As I said; since you’re handling a ‘strange’ currency, you should keep an eye on your spendings. Well for starters; that was a wise decision!
As many people keep a little book with them for noting down ideas or things to do, it comes in handy to note down your budget on holiday.

Every day, make a wallet for the day as planned in the budget and write it in the book. And as the day progresses, write down the actual spendings.
Transport, food, training money and pocketmoney (souvenirs etc).
As the first days pass by, you will come to see how good you have budgetted.

Transportation
I planned to take tokyo free kippu tickets, but we ended up getting a Pasmo card for the majority of time. Pasmo doesn’t really give you any discount but will make sure you pay the right price for the whole trip. As I said, with the tokyo free kippu, we would have to buy an extra ticket for the private railroad to Noda. The total fee would have been ¥ 2.180 (two ways, one person). With the Pasmo, this was ¥ 1.840. So this was cheaper if we just went to training and maybe a short trip in the center or so. The transport site Jorudan, was a great help. (Check what a trip for you costs from where you are staying, this might also help you descide what location is too far to stay at for regular training in Noda. I think our location was just the limit.) This site gives you the fee of every trip you lookup. So when our basic plans on a training day didn’t exceed ¥ 2.180, we could just use our Pasmo. If it did exceed it, we would take a Tokyo free Kippu and used our Pasmo just for the Tobu Noda Line. Be aware though, Tokyo free Kippu comes in different forms, get informed well at the Ticket Office! You have cheaper ones of ¥ 730, which are just for the JR lines, the one of ¥ 1.580 is including the Tokyo Metro lines. So know upfront which lines you will need to use, so that you buy a ticket covering them.

When using Pasmo, check when topping off your card if the right amount is on there, and when going out and topping it; check if the right amount is taken off. Also make sure you top it off at the right passway. Take one where the Pasmo/Suica logo is showing! Others will probably just give a green light, but will take off more money when you leave the station at the end of your trip! If you get a red light or you see the amount is not right; go to the officer at the side to check your Pasmo, he will ask you the last station you came from and will take off the right amount, or when it’s ‘broken’ he’ll fix it! We had that twice! The Pasmo all of the sudden said: amount 0 ! But that couldn’t have been right, so we went to an officer and he fixed it! : ) The first time we didn’t, we just thought we calculated wrong and uploaded the card anew. Wrong decision! Always check if you’re uncertain or you will loose money!

Ok, back to the budget.
In the end, we budgeted right! I calculated a Tokyo Free Kippu for every day and an extra for the trips to Noda. Now that we smartly used the Pasmo and where possible the Free Kippu, we ended up spending at least ¥ 6.000 a person less!
More money for extra trainings this means.
Keeping your budget in the book, you can make an assesment after a few days. Like me, I calculated how long we would have to do with an upload of the Pasmo for ¥ 5.000 or ¥ 10.000 and when we stayed under, that difference we could transfer to the budget of training fees.

Training
The first day you go to Hombu for training; write down the schedual of the Shihan teaching there and check with your fellow buyu (if you haven’t done that upfront yet) what the correct fee is. Then you can make a training schedual for yourself and a budget along with it. Calculate how much you would need for all the trainings, then see what you have. After a few days, if you budgeted well, you will see that you can spend more money on training from what you have saved on other things (food and transportation). We budgeted for ¥ 24.000 a person to make sure we could at least do all of Soke’s classes. We ended up spending ¥ 40.500 a person!

You can make your spendings on training as expensive as you wish ofcourse, but realise that training is heavy (and so is traveling) and so there will be a limit on the amount of training you will be able to make it to.
We still ended up with a nice training schedual, although we had planned for more trainings. But we didn’t push it, if we felt too tired, we rested. In the end you want to be able to enjoy all the trainings you go to, not?
What we spend in the end, which is nearly double our original budget, doesn’t really say we budgeted wrong. This was extra! Which means we budgeted great on the other parts of the trip! This extra spendings was saved out money from food and transportation!
Another tip: when seeing Shihan in Hombu, ask them if it is possible to come and train at their dojo. Do this in the beginning, so you can make sure you are able to go to at least one class in their dojo. Training fees are a little cheaper there and change of environment is always nice! You’ll see different people, maybe more local students, and it might be just a little less packed than in hombu!

