Kankeri Japan

[boyle]

hey TJ, it was great to meet you and Kenzo at Worlds, congrats on your top score at worlds. I will have to make it up to Japan sometime in the near future.

[rSSn]

Hey TJ, I read the report on Worlds' - SICK! I hope to join the party someday as well, would be incredible.

Still hooked on footbag, still practicing alone but gradually improving my form/stamina, and some 3-adds stuff.

Best of luck with everything, I hope to actually shred with you in the future - it's all thanks to you dude! Keep kicking!

How is Kankeri doing lately?

[Tjuggles]

Andrew!

Good to hear from you man. Great to see you are still kicking. I hope that bag is doing you well, or did you well. I know it wasn't the best bag...

Thanks for the props about worlds, although I didn't really do anything special.

Kankeri is good. Kenzo took first at the Japan Nationals... which is sweet! He has been kicking hard lately, and it showed at the tourney. I have been busy and haven't been kicking as much, but now that the tourney is over, I have time to go concentrate on my weak areas and improve those. That is the most important thing to me right now.

Look forward to seeing some vids from you in the NEAR future. I hope you are drilling the basics BEFORE you start doing guiltless. If you don't, it will come back and haunt you.

If you didn't know, Kankeri has a site

www.kankeri.org

Peace,

[Tjuggles]

Hi,

I check modified at least once a day, but never post anything.

From about October of 2011 to March 2012, I took a break from footbag. I had been playing just anywhere from 3 times a week to everyday, but I felt like I plateaued. I also felt like I wasn't practicing correctly, but because I had been in the groove for so long, I couldn't change it. That is one of the reasons I decided to give it a break. Another reason was because I felt like I wasn't in control of my need to play footbag. I mean, I would feel bad if I didn't kick almost everyday, and I didn't like that. I wanted to know that I was still in control of my love for footbag. It turns out that I was. Good.

I am still only playing maybe once a week, and I have a lot of problems to fix. I am looking forward to fixing them, although I am worried that it will be more and more difficult to play. My girlfriend is living with me, but she has no job and is not Japanese, so I am the one who has to do the work and find her a job. On top of that, work is busy, although in about 3 weeks I will be on break. Also, I recently got accepted to do a PhD in Wellington, NZ, so I have been studying a lot and trying to get myself ready for that. My gf will also be going down there with me and she will be applying to do a Master's.

As far as tourneys go, I really miss them. I miss worlds. I miss all of you. I won't be able to attend worlds this year either, which sucks. I'm not sure what my schedule will be like next year, but I will be a long way from everything, and studying, so it might be difficult to make it out.

I have, however, been juggling a lot. Yesterday I got 120 catches of 5-ball cascade. I have also been working on 4-ball mills mess. Juggling is a lot of fun, and even easier to do than footbag.

As far as the near future, I hope to start exercising again, as well as shredding at least 3 times a week. Summer vacation is just around the corner, and I would like to be in good shape for the Japan championships, as this will be my last for a while.

[Muffinman]

Nice.
I look forward to reading more.
I was always a fan of your blog and videos.
Also, good luck with your PhD. What's your focus?

[C-Fan]

Yeah, thanks for the update. Wellington NZ! It's a great town. I really wanted to live there after Japan, so I'm a bit jealous. I don't think the scene there is very active anymore, but maybe you can revive it.

Good luck at Japanese champs.

[Tjuggles]

Muffin: Thanks for the kind words. I would like to get back into it, and I believe that posting here and shredding are positively correlated. My PhD focus is going to be in applied linguistics. I will be looking at extensive reading and productive vocabulary.

Ken: Thanks for posting. Everyone I talk to that has been there says it's great. I am really looking forward to it. I hope that I can find some people (or recruit) to shred with. Phil is so close, but yet so far, being on the other island...

No footbag today, but I have been thinking about it a lot. I need to get a few things done and out of the way (work-related and research-related) before I can put more time towards shredding.

[boyle]

It is not too expensive to fly around NZ (or from NZ to SE Asia, Australia etc) these days.

