It occured to me the other day that I’m going to have to kill WrongMark

And yeah I realise the same thought has probably occured to most of you from time to time, but this is a matter of tradition!

We both train in ninJA under the same sensei.  So unless movies have lied to me, at some point in the future one of us will have to turn evil, seek out and murder our (by then) aged sensei and claim his power.  The good ninJA will then seek out the other in a fight to the death to claim vengeance.

I’m not sure there’s any doubt which of us will be the evil one.

At ninJA last night we did a lot of sparring.

Sparring is always fun, it’s a great chance to hurt your mates, at one point ninJAmal couldn’t remember where he was for a few seconds after I’d hit him ... sparring is great ;p

But my right hand suffered a little, I’ve ripped the skin off a few knuckles from punching ninJAs, and have a fantastically big swollen bruise from where another ninJA tried to kick me and I knocked his leg out the way with my hand.

So my right hand is pretty painful, and cut, and swollen.

Today at work I had a meeting with a major high street retailer, their Group Solicitor, the head of their Legal Team, and the store manager.  (Not don’t skip to the next post, this does get relevant).  My job was to tell them that they’re crap, and need to sort their act out.  Their job was to tell me I’m wrong.

I’ve been in plenty of meetings like this, and the first thing everyone always wants to do is establish the position of Alpha Male in the group.  If you can show right from the start that you’re the dominant male, you can have the meeting run your way.

And the first chance they get to put forward their claim on the Alpha role, is the handshake.  In these meetings they’re always Very firm, a good tight squeeze to prove the strength of the shaker.

And me with my painful, cut and swollen shaking hand.

Luckily as a ninJA I was able not to cry out in pain every time they squoze!

I’ve been off ninJA for a few weeks after I broke my wrist in a lesson.  My return on Tuesday tied in with the new University year, when ninjutsu gets a huge influx of freshers (baby ninJA), and those of us who have been around for a while are able to look at the baby ninJA’s, and use them as a point of reference on how far we’ve come in the last few years of training.  Generally we all feel pretty badass.

Obviously as immature ninJA we take every opportunity to increase our badassness in front of the baby ninJA.

WrongninJA is going out of his way to try not to be too camp when they’re looking.

I make sure to drop it into conversation that the reason my wrist is strapped up is that I broke it in a lesson a few weeks ago, but still let the babyninJA practise techniques on it.

My gi (ninJA suit) is badly torn.  One of my sleeves was ripped off in a fight a few months ago, the other now is hanging by threads.  Whilst the torn off sleeves do give the badass Ryu (Streetfighter 2) look, and having a badly torn gi makes me look a little battleworn and adds to the badass…  It’s also tearing across my chest and is in danger of becoming more a tattered rag that I wrap around me than an actual piece of clothing.

Anyway to further my badass, I’ve bought a ninJA training book.  Which among other things, promises the following:

” This book will teach you how to dissapear, speak with spirits, channel archetypes, improve your sex life, get along with gods, and be your enemy’s worst nightmare-all while working on your own loveable self,”

yay for ninJA!

It’s emerged over the past week that there is a hierarchy of badassness, and that ninJA’s aren’t top of the badass tree.

On Tuesday we needed mats for the grading (to break the baby ninJA’s falls), there was a bit of an arguement between Taff (ninJA sensei) and the sensei of the Judo class who also wanted them.

As expected, ninJA’s were more badass and the Judo guy skulked off matless.

The badass tree stands with ninJA’s at the top:

Last night was my grading for my 6th kyu ninjutsu, I failed.

I didn’t fail cos I can’t do the techniques, I didn’t fail cos I’m a poor ninJA, I didn’t fail cos I hadn’t trained hard enough.

I failed cos I don’t speak Japanese.

There were four of us going for sixth kyu, 3 of us failed ... for not being able to speak Japanese.

We were called up two by two (I went up with WrongMark), and the grader shouted instructions at us in Japanese ... to which we generally could do nothing but stand there bemused and shrug ... we don’t speak Japanese!

Gradings have never been carried out like that before, we didn’t have any warning that speaking Japanese would be important to this one ...

bah!

Still seventh kyu ninJA