Food
The initial budget for this was high, but that’s good! This way you are free to have a nice expensive dinner ones in a while if you wish and all that you save, you can spend on other things like training, trips and souvenirs.
We ended up spending even less than 1/3 of the foreseen budget!
That’s just over € 15 a person a day instaid of € 50!
But don’t make that decide you to budget smaller if you’re on a tight budget! A good meal is important! And it may take some adventuring and getting your best Japanese out and stumbling and looking into your pocket book of Japanese phrases to get you what you want for a descent price!

We ended up spending all of the money (or nearly all) anyway, but with a bigger smile! We got to buy nice souvenirs and went to the Onsen and had really nice training!

I think this is all I can give you for a budget review, I hope I can help out some people with this. If you’re still stuck with some questions, don’t hesitate to ask. We’ll be glad to help out!

Woke up at eleven, left at one for Nagato’s class at two thirty. We enjoyed our very last training with him, but didn’t ask for a picture. I could go on for a while longer, but Diana’s back and knees, and arm and head and nose and toes are disintegrating.

So after class we went to buy some stuff for you folks back home, which will be for sale on the webshop. There is going to be a little surprize this friday so make sure you are ALL there to be a part of it.

After Coco’s dinner (again), we are really fed up with the pizza’s, the noodles, the sushi’s and we really long for a good PAKSKE FRIET MET WARME CURRY EN MAYONAISE !!!!

Back in the ryokan, we’re packing our bags and I’m writing the last blog post of this exiting trip. Here a few words of thanks are certainly apropriate! I thank you all for the support and comments. A special thanks goes to lady Dee; because if it wouldn’t have been with her, I would have probably been running around Japan like a chicken without a head.

Diana Dhont & Tamouree Jordan, signing off.

For crying out loud: who on earth has a waterfall on their wall? ONLY the Japanese !!!

The Shibuya crossing is one of Tokyo’s calmest crossings, here at least, you can still see the zebra path, or maybe not,….

When we walked towards Ayase, we noticed some stray cats sitting in the evening light on a raised plateau, we have some footage of it, check it out. We went in and prepared for training.

As said, a lot of your experience in Japan, depends on whom you train with. Every time you go to Japan, you meet old friends, and make new ones. Two days ago, when we went to Coco’s dinner, we met some intresting people and we had a nice chat. One of them was Ricardo, from Spain. Today I saw Ricardo again, so we trained together.

This was a nice experience, it’s always a joy to train with people who know how they aproximately would react in a real fight. So I got a lot of good training again.

Diana trained with Shiraishi Sensei for a while, until Dino would be there, he came in a while later so she changed partner and trained with Nadine, Dino’s girlfriend.

Darren had chosen ten people on Soke’s command to show the technique which we were practicing. Ricardo and me got to show our’s. It’s always an honor to perform in front of Soke. I can really feel that I am hyperfocused and then again also super-relaxed.

Trainings come to an end, sometimes too soon. The ones with Soke end always too soon. As he closed the class, he spoke his grace towards us, who made the bujinkan grow and encouraged us to keep on training and to continue on the same path.

After class we politely asked for a last picture. This was actually our only chance to say goodbye to him. It’s probably going to be a while before we see him again. But we got a whole lot of transmissions from him and those will last our whole lives.

It’s important to let your body have the necesary rest. If you don’t do this, the chances of ending up injured raise consideberaly. It’s important to keep your mind fresh. So sleep enough if you can. Some people take a few days off training and than instead of relaxing, they go hiking through the whole country instead. We just had a long sleep and when we finally got up, we finally did our laundry. I was looking forward to a fresh t-shirt and my raincoat was reeking so much that even the Japanese on the train got up to sit somewhere else,.. so it was time indeed. After, we went to Asakusa again. We had nice conveyer belt sushi in the evening and then left for the ryokan.

