JudoNotes

Paul Virtue pointed me to this. It’s an episode of an old educational cartoon called The Funny Company. I recommend skipping the introductory cartoon-y stuff and jumping to the 3-minute mark.

The YouTube caption says:

The Funny Company,originally commissioned by Mattel Toys, featured mini educational films, cleverly sandwiched within each animated story, to help illustrate the theme of the cartoon. This innovative 1963 series was developed by producer Ken Snyder (Roger Ramjet, Skyhawks, Hot Wheels) in response to a 1961 speech by the FCC chairman urging more cultural and educational children’s programming.

Oishi Judo had a good turnout for the Hudson Promotionals on Saturday. Arthur, Zaid, Karim, Mike Pollice, and Jon Faulkner competed, as did one fellow from the day class whose name I’ll have to get. No batsugans but a few nice throws. I made a playlist on YouTube where you can see all the matches I managed to get on video. Here are the highlights, complete with slo-mo replays:

P.S. The throwers are Zaid, Jon, Jon again, Karim, and Ken.

1. Congratulations to Yotam on his promotion to ikkyu.
2. Congratulations to Romeo on taking third at the Nationals on April 18.

UPDATE: Yotam informs me that Arthur and Alberto also got promoted to ikkyu. Congratulations!

(I’m catching up on a backlog of news I’ve been meaning to post…)

Yotam posted video of his four matches at the Liberty Bell on April 5:

Someone whose YouTube name is “Ippondo” posted a whole bunch of matches from the NY Open. Click here to see them. Click here to see the ippons (or at least the ones Ippondo described as “ippon”).

Here are the women’s matches from the New York Open yesterday. Most notable are matches 2 and 5.

This was the first time women have competed in this event.

The entire Japanese team visited Oishi Judo on Saturday. I’ll post about that soon, and I’ll be updating the dojo web site.

There will be no children’s class on Sat. March 7. The adult class will be held 12:30-2pm.

Yotam took third at the Tech Judo “Super Bowl” tournament yesterday. I wasn’t going to be there, but I changed my plans so I was able to attend. I took the bus out there with Yotam and my buds Rich and Seth from Five Points.

When it was all over I helped stack the mats, as I did last time I was there. I must be nuts because I actually enjoy that, though I imagine it gets less fun around the hundredth time. Maybe it just felt good to do something physical (not to mention helpful) after watching other people fight all day. I tend to carry heavy things on my left, so I made a mental note to try carrying the mats on my right side next time, not only for strength but coordination. Someday I may have to study the nage-no-kata, and I’ll be glad I sort of practiced kata-guruma on both sides, even if my uke was a big rubber rectangle.

This was the first time I’ve been out to Tech Judo that I didn’t have a ride back. When we got to the bus stop for the return trip, we realized we had over an hour wait for the next bus. As luck would have it, referee Lillian Tom walked by and noticed us standing there. She took us to a bus stop where we caught the 166/165 line, which runs much more frequently. Thanks, Lillian! Not only did this get us back to the city much quicker, the walk to the bus stop was like a mini-workout, though you’d hardly know it to see Yotam bounding up the hills.

On a side note, I’ve updated my directions to Tech Judo with more bits of information that I always forget, like the gate number and the zone number.

On another side note, I heard Tech Judo will have another tournament in four weeks, on March 1. Looking forward to it.

Here are Yotam’s matches. Unfortunately I missed the first few seconds of his third match, when he scored a waza-ari.

A handful of unrelated notes:

• My legs felt like they had a little extra spring in them during today’s practice. No idea why. I didn’t work out all week except for last night, so my legs should have felt like lead this afternoon. Maybe going easy last night helped.
• When I see a demo of a technique from judo or any fighting art, and uke is smaller than tori, I have to resist the urge to discount the value of the demo. I think this is an understandable reaction, but it isn’t entirely rational and I should judge the technique, the demo, and the demonstrators on their own merits.
• I think learning the foot sweep motion is like learning to dribble for a basketball player: you should be able to do it without looking. The movement should be so ingrained in your muscle memory that you can brush the mat with the side of your foot while looking straight ahead.
• There’s a bunch of updates I’m supposed to do on oishi-judo.com, including a few tasks that have been slipping my mind for months. This weekend would be a good time to get them all off my plate.
• I was tempted to go watch the tournament at Tech Judo on February 1, even though I don’t know of any Oishi players who are going. I think I’m addicted to the action and the atmosphere. But I’ll be celebrating Chinese New Year’s with family that day, so I’ll have to miss the tournament.

Oishi Judo will be closed on Monday, January 19th.