Hello from Japan

Aikido, sightseeing, and living a happy life

Hello, I’m in Japan!

This is definitely the most intimidating and farthest trip I have ever done. I was in California and neighboring states for three months last year, which was a huge amount of distance covered and things to see, but it’s very different to be outside the country I have been in for 99+% of my life.

Some people ask me how I travel without being overwhelmed. “With great difficulty.” I absolutely get overwhelmed. I’m feeling overwhelmed right now.

We saw Sensei on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!

From about 2016-2020, I traveled all over the US three times per year to learn from Sensei at aikido camp. I’ve seen Sensei in Boston, Rochester, Rhode Island, NYC, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle, Oakland, Sunnyvale, and San Francisco. Many times, multiples of these cities in one trip. And now I’ve seen him in his home city, Nagoya, Japan.

Sensei is in his late eighties and still looking good, an inspiration for living a good life into old age. He talked about living a happy life.

“When is the most important time to be happy?” he asked me.

“In aikido?”

“No. If someone attacks you on the street.”

He also talked about the importance of being happy at work. Maybe “happy” does not fully describe what he was expressing, but having a positive, confident feeling, proceeding to do good with less anxiety and stress.

It’s a lesson I’m definitely still working on.

I haven’t done that much classic sightseeing yet, but I will do a bit on this trip. I was thinking about it, in my aikido travels I have been to Phoenix and Seattle but I saw very little of either city except for the dojo and the homes of our generous hosts. It feels like a location of “aikido.” I’ve helped host people too, cooked dinner and offered a couch or a bed and driven people to the dojo.

I have seen some interesting things so far other than aikido.

Only a few blocks from where we’re staying, there’s a huge Buddha. I mean really large. The sculpture is surrounded by life-size elephant sculptures that only barely reach up to the knees of the seated figure. The marble path around the base is to walk around. This is surrounded by lovely Japanese maples and a bamboo forest. The bamboo rattles when the wind blows.

We have a neighborhood onigiri (rice ball) shop. Nori, or seaweed is wrapped around rice which is wrapped around a filling like an ume plum or miso and green onions. Very delicious. 10/10.

I bought some fruit (oranges and kiwis) at a greengrocer. When I paid, the person counted up the cost of my items on an abacus, giving me a running total in Japanese, “roku ju,” etc. I can recognize that the words are numbers but I can’t keep up with the math. I am still pretty bad at figuring out yen to dollars, to know if something is a good value.

A lot of people walk around in our neighborhood in Nagoya. It has a different vibe than cities in the US. People look like they feel safe and confident. I haven’t seen someone crossing the street to avoid someone. People don’t interact with strangers, but they also don’t look around with fear and discomfort.

We are planning to visit Kyoto and Nara this week. I’ll keep you posted!

Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Take care,

Rey