May 3, 2011

She wants to Keep Fighting

Posted by gaijinass under Combat Sports, Le Tigre | Tags: kickboxing, Laura Janjira, Le Tigre |
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She wants to Keep Fighting

Guest post by Le Tigre

In my other blog I covered my first two professional fights in Japan.

However, I had three altogether. And the third and final one left me with a bad taste in my mouth about fighting in Japan.

I already didn’t trust the promoters from the experience of my first fight. And I felt like my coach had good intentions for me, but I found that I didn’t follow his way of thinking and sometimes had to go against some of his advice.

As I mentioned before, I had been training over the summer for a possible fight in August 2010. I felt great after dropping the 20 pounds and getting a fresh perspective on training from my friend GaijinAss. However, I ended up turning down that fight. It was all too similar to the first fight I had, being another Japanese champion. I got really frustrated about why they kept offering me fights against women who had 10x more experience than me. I tried talking about it with my coach but he seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with it.

I started to question my own judgment again, because according to him I should have just been happy to get offered any fights at all. That I shouldn’t worry about winning, and to just look at it as a challenge and for gaining experience.

After being offered at least 3 fights that I considered out of my league I was getting angry. Especially since all the Japanese people around me seemed to think that it was a mistake to turn down these fights, though I can understand the point they were making. There are not many women who fight at my weight, and they argued that a fighter shouldn’t worry about experience levels and just wants to fight no matter what. I can agree with that to an extent. But I still stand by my decision to not take a fight against someone who has over 20 fights when I have 2.

If they really wanted to help me as a fighter, then they should have worked with me to find opponents at my level so I could get experience and confidence before having to fight champions. I even told my coach that I would drop 15 more pounds to get to the next lower weight class where more women fight. After he called the promoters and told them that, they said I could get many fights at that weight. I started to get excited again, finally some even matches. However, I never got offered even one fight in that weight division.

I try to stay away from broad generalizations and stereotypes.

But I do believe that there was some Japanese nationalism (on some level) going on that contributed to the types of fights I was being offered.

Let’s face it, everybody always roots for the home team to win.

Of course that may have just been me being paranoid and had nothing to do with it, but after my experiences I was starting to wonder.

I even tried to find my own fights. I found one Japanese woman who had 3 pro fights and was only 10 pounds lighter than me (A weight I could have cut to.) We contacted her gym and asked if they wanted to set up a fight. A couple of days later the answer came in….No. For whatever reason she didn’t want to fight me.

So finally, I got offered a fight that was going to be October 17th 2010. The promoters told me that it was against a Japanese lady who didn’t have any professional kickboxing fights. It would be her debut. Of course I accepted this fight. I tried to get more info about her, but they only gave me her first name, which I believe was a nickname, and her weight. I had a feeling that she probably had fighting experience in something else that they weren’t telling me about, but I let it go and just started training.

Training for this fight was one of the most difficult times I have had thus far. It seemed like my gym was pushing me extra hard. I was, again, struggling with sparring. I don’t like to complain about training, but I do feel like they took it a bit far this time. There was no technical sparring at all, and for almost a month, every night it was just them pushing me around the ring. One time I almost got knocked out while I was wearing headgear. This kind of training made me feel like I was doing horrible, and I started backing up a lot, just trying to get away from their blows. I almost quit for real this time. I was sitting on the train on the way to the gym and just couldn’t imagine going through that one more day. But once I commit to something, I have a really hard time not finishing it. So I continued.

In the states I have a good group of friends from work, school and from the gym. But in Japan, it was much harder making connections with people. Trying to navigate around my dodgy Japanese skills and the social labyrinth that is Japanese society was a 24/7 tough time. And as much as I felt like most of my gym mates liked me, we were never able to connect on a deeper level. Therefore, I really believe that they thought they were making me more tough by pushing me this hard. However looking back, it’s probably part of the reason why I fought the way I did in this last fight.

As soon as I saw her I noticed how thick she was (mostly her legs and shoulders.) Not common for a Japanese woman at all. We were contracted to fight at 65 kg, same as my other fights. I had still been periodically training with Eric, and I felt my technique had gotten sharper and I had also discovered the true strength in my right punch. So I was feeling good in that aspect.

I remember hitting pads backstage before the fight. Everything was on point and powerful. It felt great. I was still nervous, but I always get a little nervous before a fight. I walked out to the ring and saw her standing across from me. The bell rang and we started walking towards each other. Before I could even get one punch in she ambushed me with a fury of punches. One of which caught me and I had to do a standing 8 count. After that I tried to focus and get back on track but as soon as we started again, it was another flurry of punches backing me into the corner. I was blocking, trying to throw out some punches and kicks but nothing was connecting. Then all of a sudden I saw the ref wave his hands in the air to stop the fight.

I couldn’t believe it. I was so angry he stopped the fight that quickly. I shook my head and looked down at my coach and asked,

‘What the fuck just happened?’

He just looked up at me and shrugged. I left the ring and walked backstage and tried to get an understanding of what had just gone wrong. The reason I was so angry is because although I had one 8 count I hadn’t been knocked down and I was still blocking and trying to fight back. I’ve seen fights where even after someone has been knocked down and their eyes are going back and forth, they let the fight continue. So why did they stop MY fight? My coach had no answers for me. I changed and went out and talked to my friends who were watching from the stands, and they agreed that it was pre-mature stoppage.

"These aren't even my truncks, they made me change for no reason before the fight."

Of course that’s the emotional side of me speaking. If I look at it rationally, I can’t get too angry. The ref was just doing his job and trying to protect me because obviously he thought I was in trouble. After all, I was the one who let her overwhelm me and back me into a corner. I was the one who just stood there, waiting to make my move. All actions I have come to regret to this day.