In Japan, you see all kinds of ingenious inventions applicated in real life. This makes Japanese society very unique in a way. Who else has a waterfall on the sidewall of a hotel? Who else has mirrors in the front of their cars? Who else has a green line on the floor to wait behind it in line on the next train? Or left on the stairways is just standing, and rigth the passing through and upholds those rules? Who else has a GPS for pedestrians on their cellphone? Who else wears mouth masks to protect others from their germs. (The germs will escape on the sides of the mask anyway, but hey: it’s the gesture that counts I guess?) Who else has an umbrella parking where you can lock it until you need it again? Or what about a heated toilet seat with a build in bidet (with different options) and even a sound button for covering up your toilet sounds with flushing sounds. These are just a few of the miriad things that make your experience of the Japanese society very strange.

The Japanese are a strange kind of people indeed. We could never begin to imagine that people could have jobs like singnaling oncoming pedestrians. Or calling the train that leaves and arives, or the liftlady that explains in a few words what you can buy on every floor. In EVERY metro and trainstation, there are people employed to sell tickets, to check tickets, to be there for the travellers if they need any assistance. We saw workers on the street buzy with fixing a fence that wasn’t broken in the first place, okay; I always give both people and things the benefit of the doubt, but the next two days we saw the same worker sitting in fudosa on the street, ocasionally hammering the fence once or twice. Most of these street workers are old men, you’d think they are retired but apparently not,…

Despite all these efforts, there are still numerous people living their lives out on the streets. They gather together in the evening (I guess it’s for safety and comfort) to put up their cartboard boxes. In there they spend the nights. To see people having difficult lives is always hard to see and we can only be greatfull for all the chances that we got and opportunities that we took. Opportunists as we are. Where we see openings we hit the right spot. Even here you can draw parallels to your taijutsu. It’s a lifesaver!

Today I trained with Darren Horvath, he is huge! When he steps on your toki, you feel your foot getting crushed and then he’s still only using his big toe, hehehe! I really like the difficult partners. You can’t use brute strenght on them, because that will only beget you more violence than you wish for. So you have to be smart and adapt to their body’s in the best way possible. But adapting to someone is not always possible because your two body’s are just not compatible nor complementary sometimes.

This is where things like technique and skill will come in play. Also distance, balance, timing, rythm and the way of when and how you apply them (strategy).  But there’s also a limit to this. Strenght, speed and precision, are also important factors. Together with technique and skill (experience through training and/or real fights) will make someone invincible. If you increase one of these factors, it balances out one of the others. The odds of meeting someone who has all traits in huge abundance are relatively small. But in a dojo, the chances of this are radically higher when you train with higher grades. At this level, it’s hard to adapt even for a skilled warrior like me! There is always room for improvement, no matter at wich level you are. Chance comes into play, and one must make his own fortune, but that’s another story.

After Oguri sensei’s class, there was Soke’s class. I trained with Diana and we even got chosen to show our technique to class. That’s always exciting and exhilirating, but it has not always been this way. In the past I used to freeze up when there were people watching, but I came a long way and learned how to relax and just to be in the moment of ‘now’. The word ‘zanchin’ comes to mind. Generally, people have a short attention span, typically not exceeding ninety minutes, but you should train this to last longer: it has been known about Takamatsu sensei that he once fought for a few days in a row! Imagine yourself!

Soke said a whole lot of things, which are too many to touch upon in this post, but I’ll give you my interpretation of class. What we learn contains a whole range of other things. A technique contains many different layers and many possibilities are the outcome. You might even have hidden weapons or not, all depending on how much kyôjutsu you apply. Strategy is a very important aspect of ninjutsu. If this sounds vague, then know that the Japanese language is a very rich one, which encompasses many meanings with the same words. Even those with a thorough knowlegde of Japanese are often looking for comparisons that don’t exist.

