Enter Golden Week

My last working Saturday before Golden Week、the first week in May, is a pleasant waste of a day. Saturdays are usually my busiest days, but I get three lesson cancellations. For others, Golden Week has already started. I use part of my long break to go out and buy a bike, something I had been planning for this month. There are two big bicycle shops in Juso, along the big, busy street near the school, bikes lined up outside with big price tags on them, while inside the shops, most of the small space is used for fixing older two-wheelers.
Most new bikes have big baskets attached to the handle bars in front. They look slow, and for me the baskets are superfluous. I carry things on my body. Finally, a black beach cruiser jumps at me and says “¥ 16,400”, which, in beach-cruiser Osaka-ben, and in combination with his blinking black curves and sparkling smile, means: “Buy me!” The frame is a size 26, slightly on the small side, but with the saddle as high as it goes, it fits me. In fact, riding it is like cycling in an armchair, it is so comfortable. I can feel the sunny day’s breeze in my face as I pedal him a few yards down the road and back to the shop. I buy a cat eye for the dark nights we will spend together, and a lock that turns out to be too long and rather impractical. But in Japan, leaving bikes without a lock is not a big problem. In many respects it is a surprisingly safe country, built on the pillars of people’s impressively, and at times frustratingly unwavering obedience.
The TV in the GEOS lobby is there to show Disney videos for students’ pre- and post-lesson entertainment. Today, I’m the one who opens the school and decides what to watch, so it goes without saying that today is Mulan day. The manager has left for Thailand, so M-Sensei and I spend the last day at work on our own. I bring her back some salmon onigiri, a bacon sandwich, and a chou a la creme from my bicycle shopping trip and sit in the lobby humming along to “I’ll Make a Man out of You” again and again, mainly to watch Mulan try and fail and try and fail and try again until she finally takes he big, muscly troop commander down with a spinning face kick and climbs up the 30 ft pole, and joins the others performing a 6 ft staff kata that illustrates the end of the song in an impressive synchronous flying side kick. “Let’s get down to business…we must be swift as the coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon, with all the strength of a raging fire, mysterious as the dark side of the moon!” Finally, the last class is over, and we complete our paper work.
After we have switched everything off, locked the door, and appeased the talking security system in the downstairs entry hall, we decide that, however adverse the circumstances, the beginning of a week of freedom has to be celebrated. M-Sensei is flying to Australia the next day and hasn’t packed. I am in a hurry to get to karate training and have a competition the next day, meeting time 7.50 a.m. But freedom is special. And a party is calling, although its voice is still faint, and we have to figure out what direction it is coming from. M-Sensei wants to go home and get changed. I agree to contact her as soon as I know more.
So I call Herrn T, who is usually somewhere in the vicinity of the next party, and take my beautiful, gearless cruiser for a first ride, heading up the road past the GEOS building, straight for Toyonaka. I find my way asking people. It goes straight most of the way and is not complicated but takes slightly longer than expected. I finally arrive at karate training, where I’m chased around by T-Sensei, attacking two pads held up by my friendly basics coach, first for two minutes, then another two, and then another. My breath sounds like a squealing biycle tyre, and has not quite gone back to normal
when we start doing kata. I don’t know many kata yet, so after I have joined the group for Seisan, I get to kneel down in seiza and breathe while the others perform the rest of the syllabus.
“OK,” says Sensei, “Tomorrow will be an early start, so let’s finish here.” It is five to ten, and class usually finished at ten. We all bow “Ossu!” and erupt into the usual post-training bustle, carrying pads, gloves, and helmets into cars, getting changed, paying bills. I pay for the helmet and gloves I ordered for the competition, and Sensei gives me a big sparring mitt for free. I have asked him to order one for me so I can practise kicks and a wider range of punches outside regular sessions, but he sends me a text message saying that he has just bought a new one, so I can have his old one for free. I pay for this and next months’ training, and the grading on Thursday. Then, when I’m about to shoot off to the changing rooms, Sensei hands me a big paper bag.
“Here’s a little present for you,” he says. Surprised, I thank him and bow. Then I make my way to the changing rooms and sneak a look inside the bag. It is a brand new dogi with the Shorinji-ryu karate crest and my name written across the sleeve. I don’t know how, with my pitiful once-a-week Saturday evening appearance, I have earned myself enough credits for this kind of generosity. I bow to Sensei’s generosity and my new dogi and decide to fight extra hard at tomorrow’s competition to show I might actually be worthy of such a precious gift.
I-senpai deposits my chunky equipment in his chunky car, and we agree to meet by the car vendor next to my house at 7.50 the next morning to go to Takarazuka where the competition will be held.
We all say good bye and Otsukaresama desu, and, hearing the voice of the party siren more clearly now, I’m off to a Toyonaka park next to a Shrine, freshly discovered, I am told. It feels good being out and about on a bike. It takes me wherever I want whenever I want, and the evening breeze blows the favours of late spring into my face and through my hair. B-san meets me half way to the park, where Herr T and two bottles of red wine are waiting. The park is a good discovery. The wine a good companion for celebrating the beginning of a short period of freedom.
M-Sensei has changed her mind. She has a lot of packing to do and does not feel inclined to make her way back from Kyoto to join us tonight. She is sad about it, though, so I try to make her feel better, telling her that it won’t be the last time we will get a chance to enjoy the freedom and fire of a warm night together.
We sit, drink and talk, and with good company and conversation, and sips of Cabernet and Merlot out of two shared bottles, the lightness of freedom sinks in through my veins and takes root in my system, pumping away still when we hop onto our three two-wheelers and make our way home to dreamland.
I put out my dogi and pack my gum shields. Everything is ready. Time to sleep and turn tiredness into energy, wine into force, nervousness into determination. Freedom, I will fight for you!