Update from us

As usual, it's been a while since we posted anything on the bandwagon, so I thought I'd give a bit of an update. This week has could have best been described as Hellishly busy. After a few weeks of not much going on at work, suddenly a client came to us with a massive job and a really tight deadline.. today being said deadline, and I'm writing this over my lunchbreak while awaiting any more feedback from them. Unfortunately, this was also the week in which I've got two Iaido demos.. one on Sunday, and the other yesterday afternoon. This basically meant that the last few days I've been starting around 6 or 7am so I can get the work done and also so I could leave early Wednesday for the demo. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the sum result is I'm pretty tired :)

So the demos. Yesterday afternoon Takeo and I were at a big park in Adelaide for a half hour or so. We did some kata together, then faced off against each other with Takeo attacking and me defending.. then we did five each alone (we were clapped at the end!) and finished with some bamboo cutting. The crowd actually built up to be pretty large. Cheryl has posted photos, and I'll chuck a couple in here.. you can see it's fairly sparse in the first one, but by the end there's people behind us watching as well. The demo Sunday should be a bit less stress.. it's just for my Dojo in Reynella, so myself and a couple of students will do about 3 kata each and that will be all.

If you want to see all the photos you can see them here.

We hung around at the Moon Lantern Festival after the demo to eat some delicious Korean food and watch a few of the shows on the main stage. Oscar also tasted his first ice-cream.. which was Cheryl's ice-cream, but he didn't want to share ;) We got it off him when we offered him a banana instead.. he loves his fruit!

Oscar is growing up so quickly and learning a lot. He's gradually adding more words, some from us (like "nan" and "up") and some from childcare (like "ta" and "more") and some he just seems to pick up himself. He started saying "nose", "mouth" and his favourite "eye" suddenly one day. He really likes to mimic us too.. sometimes you wont realise you're doing something (like scratching the top of your head) until you see Os doing it too.

He's becoming much better at feeding himself.. some foods are easier than others of course, but he loves using a spoon, fork and knife when he can. He also loves reading books.. I think that's his favourite quiet time activity. Sometimes he'll even sit down and look through the books himself. We play a lot, he loves chasing and hiding games, and really likes exploring outside. He can get a bit quiet and shy with new people, but I reckon it takes about 20 minutes for him to get used to them (and it took about 2 minutes with Sam :))

We're looking forward to seeing Mum and Nana next week, even if there is a fair bit of cleaning the house still to be done. I'm getting Wednesday and Thursday off work (which I appreciate even more after this week) and then Friday Cheryl and I will go out for a few drinks with friends to celebrate my birthday. Gotta make the most of the experienced babysitters :) Monday is a public holiday too! It's going to be a good week :)

Hmm.. I think that's it from me. Hopefully Cheryl can pop on and say how her work is going, and anything I might have forgotten. I'd better get back to work!

Tees, Teeth and Tsuka

Dayna said we need to get the old bandwagon a-rolling along again, so I thought I'd give a quick update on what I've been doing for the last few weeks.

Last Saturday I had a tee up on TeeFury. My previous tee, Oh The Humanity, had sold just over 500.. of which I get a dollar for each.. so I was hoping for something similar. This time around it was my Flight of the Conchords tee, and I sold over 1100! It was quite a shock.

As it turns out, I wont be splurging on some awesome holiday just yet.. Last week a tooth that has been going downhill for a while started really hurting. On the other side I had another tooth that had a chip out of it.. which meant for a week I was unable to eat on either side of my mouth. On Tuesday I had the bad tooth out, and having seen it I can say it's better to be gone. Then on Saturday I finally got the other one filled. Dental work is sadly quite expensive, so that was the end of my big profits.. the rest is going to stay in the bank for a while.

Today I had my Iaido grading (if you haven't seen the site, go and check it out - I built it over about 4 months). The grade was "San Dan Ho" or provisional third dan.. basically each dan grade takes two years to achieve, so next year I'll have my third dan grading. It was pretty hard, but I think I've passed.

