Sauna Party Initiation?

All the kendo clubs that I visited in Finland welcomed me with a sauna party. Finland is the birthplace of the sauna, and the sauna is often the venue for their parties. In accordance with tradition, about 20 members of the Era Ken Kai in Helsinki held a sauna party for me after my first training session there. This was a new experience for me and I was totally flabbergasted by the idea of drinking beer in a sauna. Their leader, Kari Jaaskelainen, enlightened me as follows: “When we Finns hold sauna parties, we always rush outside and dive into the snow.” As the temperature outside was minus 20 degrees Celsius, I naturally declined. However, they were determined to see me participate in this cultural ritual, and so I finally complied, rushing outside and diving head first into the powdery snow. It is difficult to describe the piercing sensation that I experienced, which transcended ordinary feelings of cold and pain. Needless to say, it was not long before I rushed back inside the sauna. Everybody was very pleased with my efforts; however, it then dawned on me that only one other person, Akseli Korhonen, had accompanied me. I asked Kari why he had not taken part in the ritual as well. He replied that it was “too cold”, and that he was satisfied to simply “watch and learn” from me. He had got me!

Two weeks later I visited a club in the town of Lahti. They also held a sauna party for me; however, this time they dug a hole through the thick ice of a frozen lake, into which I was expected to jump. I found that joining in like this was a quick way to “melt the ice”, so to speak, and I suspect that it represented a kind of initiation.

Visiting the Provinces

My hosts installed me in my own apartment in Helsinki. At first, it was difficult to get used to it, due to the differences between the Finnish lifestyle and the Japanese. However, once I had settled in, I found it quite comfortable. Touring the provincial kendo clubs was an entirely different matter, however. While on the road I stayed in people’s houses, an arrangement which I found a little uncomfortable. By the time I started to feel at home with my host family, I would be whisked off to the next town. People who I did not know would come to meet me, and then I would be taken to a town I did not know, go and stay with a family I did not know, and train at a club I did not know. This process would be repeated every few days. It was a uniquely fascinating experience.

It was impossible to predict what the level of kendo would be at a club before arriving there. Some clubs had many members, boasted a number of highly ranked exponents, and were very active. However, there was also one club that consisted solely of four beginners practicing on their own. I ran classes focusing on fundamental techniques (kihon). In particular, I taught the techniques from the recently created “bokuto ni yoru kendo kihon no keiko-ho” (basic technique training with wooden swords) in all the towns that I visited. Through my teaching in the provincial clubs I discovered that this training method is exceedingly well thought out. Not knowing a club’s level beforehand meant that it was impossible to do any useful preparation in advance, and I had to decide what I would do on the spot. Even if training sessions were usually conducted using shinai (bamboo swords), teaching these forms was still very useful and it was easy for the students to understand how to execute the various techniques.

Fortunately, all the towns I visited were very happy to receive a Japanese instructor, and I thus felt a huge responsibility to perform my duties to the best of my ability.

Every time I visited a new town, I managed to lose a few kilograms in weight before my return to Helsinki. Within a few weeks I felt very much at home in my apartment there. Thanks to the beer and sausage in Helsinki, I would always have regained the weight I had lost by the time I embarked on my next tour of the provinces.

The Helsinki Camp

During my stay in Finland, many training camps were held, including some in the provinces. The largest camp was held in Helsinki on March 12 and 13. Also in attendance were Takeda Ryuichi (Yamagata University), Saito Koji (Sendai University), Kobayashi Hideshiro (Niigata University), and over 20 college students from the Tohoku region. In all, 111 people attended. The participants were divided into groups based on skill level, and each of the Japanese instructors took charge of one group. We practiced basic techniques and conducted free training, and the Finnish national squad engaged in practice matches with the Japanese students. It turned out to be a highly productive camp.

All the participants were pure and determined in their approach to kendo and showed great fortitude. There was one point in particular which took me by surprise. Participants came from all parts of Finland to attend the camp, and they all brought sleeping bags and slept on the gymnasium floor. This also happened at the national championships, which were held in Pore, despite the fact that there were hotels there where people could have stayed. I hear that this is far from unusual in Europe, as most participants attend training seminars and competitions on a very tight budget. In Japan the prevailing attitude would dictate that if one did not have enough money to stay at a hotel, one would find it impossible to attend the camp. However, they think differently in Europe, and it was this dogged determination to learn kendo that impressed me. It made me wonder if Japanese students would be prepared to train in kendo with the same level of purity, determination, and sacrifice.

My Family fall for Finland

While I was in Finland, my wife, five year old daughter, and three year old son came from Japan to visit me, and we were able to travel to the provinces together. Naturally, this was a great experience for my family and I am extremely grateful to the Finnish Kendo Association for their understanding and hospitality.

During one home stay, one of my children went down with a 40 degree fever and suffered a nosebleed in the middle of the night. However, I will never forget the experience of visiting the northern town of Rovaniemi―said to be the birthplace of Santa Claus―and seeing the joy on my children’s faces when they met “the real Santa”. In fact, there is a prologue to this story. The previous Christmas I had been asked by my daughter to make a telephone call to Santa directly. Doing the fatherly thing, I had picked up the phone with nobody on the other end and, in English, given Santa a list of presents to bring. However, when she came to meet the real Santa, he spoke in fluent Japanese, leaving my daughter more than a little perplexed.

I fear that we may have caused many problems to our host families; however, it was fantastic for my family to be able to experience Finnish family life. I feel that my children benefited greatly.

While we were living together in our Helsinki apartment, I was unsure how my wife would cope with daily tasks such as shopping. To my pleasant surprise, she managed to communicate in broken English with relative ease and was able enjoy shopping and sight seeing. The four weeks during which she was with me served to reaffirm how strong women really are.