Given this and the fact that Soke is not always so clearly ‘showing’ what just happened (when his uke is already down on the ground, suffering in pain and agony) it must become increasingly clear to you, that ‘transmission’ is not always a clearly outlined and structured path for you to copy and paste. Which by the way he doesn’t encourage because he always says: don’t try to copy me, try to remember the feeling of it.

At this point you should know that there is a funny thing about the human brain: it will tend to fill in the gaps itself. So in fact these gaps are your unique experience of the technique, and because everybody will have a differing understanding; every-body is behaving and moving in a different way. Although similar in a way, but not the same.

So it’s not only the physical part that I’m speaking about. I myself tend to lend scientific explanations and couple them with philosofical ones to draw paralelles between the physical and the metaphysical: It’s like the body is like a root. The more ‘techniques’ and ‘experience’ you have, the more you can adapt to the circumstances (environment) in wich you are planted. Your brain is like the top part of the plant that’s sticking out of the ground. The spirit is more like the interaction that the plant does, as this is the way of the plant: he has a role and it’s a part of a bigger cycle and ecosystem in which everything is connected. In return the plant gets what it needs to survive and thrive, depending on the quality of the soil (the basics), the amount of sunlight and water (your nurishment; the training). If there’s a slight windy gusp (an attack), you don’t get pulled out by it imediately because of your thorough rooting.

But words and actions are not sufficient enough to completely convey the exact thoughts and feelings that you have. Together they give an idear but nothing more.

Feelings tend to be hollistic, thoughts are rather rational. Together they form the make-up of your mind. But where do your thoughts and feelings stemm from? They stemm from something else. Some awareness that surpasses thought or consciousness. It’s this that is a challenging thought for people. Because here we are on the quantum level of thought where thinking conciously about something will change reality and in turn the way you act on it.

At this stage it’s a funny thing to know, that we have more nerves leading from the brain towards our senses than from our senses towards the brain. This means that we are conceptually designed in such a way that we actually have concious control over what information we want to percieve (choice) from our senses. That’s why we easely tend to pass judgement on wether we like the things we see or hear. We continiously conceptualize reality by rationalising it and passing judgment. So it’s your own interpretation and perception that interacts with your conciousness. But this is not per definition reality as it is.

The trick is not to think, not to think to perceive, stop rationalising, let things be, become peacefull and calm inside and project nothing. you’re like a dark mirror: the light shines in, but does not reflect. To put it in taijutsu: Uke acts, and because of this you have choices, but you don’t fall into the trap of his choises, instead you leave all options open and because of this you can move freely. Could this be ninpô?

We ate early and took the train to Noda. Today the stationary shop was open so we finally could buy some scrolls there. I trained with Dino, from Germany. So training was very good and fluid. Diana however got an injury from her partner because she was thrown badly and fell with her knee on her elbow. Her whole arm got bruised and according to Oguri sensei it was the bone.

Due to this we had to skip the second training with Oguri sensei, but we both needed the neccesary break: my knees were hurting. So instead of training physically, we deciphered a Japanese stone that said: “this is the end of the world and the beginning of another” (lit: this signpost marks the boundary between the land and the waterway) Well done! Two hours of brain training on the side of the road, in the mellow springtime sun.

Japanese language is really a puzzle. There are levels, keys, hidden meanings, combinations and treasures to be found. I’m surprized that there still hasn’t been made a 3D strategy game to learn the language. My understanding of it is nihil, but with the help of a small pocketbook and a palmtop dictionary (which is a dinosaur compared to the level of today’s pocket computing) you will get by pretty well.

After dinner (sushi again) we finally went to an onsen we were looking for since a few days. Diana had looked one up on the internet that was not too far off. On the way, we stopped by the Shibuya station. There stands the statue of Hachiko the dog. It’s very famous because it was erected in honnor of Hachiko, a dog who’s loyalty streched beyound the life of it’s master. Together they would walk up the station where Hachiko would linger and wait the whole day until his master returned from his job. Then he would pick him up and walk his master home. One day his master did not return. Even after his death, Hachiko would fatefully walk up to the station and wait for him even in the badest of all weather conditions. After Hachiko’s death, they laid him beside his master.

