Sons of Loki

It’s been a strange, expensive weekend: went to Womb on Friday for the first time in two years for Dan and Jan’s birthdays – it was 懐かしい (nostalgic), but kind of not so fun as I remembered. On Saturday I went to the ICU guys’ guesthouse to make katsu kare with Rob, Kanako and Kaz, which turned out incredibly delicious, and in the evening we all went out to an izakaya for a few drinks and karaoke with our Leeds coursemate Dan, newly arrived from Kobe for a few days in Tokyo. Later we ended up back at mine to hang out (so rarely I have guests!) and drink sake and hold impromptu jamming sessions on guitar and mandolin, which was fun.

Today Rob had invited me to this martial arts convention at the Nippon Budokan (where Dylan recorded a live album in ’79), for which he had a spare ticket. It was kinda cool to start off with – they had all these different martial arts troupes from all over Japan assembling to show off their stuff in the middle of the big old Budokan arena. This being Japan, despite the place being reasonably packed, not a peep could be heard from the assembled crowd aside from the occasional round of polite applause.
It wore on a bit, though. It was mostly kendo and quarterstaffs, which means a minute of staring at each other, a slow advance, a shout and a swing, and then a minute to slowly back away from each other. Still, it got lively at points, like when one team broke out the flails and other exotic weaponry. There was a nice surprise at the end, too.

Check out this sword draw:







Right at the end, they broke out the muskets, for some reason unfathomable to me. But it was an awesome way to end … with a bang! (Sorry.)

The second of ignition.

Check out the puff of smoke just emerging right above his head here.