I present the people who will be beating me up on a regular basis...

So the stocky, sweat drenched fella is Tatsuya-san, an extremely nice and cheerful gentleman who made it his mission in life to pound me into the ground when I lived in Fukuma 4 years ago. I swung by the dojo last Monday and lo and behold he was the only guy there lifting weights and working the bag... and after vainly struggling in my broken Japanese and his broken English to catch up, he proceeded to punch me in the face, kick me repeatedly in the legs and twist my joints in ways they were not meant to go.

Good times.

[Notes to self: Conditioning - gone. Strength - nonexistent. Flab - everywhere.]

Tatsuya and I actually worked together at the club I manned the door at when I was here last, the "Crazy Cock"... which is closed now, apparently. I did manage to translate that one of the guys we worked with, a Brit ex-pat, was busted running drugs [with the Chinese - I think - my Japanese bites hard] and is now serving 10 years up in Yokohama prison. Crazy stuff.

The gentleman enjoying his meal is Jon [and his lovely girlfriend, who's name escapes me at the moment - gomen nei]. Jon is a JET over in the Fukuma side of Fukutsu who actually lives in the same building Sandy and I used to. He's from Hawaii and has a background in Taekwondo, is extremely quick on his feet and kicks like a mule. On a side note, if he says one more time "Man, I'm outta shape..." as he dances circles around me peppering me with absurd kicks from outta nowhere, I may stab him.

By the way, when did a spinning back kick become an effective technique in real sparring? Never in my life had I been caught with that. Now, all the time.

Fuc*$%in TKD guys..

But Jon also has SkyPerfectTV, the satellite network here in Japan, which gets all the fighting events, so he's actually my new best friend, though he doesn't know it yet. Jon trains at the Real Lock gym, which is actually pretty close by, and I'ma drag him to the dojo at some point to see if he digs it there. His myspace page is here, btw.

So I'll probably be training at both places, and these are the folks [amongst others] who will be hurting me very badly. And very often.

I'm actually looking forward to it, which probably says all sorts of dysfuntional things about me...