Every man has his breaking point, you and I have them. Well, I had reached mine. I cried and tears biggled down my cheeks as I thought about my own dog and how much I missed him and how much he must miss me. Every one leaves something behind, but to return home, we can only go forward. I can only hope that after the initial burst of happiness, I can explain my dog that I was not death, just on a long journey and still then: that he doesn’t remain wrathful too long for the feelings that he had to endure.

The onsen turned out to be a good choice; they had multiple baths, a jaccuzi and even a sauna. Outside there was a mixed bath, but there you would have to wear swimsuits. The Japanese handle explicit things like sex and erotica in a very strange way. The girls walk around in enticing and attracting mini-skirts, some even complete with jackboots (kaplaarzen). It’s very tempting, but don’t touch!

At the onsen, you would think it’s just like a mixed sauna, where no one is paying attention to the natural nakedness of the body, because your mind is not at the least bussy with these thoughts. But it’s not natural. Even here people can’t be themselves and they have to play along in the hyped up specialness of being naked, so you have to wear a bathing suit.

It’s like the Japanese are stuck in a victorian age. But hey,  no offence: I guess that’s their way of keeping a calm and a clear mind you know. Persides: my knowledge about those subjects is far from determinded. And since I’m not fatalistic or deterministic I doubt wether I will ever come to a ‘final’ or ‘complete’ understanding of things.

If we would want to buy some kakejiku’s (hanging scrolls) and still make it to Soke’s class, we would have to leave early enough so that the shops would still be open in Noda. We got there on time and searched for the shop. We had both asked different people where the shop was and then combined our intel together: how about that for ninjutsu, ha!

We finally located the shop,….it was closed however. Luckily we had somewhat foreseen this when we were in Asakusa and had bought us some A3 drawingpaper. So the shop was closed, fine, how about some food instead? We looked around for some other place and eventually found a nice restaurant where we could eat a nice soup with meat. Only problem here: we are veggy’s! So we ended up in Coco’s again. There we met up with some of the other buyu’s from all around the globe. We ordered pizza again and in the meanwhile we witnessed the signs of an ongrowing epidemic of the stomach flu; as many of the buyu’s crawld by in agony with their hands on their stomach and flailing their tongues and eyes. The toilet was a mess, even considering european standards.

Off to Soke’s class! Excitement sets in as the crowd gathers and they were many! (There are always a lot of people coming to soke’s class, so I guess we are one of the fewer people who actually try and train with some shihan too. We skipped some classes yeah,…too early for us meak body’s. The flesh is weak at seven in the morning sodesne? (especially when you write posts in the night, while you should be asleep).

Finally Soke come’s in and starts class. He spoke about a lot of things and concepts like that we have to learn how to lose and learn how to fight in a tight environment (like a battlefield, or just remember the ‘oh sooory’ shuriken in ninja’s head!) I could tell you what Soke said, but that doesn’t mean I can convey his meaning: that is what kuden is all about; oral transmission. You have to look at it from the right perspective: “out of first hand” so that the context is right for you. So remember when I speak about things that soke said; it’s always my own interpretation of it.

Soke’s trainings are more mental than physical. One of the factors is ofcourse that there are a lot of people training in the dojo. But in itself it’s just what he was stressing: you should not be affected by this. For myself it’s like the prime example of Buffu Ikan; the martial wind: When I’m training with a lot of people, it’s like there’s a typhoon going on and I am in the midst of it, in the eye of the storm. Yes, it’s a nice sensation, but don’t get carried away, sometimes you will bumb in to eachother at some time or another. So remember: when there’s no room to roll: then rock! (like on a ship)

After training we went straight home and fell asleep.

After an hour on the train we arrived at Kamakura temple complex. When you travel with your pasmo card, you pay per distance. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a Tokyo Free Kippu (ticket), this will get you anywhere on the Tokyo metro, JR lines and subway. For the rest, pay cash or pasmo.

