Never try to drink your Jûshoku under the table

Originally written May 8, 2008

Once again I learned a valuable lesson in the zen afterparty. I've already learned that competitive drinking with old budoka is a bad bad BAD idea. The same seems to apply to old buddhists. Boy can they drink. And never ever touch shôchû, the stuff doesn't suit me at all. I wasn't even that drunk (a bit drunk yes, but still totally able to function and walk back home), but I still had the worst hangover in a long time... And managed to completely miss the biggest earthquake in Tokyo during my stay here. I blame everything on the shôchû. :)

It was fun, though. Usually the drinking party lasts until 23-24 in a bigger room, but around midnight people have to start catching the last trains, and the room is cleaned and the dishes washed. Then the discussion (and drinking) continues in a smaller room, and apparently some of the people stay at the temple for the night, leaving only with the first trains in the morning. As I was saying my goodbyes for the night I was invited to sit for a while, and as I wasn't in any particular hurry I decided to stay for a while - which turned out to be until 2.30 in the morning. Well, I did have fun, one of the jûshoku's (temple's head priest) budo students who had been practising upstairs afer our zazen joined us for an hour or so, and there was a lot of teasing, laughter and even some serious conversations. And jûshoku taught me and a half german/half japanese guy wrist locks...

Then a bit about the haiku (so that this blog won't degenerate purely into telling about my drunken escapades in Tokyo). The guy organizing the haikukai had actually gone through the bother of rewriting my poems, so that I'd have a better idea of what they should look like. Very nice of him. :) The comments for the two new ones I showed here too were mostly that they had too many seasonal references in them, as you're supposed to have only one. I never knew that "air-conditioner" counts as a "kigo" (seasonal word), but you learn always something new I guess... He promised to look through my new poems as well. Also, I need to think more about the rhytm of the poem. I actually had to really coax him into commenting by telling him that what use is there for me to try writing if he doesn't tell me how to come better at it... He's so sweet, fearing that he'll hurt my feelings. Nice people, all of them.

The words for next week are: 初カツオ,　初緑 and　初夏, "first katsuo (a kind of fish)", "first leaves (of sakura)" and "beginning of summer", respectively. We'll have to see what I'll come up with this time.

I was also invited by a friend to a tankakai tomorrow (same thing as haikukai but writing tanka, 5-7-5-7-7). They are going through Ki no Tsurayuki's poems, or Kokinshû (first imperial poetic anthology, I think from beginning of 900s), I didn't really catch. But anyways, for someone who has never really understood poetry, I seem to be reading and writing it a lot lately... And it's more fun than what I'd thought. My friends will think I've completely lost my mind, but well, they're not here to complain, so... :)