JudoNotes

John Harris pointed me to the web site of Yun Gen Yang, the photographer who took John and Alison's wedding photos.

Yun posted engagement photos on his blog back in July. Click below to see them:

Note that John was wearing his Oishi t-shirt. And he's versatile — he demonstrated both left and right ippon-seoinage.

Yun created a beautiful slideshow of the wedding pictures. To see them, click below, and then click again where it says "Wedding Slideshow":

The old soda machine is alive and well. Back when the dojo was moving, some of my coworkers brought the machine from Leonard St. to our offices at Broadway and Spring.

Sensei got us started by loading the machine onto a handtruck and pulling it up those narrow, twisting stairs to the floor above, with a couple of guys pushing from the bottom. He was supposedly showing us how we should get up the stairs, but ended up doing the job himself. We then put the machine in the freight elevator, took it to street level, and loaded it into a waiting truck.

Thanks to Scott, Dan, and the other Scott for bringing muscle and transportation, and thanks to Pando for giving the soda machine a new home, where for all we know it will give us another 35 years of service.

Using the "Street View" in Google Maps, I zoomed in on the photo below of our block on Greenwich St. Number 547 is the drab green storefront in the center:

I believe the photos on Google Maps are something like two years old, so this would have been how it looked just before we took over.

Now look at a recent photo:

Even accounting for the poor resolution of the Google Maps photo, you have to admit we've beautified the neighborhood.

Here are photos of Jeff and Owen at Iguazu Falls, relaxing after the 2007 World Masters.

There's no judo in these photos, but there's a ton of judo in the people in the photos.

My favorite is the one with the huge thundering waterfall in the background, all noise and chaos, and in the foreground there's a man-made walkway, all straight lines and angles, and poised in the middle is Jeff. It's very, like, yin and yang, or something.

As usual, click on any of the thumbnails to go to the Flickr page.

Our dojo has another newlywed. Zuri and Reiko got married this morning at the Buddhist Cultural Center on Chrystie St. It was the first Buddhist wedding I'd ever attended. Will and his girlfriend were there as well.

I don't remember the full sequence of the ceremony (I'll review my videotape later), but there was a lot of bowing to elders, there was the exchange of rings, the priest made some pronouncements, and there was chanting. Good-luck gifts were presented to the couple by a procession of grandmotherly ladies. I thought that part was sweet.

After the ceremony tables were set up and a vegetarian meal was brought out from the kitchen. I especially liked the dumplings. The cake was excellent and there was lots to go around, but I limited myself to one small piece, because, you know, the weight thing.

Mazel tov, Zuri!

On Friday night, Sensei presented Austin Young with his black belt. Austin's wife was there to share the moment.

I completely spaced on getting her name. I'll update this entry when I find it out.

Click below for the Flickr page with the full-sized photo:

Keith Goldfeld sent in a bunch of great photos from the first evening class at the new dojo. Click below to see them all.

I would have loved to be there, but the photos you folks have been sending are the next best thing.

I tried to post these last night, but I was having trouble with the network at my hotel. I'm typing this now at Moscone Center, in a room full of other Apple nerds who are also catching up on stuff between sessions.

Update: Great stuff! Sonam Atuk sent me a few too:

Update: Still more! Bob Henry sent these:

Many thanks to Dan Heinrich for four photos and a few seconds of video from the very first class at the new dojo, the daytime class on June 11.

Update: Thanks to Jean-Ezra Yeung for a fifth photo.

A few weeks ago, I heard a story about an old French bakery. The COO at my company was telling this to somebody, and I was eavesdropping. Right now, I'm waiting for photos from last night's party to upload to Flickr. So I'll take a moment to pass the story along, because it relates to the move.

There was a very old bakery in France that was famous for its wonderful bread. Their bread was so good that the business grew and grew until they had to move to a bigger facility. They built a brand new bakery up on a hill. Everything was big and shiny and new.

But their bread wasn't the same. They tried and tried, but they couldn't get it quite right. The thing is, although they brought all their recipes and techniques to the new location, they couldn't reproduce the exact combination of temperature and humidity, and minerals in the water, and bacteria and mold spores in the air, that had developed over the years at the old place. And so they lost their reputation and the business suffered.

I thought about this story in the weeks leading up to the dojo move. Sensei told us we were going to have a beautiful new facility, designed by an interior designer, everything brand new — but that a dojo is not the place; it's nothing without the people in it. We — you and I — are the bacteria and mold. It sounds unflattering, but you know what I mean.

Sensei used a couple of metaphors of his own, in his special Sensei way. The one I remember also involves bread. He said a dojo without people is like opening a sandwich and there's no meat inside.

Judging by the outpouring of affection at last night's dojo-warming party, I think we will have no problem with sandwich meat.

Okay, the photos finished uploading a little while ago. Below is a link to the Flickr page. You know what to do.

Update: I've pruned the photo collection down to a dozen.

We finish taking up the mats. We do some packing. We find some old artifacts.

Click below for full-size photos, with captions.