My body-clock is completely out of whack so I am wide awake at 4am having had only a few short cat-naps. The telly has nothing I can understand on it, no English channels, so I end up mindlessly watching local news and weather. More news about the approaching typhoon.

At 8am Iwasaki Sensei knocked on my door to go up to the small games-room where there was enough space after the table-tennis table was pushed to one side, to practice Kata. No breakfast that day since we were in a hurry to practice and then meet Sensei’s brother. It was August 15th which is the day Japan surrendered to the USA. This is considered a national day of mourning so many people are off work for the day. Sometimes go on vacation or visit the graves of relatives. We were to visit Sensei’s mothers grave to wash it and say Buddhist prayers.

The games room was empty, and there was no air-conditioning on. At only 8am it was already very hot. We stretched and then went into the fine details of Seishan revising all the main points covered at the Grandmaster’s Dojo the day before. Within ten minutes we are drenched in sweat.

After the training, Sensei kindly provides my sore back and hip with some deep Shiatsu pressure, then showers and suitable replacement of lost fluids with big bottles of ‘Pocari Sweat’.

By 11:30 we were picked up on the sidewalk by Nobuhide and Mr Iwasaki to go into the mountains by the sea where his mother’s grave rests. The scenery was beautiful, much more like the Japan of my imagination with little wooden buildings stuck tight together with their rickety tiled roofs and little old Japanese ladies watering their tiny front gardens. The sea was swelling up big - you could tell the typhoon was coming. As we rocketed along in the Mitsubishi, Sensei passed out Japanese fast-food: small plastic wrapped rice ‘triangles’ covered in thin dried seaweed with a tasty centre of tuna salad with onion. Absolutely delicious little things!


The Iwasaki family at Mrs Iwasaki's grave in the mountains outside Yokohama.

It was hot out at the cemetery – scorching. The crickets and these crazy big beetle things that live in the trees were kicking up a huge racket as the two brothers washed down their mother’s marble grave with water from an old bamboo bucket and ladle they got from a rack standing in the middle of the graveyard. Their dad looked on, a little too old and wobbly to really do much except point out spots on the marble grave where they had missed. They lit incense once it was completely washed down and we each had to place a stick in front of Mrs Iwasaki’s urn, and then bow with hands held in the classical ‘Gassho’ position of Buddhism.

Afterwards, we visited Nobuhide’s mother and father-in-law’s home who lived just down the hill looking out over the sea. They were obviously quite well-off because the house was enormous by Japanese standards. Nobuhide’s father-in-law was chief of Yokohama police for 35 years, and although now retired, was a sprightly and rather fit looking 80 year old. He greeted me with a big smile speaking in Japanese all the while feeling my arms and chest muscles like he was at the market buying fruit. Sensei told him that I was a European Kata and Kumite champion, so he was impressed and he poked and squeezed my arms and chest some more. Then we ate sliced raw vegetables and pickles with some kind of cold, sweat tea served by Nobuhide’s wife and her mother who did not join us but very oddly just sat on the floor of the kitchen beside the reception room where we were gathered. They just chatted and looked over the newspapers waiting to serve the next course of vegetables or fruit.

The garden at the Iwasaki home.


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