for your idiot ninja husband.

Happy training everyone.

The Mr Ben box.

Forgive me Shihan for I have lapsed. It has been 9 weeks since my last training session. This sounds like a confession and it is, only I can't fix this with three hail Mary's and a hows your father.

It has been that long since I last trained that I am really feeling the frustration. I have been playing ball with Hettie in the garden and trying to sneak it away from her with slight of hand, picking up a rake and breaking into bo katas in the middle of gardening, and diving over obstacles in the garden and on the beach, rolling around like an idiot. I really should go back.

It is all too easy to find excuses not to,which is the trap a lot of people fall into. They train for six months to a year, then don't go because they have to work, then that turns into a football match on the telly, then they are low on petrol, then they have promised their daughter to spend some more time with her, homework, parents evenings, more work commitments....I say 'they', I actually mean I, as in me.

I looked at the collection in my 'Mr Ben' box yesterday. Mr Ben, for those of you who don't know was a cartoon from the 70's and 80's – the heyday of children's TV. He visited a fancy dress shop in each episode, had a magical adventure with each outfit he tried on, and went home with a souvenir at the end.

                                             This is Mr Ben, not me.

So far my personal Mr Ben box of souvenirs has an aikido outfit, a kendo jacket and hakama, an italian foil, and a pair of well worn football boots. I will not add my tabi to that list.

 

         My tabi, not yet in the Mr Ben box.

My sensei keeps asking if I am coming out to play this week. 

Next time I will say yes.

Gymnastics v Ninjitsu

Daughter number 1 started gymnastics, or more specifically sports acro gymnastics a couple of years ago. It started innocently enough with one hour a week at the age of 6, but has crept upon me like an evil ninja - BLAM! until at the age of 10 she trains for three hours three times a week, and most weekends all day. Because our life has been taken over by this curious sport Daughter number 2 has also joined in, so the pair of them are now like a travelling circus act in our garden.

We get to watch them at barbeques though which is quite cool.

All of this is great until I realise that Daughter number 1 is now fitter than her Ninja Dad. She is leaner (although mine is clearly all muscle underneath a protective layer of fat), faster, and more flexible. The proof of this came when I realised that I have to learn to back flip as part of my training, which I find ridiculously difficult. You have to be slightly unhinged to enjoy travelling backwards at speed and upside down.

"I'll teach you Dad".

yeah,right.

She then laughed and flick-flacked across the garden like a human slinky.

I feel inadequate.

Anyway I watched,and she corrected me, and I fell on my head, then on my shoulder, then I knocked over a deckchair. Daughter number 1 laughed and giggled at me the whole time. Eventually I got it.

"You need to straighten your arms Dad and push your hips out, and point your toes, and don't bend your knees".

Forget all that. I did it. I back-flipped, and it took my ten year old daughter to teach me.

I stood there panting and sweaty,like an unfit dad.

"Let's go in." I said.

"wuss."

And there you have it.I am a wuss, a feeble dork, a puny weakling because my ten year old daughter can back flip, cartwheel with no hands, front and back somersault, backward walkover,front walkover,and do a straight back somersault with a twist off a three person tower and I can't...yet :)

Carl is a cunt

My car broke down last week. The rear diff 'went' and no I don't know what the hell that is, only that it controls the 4 wheel drive mechanism and turns the rear axle. Without it the car is basically useless and if I drive it the rear axle will seize up and the apocalypse will break out or something. Anyway it looks something like this:

Notice the lack of oil? That's because when it blew up and left bits all over the road in an embarrassing trail of destruction all of the oil fell out.
I have to replace the rear diff (see apocalypse comment above) and it is going to be 'really expensive' said the mechanic. We have used this particular garage before and they have usually been very good so I have no reason to doubt him. Whilst the car is up on the ramp he calls over all of the apprentices because (he tells them) he has only seen this happen once before, and they are never likely to see it happen again. Great. Now my misfortune is being used as a learning tool. They all stand around scratching their heads and the one thing they agree on is that they have never heard of,or seen this before.
The part will cost £2,500 + VAT, yes plus vat. While my wife cries outside he suggests that we get a used part from a breakers yard instead. The labour will cost £250.
Needless to say I phoned around and finally got the correct part from a breaker for £200. That's a big difference. Trouble is the garage now say they won't do the labour because it is not company policy to fit used parts. So what the hell do I do now? I have a broken car that I can't drive anywhere in case the rear axle seizes up and the apocalypse breaks out, and a spare part sitting in my hallway making the  house stink of dirty oil (see below)

Note the professional way it is packaged up.
Along comes Carl to the rescue. Well sort of. Carl is a friend of one of Sarah's friends. I have never met Carl,and neither has Sarah, although her friend obviously has and is very happy with the work Carl has done on his Land Rovers. Trouble is that Sarah's friend is a farmer and has shotguns, so of course he is happy with the work Carl does on his Land Rovers. I am sure he is also delighted with his plumber, plasterer, and the guy who laid the tarmac on his driveway. I however do not own a shotgun so am at the mercy of any workmen who do anything for me. Carl said (via text) that he would be happy to come to us, bring all the equipment he needed and spend a day doing the work for £100, which is absolutely brilliant, but for one thing...,.He didn't turn up. Then he made another appointment and didn't turn up for that, then another, and another....It is now almost two weeks on and we have missed four attempts. I now want to know what his full name is and exactly where he works so that I can go and 'discuss' his blatant rudeness with him face to face. Sarah's friend of course will now not tell me where he works or lives, knowing how angry I am, shotgun or not. So yes, Carl is in fact a cunt, and if you know a mechanic called Carl I suggest you tell him.