I think Adrian Dick and a couple of others are still around in Wellington, and though I don't think they kick very often, they could always be keen to revive things.

You could also pop on over to South America where the scene is beginning to grow a little.

Great to hear you are still playing, I also wish I could go to Worlds this year.

[Tjuggles]

Hey Dan,

That's good to know about cheap flights in and around NZ. I'm not sure how busy I will be with my PhD, but I would love to travel around and, more importantly, kick with people.

I will be sure to contact Adrian et al. about getting together. I wonder if any of them are on modified?

[C-Fan]

I think Adrian lurks on modified; you see the occasional comment. Last I heard from him, he was in Auckland though. Pretty sure Johnny Murphy is in Vietnam still. Your best bet for Wellington footbag would be sending Floyd Morgan an email, and asking him where everybody is. I wouldn't be surprised if Liam Johnston or Ben Spink McCarthy are in the area...either Wellington proper or Palmerston North. John Kingi might be there too. Start by contacting Floyd though. I believe he uses morgan dot floyd at gmail.

[Tjuggles]

Ken: Thanks a lot for the info. I will contact him for sure. I hope there are some people who will want to get together down there.

Still no footbag for me, but two things:

1. In jugging news, I got 37 catches of 4-ball mills mess.
2. Whenever I can't sleep at night, instead of counting sheep, I imagine myself shredding.

The school semester finishes in 1.5 weeks. That means I have a lot of papers to grade, but then I will pretty much be free for about 2 months, minus a camp that I have to do (which conflicts with worlds, which is why I haven't been able to attend). I can't wait to get into it again.

[Adam]

Bump!

Was reading through this blog tonight and it brought back lots of things I'd forgotten.
This quote (of a quote) made me laugh again:

I was still becoming aware of my surroundings. I had been deep in the non-material and was not even sure what century it was. I reached into my pockets to see if I could find my ID, but I found my pockets were empty. I must have put on a pair of pants from a previous day. The officer said with some urgency, "Take your hands out of your pockets."

Kenzo, TJ and I are having a session tomorrow in Kobe near the harbor. We've been getting together there to kick at least once a month. Looking forward to going to our usual bar afterwards where we can enjoy Mexican food and drinks. I should do a writeup when I get back.

[Tjuggles]

Looking forward to getting together in a couple hours. Also, good to see you still posting here!

[Tjuggles]

We just finished and are eating delicious tacos.

Here are some highlights:

TJ:
Vortex > rip walk > Bsos
Rubberman
Vertigo > p torque
Ripped warrior x 2
Flip marius (first time?)

5-ball reverse cascade - 45 catches

Adam:
Gyro mirage>dimwalk rpt.
Pixie pickup x 2
Vortex bs
Tombstone
Stepping same mirage > tap down

Kenzo:
Torque > spinning osis > rpt
Ripped warrior Bsos
Stepping same mirAge > tap down > rip walk > rpt

[Adam]

On December 16, 2007 I posted in this blog that I hit the following drills during a session:

whirl>pdx whirl (rpt.)
whirl>drifter (rpt.)
sidewalk>ripwalk (rpt.)
barfly>whirl (rpt.)
magellan>pixie ss mirage (rpt.)
magellan>plo (rpt.)
ducking clip>ducking osis (rpt.)
pdx whirl>spinning clip (rpt.)
ripwalk>diving clip (rpt.)

TJ challenged me to do these again, so I decided to film them all today:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kNTxqtJkjw&feature=plcp[/youtube]

None of them were terribly hard for me, but I felt some were a bit sloppy. I don't like doing barflies now because that is the trick that I twisted my ankle on last year.

In other news, my wife Kaori and I are expecting a baby girl around the end of October. We've been going to a smaller obstetrics clinic, but the doctor told us today that the baby recently doesn't appear to be growing as much as she should. She's over 2 kilos already, so she's within the safe range, but she should have been getting bigger and bigger over the last few weeks. We don't know why this is happening. The doctor recommended us to a larger hospital—Kyoto University Hospital—to do more detailed tests. Kaori and I are going to the new hospital next morning and while I'm not really worried, I do feel some anxiety, which mainly stems from a lack of certainty. I'm trying to accept the uncertainty with as much equanimity as I can. My footbag session today did help to relieve some of the tension.

