Art Imitates Life

I've been reading the fairly decent Rogue Angel series by Alex Archer lately. The main character is a bit like a female version of Indiana Jones although intriguingly she quite regularly doesn't win out in the end.

Anyway, in Book 9 the heroine of the story is in Tokyo. She's already established an expertise and interest in marial arts throughout the course of the series so accepts an offer to train at the dojo of a guy who is interesting in hiring her. It seems the dojo is a little outside of Tokyo. That's funny I thought, just like the Hombu Dojo where I trained and took my Godan test. A little later she arrives at the town and immediately notices the smell of soy sauce in the air, due to the presence of a large soy factory in the town. That's funny I thought, just like the soy factory in Noda near the Hombu... Hang on a minute! As I read on it became increasingly apparent that this fictional character was training in my real dojo. Nobody was named, but it was all there:

• Out of Tokyo location in a town with a giant soy sauce factory - check!
• Tiny dojo with more students (mainly foreign) than floor space - check!
• No changing facilities apart from a toilet - check!
• Shrine on the back wall of the dojo - check!
• Racks full of obscure training weapons on the wall - check!

Now, those things could apply to almost any dojo, but there was much more as I read on:

• Diminutive but smiley grandmaster who only says one English word: "Play!" - check!
• Strange bowing in process involving nine Japanese syllables, claps and double claps - check!
  
• Techniques never demonstrated the same way twice - check!
• Pinning people to the ground with arm locks rather than letting them get up - check!
• An Australian in the corner translating into English for everyone (Ed Lomax?) - check!

Again, this is all fairly circumstantial, except for maybe the first two, but then:

• Grandmaster administering Godan tests with a golden shinai - check!

Yup, no doubt at all, that's the Hombu in Noda all right. It was very weird to read about it in a fiction book. It also made me wonder if the author had actually been there, or just read about it. Not that it really matters much but it was very strange, a bit like when you see somewhere you know on TV.