Also on the topic of Iaido, I'm opening a dojo in Reynella. I'll be borrowing equipment from the Honbu, and the hall hire is cheap enough that I just need two ongoing students to pay the rent. It will be interesting to see how it goes, anyway, and see if there's an interest for it in the southern suburbs. It'll open at the end of April, after school holidays.

That's about it from me. Maybe if we can get updates from Lisa or Glenn I can write one about the Adelaide Mason you're all really interested in, my man Oscar :)

Blue-eyed future Sword Saint ;)

Just a quick update from us.

Oscar has calmed down a lot - he's on Losec for his reflux - the Mylanta we had him on previously wasn't doing the trick. It does help, although sometimes it can still be difficult getting him to sleep.. but he's not awake every 45 minutes all day and night now, so it's a big plus. We're hoping once he reaches that 6 month point we wont need to give him the medication.. often that's when it settles down anyway.

Cheryl had her shopping day in Melbourne on Saturday (for our anniversary I got her a return ticket).. she spent most of her time (and money) at the DFO at Southern Cross Station, definitely worth a look if you're ever visiting the rainy city. I looked after Oscar for the day.. from 5am when Cheryl left until 9pm when she returned. Thankfully now he's got his medication he was much more relaxed and actually managed a few hours of sleep in there.

The other thing that helped keep me sane over the day was my new iPhone - Cheryl's anniversary present to me.. well, a combination of Cheryl and Kevin Rudd really. I was able to hold Oscar and still surf the net or play games I had downloaded. It was much better than my previous method of passing the time - staring into space :)

This morning we all headed to Goodwood for Iaido, because we had the Grading Certificate Presentations. I am now officially Ni-Dan, which makes me a sensei and also meant I got an art name - a name specific to the style to represent me. My name is "Go Seki".. the "Go" part is from Shihan's art name (Go Ho) and indicates that we have come from the Australian school.. and the "Seki" part means "stone" or "rock".. which was Shihan's (and the Grandmaster's) opinion of me I guess. I hope it's solid as a rock, and not rock-headed ;)

Oh, and finally there's a few more photos of Oscar up - http://www.flickr.com/photos/damienmason/3495448177/in/set-72157613379231082/ Cheryl took some fantastic shots, and I think it's pretty safe to say Oscar's eyes will be staying blue now :)

Japan Photos

Ok, we've uploaded the first set of our photos from Japan. You can see them here. We're limited to 100MB per month, so we'll have to upload the other half in November :)

Japan trip

Ok, it's only two weeks until we go to Japan, we're getting ourselved organised (Cheryl got some yen today) and finalising everything, so I thought I might post our itinerary for you guys. The first week we're travelling with 25 other people from the SA and New Zealand dojos. We're flying out on Friday 12th on the 11:55am plane from Adelaide, arriving at Changi at 5:50pm. Then at 1am we leave Changi, arriving at Nagoya at 8:35am on Saturday morning.
After we've dropped out stuff off at the hotel, we're heading into Nagoya to see the Tokugawa museum. There's also a festival on in Nagoya, so we'll wander around that for a while.

On Sunday we're leaving at 8am to bus to Seki City. It's an area famous for it's blades.. it used to be swords, but now it's kitchen knives and the like as well. I'll be buying a sword there (I've pre-ordered one) and we have tameshigiri (bamboo-cutting) lessons. The guy teaching us apparently usually just does demos, so that should be really good. We're having lunch at a place famous for it's grilled eel, which Cheryl is very happy to hear. Then that evening we're training at the head dojo (which is a shrine) and meeting the Grand Master himself for dinner.

On Monday, again at 8am, we're catching the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Nagoya to Kyoto. Kyoto is the original capital of Japan, and so there should be some great old buildings to see. That evening we then train to Himeji city and check into a hotel there.

Tuesday we're touring Himeji castle and doing some sword classes on the lawn outside the castle. We had to get permission from the government to be able to do that, but because Himeji is a sister city to Adelaide and we're taking a letter from the Mayor to give to the officials there I guess we get special treatment. That afternoon we'll be going to a Zen temple to do meditation for an hour or so.

