Exchange Student Ben Ridler Reporting Direct From Japan
Evolution Martial Arts student Ben Ridler, 16, is completed a 12-month scholarship exchange with Meitoku Gijuku High School in Kochi, Japan. In this report he offers a fascinating insight into the Japanese way of life and their unique approach to training.
For the last four months I’ve been attending class and boarding at Meitoku Gijuku High School in Japan for the purpose of studying karate. I was first told about this opportunity over a year ago after Sensei Ray Morcomb was offered a scholarship for one of his students to complete a one-year exchange at Meitoku. I was thrilled to be offered the chance to participate.
After Sensei Ray and my parents met to discuss the details we started putting plans in place and it seemed the trip was really to become a reality! But there would be a full year of preparation to tackle before I went anywhere…
This involved taking Japanese lessons for 12 months so I wouldn’t be completely in the dark when I arrived in the country and making every training session possible throughout the week. I also did a little extra boxing and personal training with Sensei Ray which mostly consisted of killer hill runs, sprint training and what he calls cave man training involving a truck tyre and a sledge hammer. This would leave me near-dead and aching for a full week until our next session.
School here in Japan is very different from Australia. Sport is the main focus at Meitoku Gijuku and a student’s life is very much defined by their specific club. Karate is not viewed as an individual sport but rather as a team sport. But not like a rugby or soccer team back home. Because everything we do here revolves around karate - we literally live and breathe it day in and day out - the team is more like one big family, military style. If one person goes down it’s the team’s job to lift him or her back up again. The motto here is basically one for all and all for one.
Oishi Sensei, my instructor in Japan, is amazing but very tough. He’s a complex character who behaves completely different inside and outside the dojo. As soon as he puts on his do-gi and obi he turns into the devil! But outside of training he is really kind but still very strict, which makes dorm life hard as he is always watching over everything you do.
Spirit is everything here and Oishi Sensei considers it number one. On one occasion the team didn’t show enough spirit in training so he made us sprint around the school and then walk 50 metres on our hands up a steep gravel road while he watched from the top of the hill along with his shinai to make sure none of us slacked off (keep in mind that his shinai wasn’t just there for show).
In training everyone is always encouraging one other so it’s an awesome environment but very intense. The students here all tackle every exercise and training session head on, no slacking. And it’s not just physically challenging; mentally it’s also very taxing. On average, we train three hours each week day and about six hours on Saturday and Sunday. And holidays aren’t holidays; we have to train all day, every day with no exception. But the intensity varies, so we might have three hard days then a lighter day to allow our aching muscles to recover. The Japanese approach to training every day is based on the premise that if you miss a day it takes you three to get back to the level you were at when you stopped. So we train every day without fail.
The training sessions are completely different from what we know back home. Here we have a different set of exercises that we concentrate on each week. An average training might include an hour of the set routine, then an hour of kumite followed by whatever Oishi Sensei chooses to do next. Kumite is the main focus here so training is heavily focused on fighting and fitness. Occasionally we do one to three hours of kata once a week, maybe five if we’re lucky, but remember this is stretched out over seven days.
The team’s main focus is competition so we mostly train shobu ippon (one point) sparring and hardly any continuous sparring like we do back in the dojo in Australia. The point system follows the JKF rules, similar to those of the WKF and AKF, so speed and timing are crucial. I get smashed a lot of the time but I can say I’m not getting any worse. I’ve nearly had my teeth knocked out on several occasions - the fact that they don’t wear mouth guards here doesn’t help!
Meitoku Gijuku High School is like one giant boot camp. It’s located in rural Japan on the island of Shikoku, Kochi-ken (the prefecture) in a secluded valley surrounded by mountains and is 30 minutes away by car from the first sign of civilisation, which is a small fishing village. There is no escape!
The school is very determined to create elite sports men and women of the future and they have a very intense system in place to create a student environment that supports that goal. As a result, we don’t have much in the way of free time and it’s certainly no holiday. If we’re not at school we’re training and if we’re not at training we’re studying.
Every day there are four role calls: two in the morning and two in the evening so the kids don’t run away or do anything they’re not supposed to. Dorm life is extremely regimented. Being an international student I do have some privileges though, such as getting extra call time to phone home during study time. But apart from that, my life here is not very different from any of the other students.
The language is very hard and every day I struggle to get out what I need to say. But I’m getting by and picking up more and more as I listen to the students but I still find it very difficult. Being the only English speaker in the karate club I haven’t been able to be as social with the other students as I would have liked, but I do try. Most international students at the school don’t even speak Japanese let alone English so class time is always a challenge. Plus I’m also the only westerner at the school which makes me a bit of a novelty!
The food at Meitoku isn’t great. The diet is pretty bland: we eat rice three meals a day, seven days a week. Although we do get meat three proper meals each day, they mostly consists of ‘mystery meat’ so you don’t actually know what you’re eating - and you probably don’t want to! Vending machines are everywhere in Japan though and thankfully there are some at the school so I can at least access some familiar western foods.
I’m currently on my summer holidays now and am back in Australia until August 21 when I return to Japan for a further three to four months to complete my exchange. I hope to learn as much as I can before coming home for good in December, primarily to develop my karate and study the Japanese language and culture. I look forward to putting my new skills to use back home in the dojo and in competition and can’t wait to share what I’ve learnt with my fellow karate-ka.
I am extremely grateful to my dojo Evolution Martial Arts and especially Sensei Ray for providing me with this extraordinary opportunity. I hope to be the first of many students that get to experience life at Meitoku Gijuku.
Oss,
Ben Ridler