[Tjuggles]

Great stuff Adam! I'm glad to see you can still hit them.

Also, with barfly, maybe practicing out to in datw would help you get over the fear and lessen your chances of another sprain?

I will edit the video I took soon and post it, so stay tuned.

[C-Fan]

Nice video Adam, good form on the drills. Also sweet tombstone.

Crossing my fingers on your wife's pregnancy. I'm glad footbag has helped with stress relief.

[boyle]

Good luck with the baby, hope everything goes fine. Nice work with the drills, a few ideas I hadn't thought of.

[Adam]

Ken and Daniel: Thank you for the comments and encouragement. It's good to know that some people are interested in this blog.

About the baby: We went to Kyoto University Hospital on Monday and had the regular ultrasound scan. At this stage it's hard to get a reliable measurement of the baby's size, but the doctor told us that the baby had grown about 200 grams! And that's in only two days! So right now we are at around 2400 grams and still have three weeks to go, which is completely within the normal range. It was important for us to see that the baby was still able to grow, because they might have had to take her out early if she had stopped growing—sometimes being in the mother's womb can actually hinder the baby's growth. We're going in again tomorrow so I'll keep everyone posted.

In footbag news, TJ and I had a session at Otani on Tuesday. We played near the main hall there, which has a slate surface that I kind of like, even though it is slightly uneven. Most of the campus at Otani is covered in brick, but in many places it looks like the brick has just been laid down without making any attempt to level the ground beforehand. I like to play on brick too, but there are surprisingly few even spaces on campus. The campus at Kyoto University is much better in this regard.

We played for a good two hours or so. Classes are in session, so there were lots of students passing by. Some people seemed to show some interest, but no one tried to approach us. In Japan I find that I am rarely approached by younger people when playing—it's usually middle-aged people who ask me about what I'm doing. Especially when people see two advanced players in the middle of an intense session I think it would be hard to approach as an outsider.

After kicking we were going to go to a Nepali restaurant nearby but found it to be closed. We opted for a sushi place instead, which wasn't that bad, although they served sushi rolls more than actual raw fish.

Below are some of my highlights and personal notes:
• motion: I'd never really tried this before, but it was much easier than I thought.
• smear > atom smasher: TJ challenged me to this. I don't do atomics as much as I should, especially on my flip, so I was only able to hit this on one side.
• longish run ending in spinning pdx whirl.
• TJ was saying the same thing, but I think that greater flexibility would improve my game. My range of motion when turning the knee inwards toward my center line is particularly bad. Eggbeater-like dexes are fine for me, but blurry-type dexes have always been much harder because of this. I will incorporate more stretching into my sessions to try to remedy this.
• In addition to more flexibility, I think that shaving off some extra weight and strengthening my core would also help—I guess this would be true for most players though.

[Adam]

Had a fun session at campus (Kyoto University) today after our Avestan study group. I warmed up with some kicks and basic stalls and then spent about 15 minutes stretching, mostly loosening up my hips as much as possible. Stretching like this makes my sessions go over an hour, but I feel that the increased flexibility makes everything I try much easier. It's getting cooler, but I still sweat like crazy today.

I was practicing something that the players here have been doing called 1212. Zen came up with the idea—you do a string of 12 tricks, all unique, and all tricks must be performed on both sides. I filmed an "extended" 1212 during my session today before I had carefully checked the rules. Here are the tricks I did:

• phoenix > pdx mirage rpt.
• dimwalk
• sidewalk > ripwalk rpt.
• whirl > drifter rpt.

As you can see, the dimwalk is only on one side. I use it to link to the other drills, but I think it's cheating a bit maybe. Nevertheless, I hit the string on my first attempt and thought my form was good, so I decided to keep this as an "extended" 1212 drill.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y7Q6tTU ... ature=plcp[/youtube]