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Episode 3 - A chance meeting - What's the name of the material art...? After the incident, I felt that I was still lacking in training, so I put even more passion into my search for greater strength, made a "rolled straw" at home, and poked it around day after day. I strongly believed “Someday I will be strong” but a harsh reality was looming over me. I broke my knuckles from over-poking the rolled straw, and the doctor stopped me from practicing. Such a situation couldn’t blight my passion. I immediately switched to striking at the straw with my hand sword instead of my fists. But this time I damaged a nerve in my little finger, and again the doctor stopped me.... Why was I so devoted to my training? It was only because I had been completely brainwashed by Ikki Kajiwara's spirit. As the opening song of the anime Kyojin no Hoshi sing, “If you get the conviction, it is man’s guts to go on the road of trials. In the world of sports at that time, the guts theory was widely accepted. “When others do it once, you should do it ten times and when they do ten times, you should do it a hundred times.” In the case of martial arts, which aimed for the highest level, there was no doubt in our minds that it was natural to go beyond that. However, I could not aggravate my injury, so I refrained from practicing recklessly and distracted myself with other interests while I healed. Although it may seem surprising for a teenage boy to have such an interest, I became interested in visiting used bookstores. It may sound a little old-fashioned, but in my spare time I liked to visit the used bookstores in Jimbocho. It may have been the sensitivity developed by my childhood spent in the countryside rich in nature that led me to wander around used bookstores in search of the key that would open the door to an unknown world! I remember that many of the books that caught my attention were translations of books on exploration of the world's unexplored regions. Then one day, as I entered a used bookstore in search of an encounter as usual and was browsing the bookshelves, the word "Chuan" (meaning of material art) suddenly caught my eye. Looking the shelf closely, I found a book titled Tai Chi Chuan. Immediately I reached out, picked up the book and skimmed through the contents. Clearly, it was different from karate...! I couldn't stop reading. The more I read, the more I felt a sense of wonder. My senses are about to open the door to the unknown...! And my inner excitement began to shake my whole body. I remembered Oyama Masutatsu known as the cow killer had admitted in his autobiography that the only person who had defeated Oyama was a Tai Chi Chuan master, Old Man Chen. Sensitivity and memory connected, and my inner spurt burns even hotter! At this time, I had already begun to be drawn into the abyss of " Tai Chi Chuan " which even my revered spiritual master Oyama Masutatsu could not match.... As I read further, I found a passage that says, "Do not strike things with your fists. “Then, I could practice it with my injured fist, couldn't I?”, I thought. One after another, the arrangements seemed to progress, and I felt a kind of tailwind. "It would be good for my rehabilitation until my fist heals completely, and wouldn't it be interesting to try learning it just until it heals?" It did not take me long to come to such a decision, whether by coincidence or destiny. The only problem was that this martial art was too "mysterious" for me to learn on my own just by reading books, and I had no idea how to practice it. I wondered if there was a dojo somewhere. I searched for a dojo in the phone book and found that there was one surprisingly close by. It was the only dojo in the Kanto area. I immediately called the dojo, and a woman kindly replied, "Please come and visit us anytime.” After hearing the practice schedule, I lost no time in visiting the place. It was only a few days since I encountered the book at the used bookstore. On the day of my visit to the dojo, I witnessed Tai chi Chuan with my own eyes for the first time! |