2025 Japan: Ending And Beginnings

During our most recent training trip to Japan near the end of our time, our Headmaster made an announcement:  He was thinking of not going back to where we had done our training for many years and training only in the Tokyo region.  

The statement itself was surprising and even a little shocking - training at that site had been going on for well over twenty years.  After a few moments of silence, we all nodded in acceptance - he is the Headmaster and will only, ever, do things that he feels will improve the art.

It is certainly not as if training in Tokyo is some kind of burden.  Access to the hotel we stay at is much more convenient, anywhere from 20 minutes to 90 minutes depending on if you fly into Haneda or Narita.  The hotel is does everything it needs to - and honestly this period in my life, a regular mattress instead of a tatami mat is welcome.  There are several facilities we can train at, and it certainly much easier to take occasional half day we get during the visit to go see something or go shopping.

Still, things will never be the same.

I am not quite sure when I first knew there was training in Japan - maybe 2014 or 2015.  My sensei attended his first training there in 2016.  I intended to go in 2017, but life (e.g., Nighean Gheal's college) got in the way of spending money on what was not a critical item.  But I finally went in 2018, followed then by 2019 and 2020.  Our first return after The Plague was 2024 and then, of course this most recent trip in 2025.

The first trip - like most first trips - could never be replicated.  I had not been to Japan for over 20 years that first time, and certainly not for a specific task, only a tourist.  Everything - the housing, the food, the very nature of training, the drink machines with their hot and cold drinks, even the showers (I did not use the ofuro, the hot soaking pool, the first year because single sex showers, let alone showering with anyone else in the vicinity, was something I had successfully avoided for the most part growing up.  That second year when I found the restorative powers of hot water, I never looked back.) was new and exciting.

I was exhausted when I came home. It was magical.

There is a rhythm that develops when one was there.  In the past, it had been referred to as "prison camp" training.  And in a way, it could be considered that:  we rose early and trained hard.  We ate, showered, and to a large extent relaxed with each other in a group.  Going outside, even outside the facility and the parking lot, was something that not many people always did, let alone walk to the town that was maybe a quarter of a mile away.  Yes, we were often exhausted but there was also an element of not having the time to do so - and, I suspect, an element of missing out on being with the group.

The being with group, I have realized, is one of the most ephemeral things about the training. It was never something that was discussed, and I suspect many if not most of us could enunciate it as such.  But there was shared experience in meeting these people, spending time with them (we are from all over the world), united by our training and our Headmaster.  In a way, it became much like a family reunion, seeing people once a year that you shared a specific sort of relationship with.

And just like that, it seems it will be suddenly gone.

It is not as if any of that ends, of course.  We will continue to gather each year for training.  The place we stay will be different, the training facilities will be different, but the training will remain the same - I am sure the fact that we are somewhere else will not change the nature or the intensity of the training.  

And yet, something has passed which likely will not come again.

I have mentioned more than once the moments of kairos in our lives, that ancient Greek term meaning the specific or particular moment in time (as opposed to kronos, which is simply time passing).  Training at our facility was inevitably a kairos series of moments.  Likewise, the moment we found out that everything was changing was another one.

I have also mentioned more than once that the older I get, the more I realize that life is just as much a series of last things as it is first things, that if we are not careful we do not realize that things have passed until they are long gone:  the last time we went out to play with our friends, the last time we dropped a child off at their school, the last time we talked to our parents, the last day of seeing friends at a job before the layoff.

I try to be conscious of these moments more often. This one, however, caught me off guard.

Right up to that discussion, there was no reason to question that next year would be as the year past.  We could look forward to the same rooms, the same sorts of food, the same times and types of training, the same showers, the same training facilities.  In a way, we would train much more like typical Japanese students than most foreigners.

And suddenly, all that had happened for the last time.

We will gather in Tokyo next year and hopefully for many years after that, seeing familiar faces and greeting new ones.  There will of course be the adjustment of spending the whole time in Shinagawa:  where to eat (with no more cafeteria, we will have to choose our restaurants in the area; fortunately there are many), how we connect (without a common area, the tendency is to spend more time in your room), using the indoor hot baths and spa (which are reasonable and amazing).  My ability to use the Japanese train system confidently will continue to grow.

And yet...

And yet with all of this, there will come a new generation to whom the previous training facility will only be a story, to pass into the sort of legendary status that such things always do.  Less and less people will have direct knowledge or experience with it.  The stories will begin to start with "Once, when we were there..." rather than "When you go there next year....".

Such is the nature of life.

Someday - if I ever get the ability to go to Japan as a tourist and not as a student - I intend to take the 90 minute train ride from Tokyo to the coast - I can navigate it myself now, I have done it a number of times.  And I may walk from the town to the training center - but I will just as equally walk through the town to the sea shore and the beach that I always saw in the distance but never had time to reach when I was there to train.

Sometimes it is not that things are lost to us in those moments.  Sometimes it is just that we will come to experience and see them in different ways.  And, of course, without something old ending, something new cannot come into being.

And, perhaps in some small way, knowing that participating there in training is an ending and will in some way pass into a new thing in the myth and lore of the school.  

To figure in a myth; that is no small thing.