{"id":5754,"date":"2015-08-28T11:58:23","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T17:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/?p=5754"},"modified":"2015-08-28T11:58:23","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T17:58:23","slug":"japanese-culture-through-language-training-vs-practice-shugyo-vs-renshu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/2015\/08\/28\/japanese-culture-through-language-training-vs-practice-shugyo-vs-renshu\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese culture through language: “training vs practice,” “shugyo vs renshu”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tIn the book \u201cServant of the Bones\u201d by Anne Rice, a genie who is immortal told a main character that he learned a hundred languages, and loved speaking and thinking in English.<\/p>\n

Having achieved a high fluency in Japanese, I finally understand what he meant. I love talking about martial arts, fighting, and MMA in Japanese. I write weekly blog entries on my Japanese and English blog about the same thing, and I always feel like I can communicate better in Japanese about fighting. <\/p>\n

\tFor example, there are many words to describe \u201cdo\u201d martial arts. There\u2019s \u201cshu-gyo,\u201d \u4fee\u884c,\u3000\u201crenshu\u201d \u7df4\u7fd2 and even \u201ckeiko.\u201d The word renshu means \u201cpractice,\u201d like to do something repetitively until mastered. Often used in team sports. I did a poll on my facebook for what people say, “train” or “practice.” Anna De Mars (Ronda\u2019s Mom) said on my Facebook poll that she uses \u201cpractice\u201d for Judo. I\u2019m mentioning her because she lived in Japan, and Judo is a sport-martial art. \u7df4\u3000means repetitively, and \u7fd2 means \u201cto learn.\u201d\u3000Shugyo, as far as I understand it, is more like an esoteric practice.\u3000\u4fee\u3000means to mentally strengthen oneself. \u884c means \u201cto go.\u201d Martial Artists go into the woods and do forms and \u201ctrain\u201d their minds and spirits. The dictionary says, \u201ctraining. Ascetic practices, like religious.\u201d But an example the dictionary gave was cooking shugyou. Goku in Dragon Ball Z anime and Naruto in Naruto refer to their fight training as \u201cshugyou.\u201d But they are old school.
\n\"goku<\/a>
\n They sit under waterfalls in addition to duking it out with their trainers.
\n\"naruto<\/a><\/p>\n

\tI\u2019ve always used because everybody else used it renshu \u2026until the day I got to the AACC and a teammate said \u201ckeiko.\u201d I was like \u201chuh?\u201d and he said it\u2019s basically the same as practice. But I knew there was something else to it. I looked up the kanji and got the nuance. \u7a3d\u53e4 I\u2019m not sure about the first kanji but the second one means \u201cold.\u201d I think Keiko is the far end of the \u201cshugyou\u201d spectrum in that you train yourself. The dictionary only used examples of karate, tea ceremony, and other ceremonies. I\u2019ve only heard that guy and one other guy ever use Keiko, so I think that to them, they\u2019re not in the jiu-jitsu class to compete, but rather, to better themselves as people and learn new knowledge. Therefore to them, it\u2019s Keiko. If I go practice Kendo or sword fighting, I might use \u201cKeiko\u201d because I\u2019m not ever going to compete in that.<\/p>\n

If you are bilingual Japanese-English and think I have this TOTALLY wrong, let me know. lol<\/p>\n

\tI always say renshu because I don\u2019t want to sound weird since all my MMA training partners say it. But we are “practicing” techniques to use in a fight….<\/p>\n

\tRelated but seemingly unrelated, I found out that my request to be a translator for UFC Japan got turned down, due to\u2026\u2026 who really knows? They gave me a reason. :\/ But anyway, I was disappointed because I had started studying specialized MMA language to prepare. I mean, I was studying a few hours every day and getting my friend to correct me work. Nobody had told me to do that, but I wanted to level up my Japanese. Of course I felt like it was all wasted effort after I got denied, but my Japanese friend, uncle, mentor Goto-san said that it was shugyo. <\/p>\n

He went on to explain and this is what I took from it: shugyou isn\u2019t always something you like to do for fun. It\u2019s the benefit and growth that you get out of making an effort. If you don\u2019t want to go to the gym but you make yourself go to better yourself simply BY GOING, that\u2019s shugyou. If you start a project and find you don\u2019t have to finish it but you finish it simply out of principle, that\u2019s shugyou. If you study something just to enlighten yourself and nobody else will ever know the difference, that\u2019s shugyou.<\/p>\n

\tThat\u2019s why I like to use \u201ctraining,\u201d like \u201cI\u2019m going to training\u201d now in English because I feel it\u2019s closest. But there is no perfect word in English to describe what shugyo means to me. That\u2019s one reason that I love talking about martial arts in Japanese.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the book \u201cServant of the Bones\u201d by Anne Rice, a genie who is immortal told a main character that he learned a hundred languages, and loved speaking and thinking in English. Having achieved a high fluency in Japanese, I finally understand what he meant. I love talking about martial arts, fighting, and MMA in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural","category-13","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5758,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions\/5758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}