It was a miracle I woke up on time this morning. Although a night owl, it's atypical for me to hit the futon as late, rather early, as 4AM, only to throw my first blow at my alarm clock at 6:30a. I didn't get back in the house 'til after midnight, and still managed to eat dinner, while watching the Bad Boys 2 rental dvd in the 1 o'clock hour.
The cause of last night's sleep deprivation was my very first attendance of the Tuesday night Capoeira class in
Komaki. Prior, I'd never gone to the Komaki class because of the distance and cost. For instance, just riding the train to Komaki from where I live comes to about $20, plus the cost of the class $10). So total costs to attend the Tues. class would come to about $30 for me. Heeeck No. Not to mention the travel time is about an hour each way, plus the 2 hour class, which only begins at 9pm, comes to about 4 hours of my night I'd have to give up--on a work night to boot. Last night, however, Thomas and I got a ride with Alan, a young Brazilian guy who speaks fluent English. I met Alan when he came to our Saturday class for the first time and offered Thomas, another foreign white guy and I rides home, since we all lived relatively close to each other. Coincidentally, it turned out Alan and Thomas live in apartment buildings only about 2 minutes away from each other on foot.
Alan was born in Brazil, but his family moved to the States when he was a kid, so he speaks Portugese and English. As a matter of fact, he lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is D.C.'s backyard, virtually. I used to ride the bus up to Silver Spring to go to the movies back in my HU days. We were practically neighbors in the U.S. Now Alan's in Japan working in an auto garage. It's a small world, forreal.
Alan's a pretty cool dude, he gave us a ride to Komaki, free of charge. I offered him money for gas, but he refused to take it. We made it to Komaki, but didn't know how to get to the gym, so someone called Z and he dashed from the gym to come meet us and lead the way. Z drives really crazy. Word is, he flipped, rather--he rolled his last car trying to pull some crazy maneuver while going at a high speed. On the way to the gym, Z was accelerating and dipping like crazy in and out of the claustrophobic side and backstreets--and we were in Alan's car in hot pursuit. Brazilians drive crazy--it's official. Alan was whipping the little Beetle-like Mitsubushi like it was a NASCAR--and he was driving someone else's car! I joked that if on the Brazilian driver's exam, they asked "A car is a toy. True or False?," they both would fail. It's bad enough that Japan has probably the least driver-friendly roads out of the industrialized world. I had my safety belt extra tight. Eventually, however, we arrived safe and sound.
Class was great. Some people were surprised to see me there. The training room we had in the gym was smaller than where we practice on weekends, and it was hot as sin in there. I got a good, sweaty workout and learned a pretty, new au, a carthwheel. Really slick-looking move. There were less heads than the Saturday class, so Z was able to focus more on everyone's individual techniques. I was able to get some much-needed critique and correction from Z. There's a reason why Capoeira looks so pretty--because it's HARD. It's probably the most physically and technically demanding martial art I've ever done. I like it, especially because it's so difficult to master. A challenge always remains.
