Friends - I have returned. On the whole no worse for wear, other than a rather long last day of travel (30 hours awake total, about 24 hours of travel time).
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| Main Dojo - Katsuura Training Center |
How was training? It was good - good to see everyone, good to see our headmaster, good to be back in training, good to be back in Japan.
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| Sunset over Katssura, looking West |
Did I get any corrections? Oh, basically a boatload of things I will need to work on so that the next time I see our headmaster, I will get new corrections to work on (this is the goal, of course - to get new corrections when you see him, not the same corrections).
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| Katsuura - More or less the same view as above |
Did I have any breakthroughs? I did, or at least I perceive that I did. I need to take a little more time and writing and thought to work through them, but I think some progress was made.
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| Traditional Soba - Tokyo |
Did I have a good time otherwise? I did. We got to do a bit more sightseeing than we have in years past, so I have some actually just "pictures" to show you, not lots of pictures of food from the training center and pictures of the training center.
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| Sunrise over Tokyo |
How is the job search going? Slowly pushing along and worthy of a longer post. The short version is that I have multi-person interviews with two companies this week for which your prayers and good thoughts are asked for. If I am understanding things correctly, this is the second part of each of these processes. If successful here, likely there would be a third step involved as an on-site interview. The interview from the week before I left has returned no results and, given the current situation of these interviews, something I am happen to slow roll.
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Yasukuni Shrine - Tokyo
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Did I miss being out of circulation for a week and a half? Not at all. Except for one accidental update, I followed absolutely none of the insanity that passes for the news at the moment. Oddly enough, my life was no worse for not being informed of anything.
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Mos Burger Cheeseburger meal
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Do I have any more clarity than when I left? Yes and no. I am much clearer that
Iaijutsu is a critical thing in my life and something that I need to continue to press into (as if swordsmanship somehow improves anything about the world now). How I am going to do that impinges both on my continuing job search as well as what I might have to do in the event I am no-where without a dojo.
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| Sengaku-ji - Tokyo. View of the main temple. |
Did I miss all of you? Of course I did. Thank you, as always, for your kind management of your conversation. I checked in briefly on comments, but I cannot tell you how much of a relief it is as a blog owner to be able to leave knowing I will not come back to the comments section "on fire", as it were.
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| Graves of the 47 Ronin - Sengaku-ji, Tokyo |
Am I glad I went? Of course. But it is always good to come back home.
Welcome back! Sounds like it was an excellent trip. Continued prayers from me for your upcoming interviews.
ReplyDeleteThank you Leigh! It was a good trip. And the prayers are much appreciated.
DeleteWelcome back indeed! And thanks for the work answering all the comments for the last week TB. Two days ago I saw where the Tokyo area was forecast for 15 inches of snow, yipes! Looking forward to hearing more about this visit.........much moar!
ReplyDeleteThank you Nylon12! Yup, the day it was snowing was the day we left. It did not impact us as we got to the airport early, but the news was playing pictures of the snow by the time we were getting ready to board.
DeleteWelcome back!
ReplyDeleteYou already know this, but that is a lot of travel and a lot of time zones.
Maybe it's true that swordsmanship doesn't directly improve anything in the world.
But it's important to you, it improves you, and that is a big deal.
Continued good wishes in El Serche de Jobe. (pronounced El-Search-A-day-job-A) and as you already figured out, I made it up.
Thanks John. My sleep pattern is not quite cooperating but hopefully things will be back to "normal" soon.
DeleteSwordsmanship certainly has made me a better human being.
Thanks for the good wishes. Hopefully something to report soon.
I used to scoff at people who had a hard time readjusting to the 12 to 13 hour time zone difference and chalked it down as a lack of willpower. But my last trip, especially the coming back legs, really knocked me hard and it took me a full week to reach some resemblance of normal. Hopefully you aren't that bad.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back and I'll keep you in my prayers for your upcoming interviews.
Ed, for me it does seem to be an age related thing. It can easily be a week for me (for some reason, arriving in Greece was terrible). I cannot tell at the moment if this is jet lag or just my normal horrible sleep pattern reasserting itself.
DeleteThanks for the welcome back and the prayers!
I was following your blog when Blogger started double and triple-posting all my comments last year. I have a new account, hoping this works better. Welcome back, as everyone has said! I think swordsmanship must teach you many things that are directly applicable to dealing with people, even if not in a combat situation.
ReplyDeleteHi H_H! Sorry that Blogger started "helping"; it seems prone to that.
DeleteThanks so much for the welcome back. Swordsmanship really has taught me a great deal about life, introspectively as well as dealing with situations in general.
I'm more than a week late, TB, but it was good to read about your trip. FWIW, I would think a discipline like Iaijutsu would be very grounding - in life in general, but maybe especially so when faced with so much unknown.
ReplyDeleteBecki, I think that is why I have stuck with it all these years. It is grounding - grounded in tradition of course, but also in life lessons and discipline.
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