July 18, 2006

I’m in LOVE

Remember how I said I thought it was love? You know, me and my new weapon, the sai? Well, it is definitely love. I woke up bright and early this past weekend and attended a morning karate class. It was me and one other student. We worked on only weapons kata’s and it was a blast. I now have a good working knowledge of my new sai kata.

At one point in the kata, there is a move where you are standing on guard (for non-karate-ka’s, this means that you are standing upright with one sai in each hand. You are holding the handles and the blades are against your arms, somewhat obscuring them from view. The handles of the sai are creating a plus sign just out from your left hip bone). The next move has you step out into a deep right-foot forward seisan (think deep knee bend, sort of) and you make a throwing motion with the sai in your right hand, blade facing toward an attacker’s imaginary foot.

The next move has you pulling the sai back to the on-guard position again, followed by a step back and then you spear the would-be attacker with the sai in your right hand. It is wicked cool, the spearing part, but the confusing thing is this: why would you point a sai at someones foot and then pull it back and start over again?

This weekend I learned what it was all about. As the other student and I stood on guard, our instructor had us freeze. He retrieved two additional sai. He placed one securely in my belt with the blade facing down and did the same for the other student. We started from the on guard position, but this time we threw our sai at our would-be attackers foot. We then stood up into the on-guard position again. This time, we discreetly moved the other sai that was in our belt into our empty hand, stepped back and then speared our would-be attacker with our new sai.

Regarding my love for the new weapon. . . YOU HAD ME AT THE THIRD SAI! (Think Jerry Maguire.)

We also learned how to properly do the sabori at the end of the kata. Sabori is a term I first learned from John at Martial Views. Simply put, it is the symbolic cleaning off of the blood, etc. from the sai blades at the conclusion of the kata. It is important to do this right, because if it were real you certainly wouldn’t want to be splattering your opponent’s blood all over yourself. While I oohed and aahed over the kata, the little girl who was taking class with me squealed with disgust. She thought it was "gross." We are obviously at two very different places, which can probably be explained by the 20-something year age difference.

So, blood and gore aside, morning karate was refreshing. It was great to start the day with it as opposed to ending the day with it. I had much more energy; and I seem to have retained more of the kata. Of course, that could just be because I’m getting more familiar with the kata. But, I prefer to go with the "morning karate is good for me" theme. I do, after all, need to convince Mr. BBM that he likes being stuck with both of the kids by himself while I’m out there becoming a warrior.

Once my sai come in, I may attempt to video-tape a kata and post it. I think it would be beneficial for all the non-karate folk who frequent here and are probably wondering what the heck I’m talking about most of the time. (It would also probably provide a good laugh for all the karate authorities out there.) It all depends on how I look on film though, so the jury’s still out on that decision. Stay tuned. . .