You can't escape, little boy!

Okay, I managed to win three out of my five matches. So I am officially a second degree brown belt in judo now. But it wasn't easy, and I barely made it. Two of the guys were my size or smaller, and I beat them on the mat by pinning them for 30 seconds. One other guy was actually a friend of mine from Chuo, and I barely beat him by a score of one-quarter point to none. He's not as strong as me physically but much more skilled. I felt bad about beating him, but we both tried our hardest and I got a little lucky. The other two guys beat me, although one of them I was disappointed in myself for not winning. The guy was bigger and stronger than me, but I think I should have been able to beat him. No doubt if we fought many times, I would win some times. But probably he would win more times than me. But the way he beat me was similar to the way that I beat the guy before. The last guy was the best out of my group and won all five of his matches. I don't think I would have been able to beat him even if he was my first match, but in fact he was my last and I had no strength left at all, and was moving pretty slowly as well. One of my strong points is being able to evade a lot of moves by being quick, and waiting for an opportunity. But probably my biggest weak point is that I have no stamina, so by the fifth match I couldn't evade well enough. Not that it would have made much difference, but I would have liked to give it a better shot. I got put in a hold on the mat and escaped pretty easily, since I am very slippery, but then I noticed I was wondering why I bothered to escape, since I had no energy left and the best I could hope for was to run around the mat avoiding the guy for three minutes, which really pisses off the judges. Of course, while I'm doing all this thinking, I got tossed. But I won my three matches and got my belt so that's good. And my friend who I beat beat the guy who beat me, so he got his belt too. So it worked out okay. And I got to see a lot of old students from Chuo and Eishin, as well a bunch of kids from Nishi who I will probably end up teaching sometime next year. Of course now I am in pain in every part of my body, except for my balls ironically enough. So I am going to lay down and recover for a while.

Oh by the way, the rainy season has officially started, so expect me to start complaining about that and how hard it is to ride half an hour every day in the rain, as soon as the pain passes.