Wednesday we head to Hiroshima, to see Miyajima Island and the atomic bomb museum. Miyajima is a sacred island and used to be worshipped itself as a god. It's apparently an incredibly beautiful place, so it'll be great to see it.

Thursday we head to Kumamoto. We'll see Kumamoto castle, and also the cave where Miyamoto Musashi lived for several of his later years. He was a famous swordsman of the 1500s who was apparently undefeated, retired from fighting in his 30s to live at Kumamoto Castle, and then moved to the cave in his 50s and wrote his famous book, The Book of Five Rings. I'm really looking forward to seeing the cave, although we have to walk up a mountain to get there

Friday we head to Okayama, which is a sister state to South Australia. We have a letter from the Premier to present to the officials there. We'll also see traditional sword smithing, and have dinner with the Okayama Friendship Society.

On Saturday we're going to the Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei, it's basically a big Kendo grading for all of Japan. We're doing a demo there for some insane reason, a group of Westerners showing Japanese swordsmen how good we are. No pressure. The we have a bit of time in an Edo period heritage town called Kurashiki.

On Sunday we seperate with the rest of the travellers, and make our way by Shinkansen to Tokyo. Our plans for this week aren't as definite, but we've got a few things we'd like to do. Sunday we'll drop our stuff off at the Ryukan (a traditional Japanese hotel with a futon, tatami mats on the floor, that kind of thing) and then either head off shopping or maybe just relax.

Monday we might check out the fish markets in the morning for fresh sushi, and then we're planning on heading to Kamakura. There's a famous giant buddha statue there, as well as a shrine to Hachiman, the Japanese god of war. It's apparently a more peaceful place, quite the contrast from Tokyo. I think it will be good to relax a little after the fast pace of the first week.

Tuesday we're heading north to Sendai, about 2 hours from the centre of Tokyo. There we'll be meeting Cheryl's pen pal Yuko and her husband Akira. We're staying at a Ryukan with hot springs there, another very relaxing time I think.

Wednesday we'll head back to Tokyo, and maybe check out one of the shopping districts. It depends on how long we spend in Sendai of course, and we're not completely sure what we'll be doing while we're there.

Thursday hopefully we'll go to the Ghibli museum. You have to book the tickets outside of Japan, and it's very popular, so it will depend on whether we can get tickets.. we'll find that out in the next couple of days. Studio Ghibli are an anime production company similar to Disney maybe? They do a lot of fantastic kids films, you might have seen Spirited Away or Howl's Moving Castle. It looks like the coolest museum.. it's got a cinema with three films unreleased outside the museum, and statues and all that, plus a rooftop garden.

Friday will be our real big shopping day. There's a 7 story shopping centre Cheryl wants to check out, and I suspect we'll easily spend the whole day there. It's probably best to have this day later in the week so we're not hauling around heaps of souvenirs as we go. Friday night we'll check into a hotel at Narita airport.

Saturday we fly out at 11:30am, arriving in Changi at 5:35pm. If we still have any money or energy left by then no doubt we'll do some shopping at Changi too, since we have 6 hours there before flying out at 11:45pm. Changi has cinemas, restaurants, it's a massive airport.

And then we arrive back in Adelaide on Sunday 28th, at 7:45 am.

Sword arts and Illustration

I had my Shodan grading last night. I think I went ok - Shihan picked me up on a couple of small things, but some students got a half hour talking to after their grading, so i think anything less that that is a plus. He kind of threw me - I had trained for 8 kata, and after I did those he asked for another one which I hadn't been practicing. No idea how I did with that one :S
I've also started a new blog (shhh.. don't tell the family bandwagon blog).. it's on blogger as well, and it's somewhere for me to post illustrations that I've done. I'm hoping to get the occasional comment for stuff I put up. You can see it here. I'll keep posting my old work on there as well until I run out :)
In health news I've had a cold for the last four or five days, but it seems to be improving. Cheryl didn't catch it although I don't know how. Unfortunately last night my tooth started to hurt, and so I have slept very little.. I'm hoping to see a dentist today. As soon as possible.
So there you have it - the three pillars of a post from Damien. Achievement, Inspiration, and Tragedy.
;)