On the train you’re not suppose to use your phone and you have to turn the silent mode on. In the proximity of the curtesy seats you even have to switch it off! We figured that the Japanese at least acknowlegde the dangers of their network for comuters with baby’s and old people with pacemakers. For the rest of the train, silent mode: you nearly see every Japanese sms’ing or chatting so imagine what a noisy chaos it would become if they all would talk and try to raise above the chaos of the other people also shouting on their phone in such a close environment!

At the entrance of the temple we bought some good fortune and figured out that we should wash our hands before we would go up the stairs.

I must say, it’s really impressive the beauty of it all. It’s kind of amazing to think that it was just a few hundred years ago that these temples were build. They are in such good shape that you can easely imagine that you’re way back into time. These temple complexes close at four o’clock so it’s nearly impossible to see them all; I guess we’ll have to come back sometime!

It was quite a change to be out of the the buzzy center town of Tokyo and to breath in fresh air. Just being amongst the trees and the bamboo brought a kind of inner rest and de-stresses the body. But not as good as an Onsen!

As we went on for the other temples in the neighbourhood we noticed a little shop on the other side of the village road. We went in with curiosity and came out with some nice things. We think we made a bargain, for those prices, you would wish that you had brought more money to spend on real nice stuff like these. I can’t understand why people buy plastic fake rubbish. It’s like buying a plastic toysword to practice kenjutsu with. There’s no authenticity in that.

Satisfied we walked down the street, took the train home. We went for a pizza and I ordered a big beer; I had failed to notice that a ‘pitcher’ (thats what they call them because Japanese love baseball) is a remarkable 1800cc ! Remarkable because the Japanese are notorious for being bad drinkers: they usually can’t take more than one good pint and they’re drunk. I didn’t expect to have such a Tamou beer but hey, it came in my size. The Japanese looked over their shoulders to see how a westerner bolsters this kind of exhiliration. They were visually surprized when I walked out straight and not zig-zagging.

We see drunk youth all the time. Often with their head preliminary and precausiously stuck in a plastic bag. You know: they might vomid and hoooo, then the street would get all messed up. We see that too, all dried up but it doesn’t stay long there, usually the next day, the street is clean again. We first tought that those kids were sniffing glue or something: but they’ll just overact: because that’s their culture. (Ofcourse: if you play sick, it doesn’t take long before your dinner is on the street sodesne?!) But when I first saw it, I was ready to jump in, and start a resucitation.

After we got home, unpacked our stuff, admired it and fell sound asleep.

Relaxed by a good night’s sleep we entered the dojo. The first training was given by Shiraishi sensei. He is really stressing basics and the way in which he teaches is that he lets you show the technique again and again, each time taking another uke from the crowd. He explains a lot of the underlining principles and actually makes you feel like there really is nothing special to it. That it is really possible for anyone to learn good taijutsu which is just the ability to move naturally. I made a lot of notes.

After this training we went to eat in the little restaurant and although we tried to ask for a rice dish we ended up with exactly the same food we had had the first time: ramen (noodle soup). Still no scrolls though (kakejiku).

Back to Honbu for another training. Nagato Sensei this time. He picked a few people to show a technique and then let us perform it. Then he added some improvements and variations. After training we met up with my friend from Germany; Cavin. He invited us for dinner at Coco’s: this is a nice place where you can get european food, like pizza, french fries, spagetti and risotto. For a unit price you can drink as much as you like from the drink bar, where you can order soda, coke, fruitjuices, coffee or thee.

Then back for the third training with Noguchi Sensei. We really enjoyed this training. It was a sweaty one and went by very fast because we were not concious of time anymore and I really also have to thank Cavin for that. Training with another uke is really important for your devellopment. And quite frankly; you don’t come all the way to Japan just to train with your regular companion, do you? Although it can be safer sometimes, (because you won’t kill eachother), to have a soft training when your muscles are sore.

This day really was a fruitfull one. We forgot about time and yesterday’s experiences were forgotten in the midst of so many good tidings. Tired but satisfied we came home and fell into a deeeeeep and looooong sleeeeeeeeep!