Notebook Club

One of the earliest things I learned in this art, and was reminded of during my last blog is that, just about any class can become overwhelming.  It is difficult in a 1-2 hour class to remember everything you are taught, much less a weekend long seminar.  What I found when I started training at Taika’s dojo and even before that when I was just going to seminars he put on, is he liked to keep your cup running over.  In fact, I would always hear people saying how they couldn’t remember a tenth of what he said. 

My remedy for that very early into the 90’s was going to the local book store and purchasing a ‘blank lined book’.  I took this to class with me every time, and wrote notes as I went.  Constantly jotting things down.  My last blog had some footwork scans that I had made for my notebook from one of Taika’s early Spider Web classes at his dojo.  As I saw it, the people that took good notes tended to remember things better.  Taika would notice.  Openly in class he would kid me about it but later at his house he would always stress that I should write stuff down.  He actually told me to take good notes so I could retain his art and surprisingly, to write a book later on.  I even practiced my Japanese language skills, as limited as they were.

  

 

I would write down notes during class.  As soon as I got home or to work after class, I’d add more notes and clarify any short hand.  I would often go into work the next day and have a co-worker at the academy take pictures of me doing the fixups or no drills.  I would then print them onto sticker paper, cut them out and put them in the book.

Early days I drew stick figures and really ugly drawings, later on I used photos on sticker paper and even at one point I had little footprint rubber stamps made that I carried in my notebook bag along with a protractor and other tools of the trade.  Yes, I’m one anal geek.

  

Now if you go back and realize I did this for 25 years, and extrapolate out the math of not understanding but maybe a 10^th of what Taika was giving me at the time, you can see that I’ve only scratched the surface of understanding all that I wrote down.  I have many years’ worth of research and training on my shelves.   I still go through my books and find notes to both make sure I have not drifted from his teachings, and to see what I’m forgetting.  I have thousands of documented hours of training, and even just stories, language and history notes from Taika.  These are my cherished treasures. 

Taika is still alive, in my books and in my heart.