But what was really making me angry was that right before he stopped it I could FEEL her punches losing power. I knew that she was wearing out, and if the fight would have continued I would have gotten a chance to redeem myself. Therefore I felt robbed of that opportunity, and THAT is an infuriating and powerless feeling.

Of course I did learn a lot from that fight. Things said to me in training such as, ”Be first” and ”Don’t stand still” really resinated with me afterwards and I took these lessons to heart when I started training again. I really wanted to rematch her before I left Japan but I never got the chance. I told my coach that I would like to have at least one buffer fight in between our rematch to get more experience and hopefully gain some confidence back. But we ran into the same problems as before and sadly, I never got to fight anyone before I left.

Which of course leads me to where I am now, in the states working at the same Japanese restaurant that I worked at for years. Back when going to Japan was only just a dream.

Ironic? It would seem so.

I still see a lot of Japanese people and hear the language on a daily basis.

I just can’t seem to escape Japan.

As a prelude to my next blog, I’ll sum up by saying that I was scheduled to finish my school contract on March 25th 2011, and then I was going to hop on over to Australia for a working holiday year. But as everyone knows, March 11th came around and there was a huge earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan, and I decided to leave early and come home instead. I am still planning on going to Australia later this year.

And don’t count me out for kickboxing either. I may have had an unconventional experience in Japan, but I really do love training and want to continue with it wherever I end up. If, for whatever reason, I can’t fight in the states then I will keep training and try to fight when I go to Australia. Muay Thai is really popular out there, and I already have a specific gym picked out where I want to train.

To be continued…

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April 27, 2011

She likes to fight.

Posted by gaijinass under Combat Sports, Le Tigre | Tags: J-network, kickboxing, Laura Janjira, Le Tigre |
[9] Comments

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She Likes to Fight

Guest post by Le Tigre

After my not so fun experience at an Eikaiwa (private English school) down in Okazaki, I decided to head for the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. I yearned for the bright lights, and for some excitement! And that’s exactly what I found.

I had dabbled in Muay Thai kickboxing in the states for 3 years. I really enjoyed it and had 3 amateur competitions over 2 of those years. It was hard to really get a foothold in it though because at the time I was a full-time student and had a semi full-time job. So I was obviously spread pretty thin over 3 things that all manipulate my time in demanding ways.

After coming to Tokyo I quickly found a gym and started training. I hadn’t trained in 3 months due to all the moving around, and the first time punching and kicking those pads was a breath of fresh air. Muay Thai has always been my stress release. If you’ve ever had a sport or physical activity completely consume you, then you may know how I feel about kickboxing…I need it.

If you’ve read any of my other posts than you’ll know I had a really hard time with money and adjusting to Japan during my first year. I had started training at my gym in May ’09 and around August of that year it seemed like my luck was changing. I got a job as a part-time elementary school teacher, AND I got my first fight offer. These couldn’t have come at a better time, I was living with my friend for free, hated my current job at a bar, and was about to give up on Japan.

I had been training at my gym for a month when my coach mentioned that he thought I could go pro. Of course I was enthralled and told him I would love to do that. So he started making phone calls to see if he could find me a fight. Then the offer came in. It was set for September 27th, two months later. We enthusiastically started negotiating the details, theeeen things got dicey.

Who was my opponent going to be? Because I had learned that most Japanese women fight around 55 kg (120 lb), and I was 70 kg (155 lb.) The promoters told me I needed to drop to 65 kg (143 lb) but explained that the only woman even close to my weight was a well established Japanese fighter with almost 20 fights, who already had a champion belt. At first I was apprehensive, but was eventually led to believe that she was a champion by “luck.” One of the promoters even told us that he had seen her fight and thought she had weak punches. Me and my coach were still on the fence, so they sent us a video of one of her fights. After watching it we decided that she was good, but not too much out of my league. Her gym, however, was also paranoid. This was going to be marketed as my debut pro fight, and if she lost to me it would no doubt make her and her gym look bad. It didn’t help that her coach had googled me and supposedly found videos of me as a pro MMA fighter. I don’t know what he found, but I’ve never fought MMA. I can only assume that was all B.S. We told him that, but they were still worried. So we finally negotiated the contract with me at 65 kg, her at 63 kg and because of the weight difference she would get 6 oz gloves, and I would get 10 oz gloves.

The huge difference in glove sizes should have been a red flag. If you’ve ever boxed then you know that 6 oz gloves are small, and you can feel the person’s knuckles, 10 oz on the other hand are bigger, have more padding and absorb some impact. I should have never agreed to those terms, especially because of her experience. But I had been swept away in the excitement, and was still holding onto the idea of her somehow floating through all her fights to get a champion belt with ‘weak punches.’ Looking back, I realize how absurd this sounds.
You can probably guess how the fight went, I wasn’t knocked out but there was a three knockdown rule, that after my ass hit the canvas 3 times they automatically stopped the fight.

In a daze I walked to the backstage area, my coach put some ice on my face and asked if I was okay. I was, but I was almost speechless. I couldn’t believe my first fight had gone down like that. I had trained harder than I ever had before, and had felt so confident and it was all smashed in a matter of one minute and forty-eight seconds.

I ended up looking more closely to the dvd of her fight they gave us. I then realized it was from 3 years earlier. No doubt before her champion belt and probably some 10-15 fights ago. From then I realized that I was on my own. No one here was going to do me any favors so I’d better make more careful judgement calls without getting swept away by promises of recognition and glory. I do however want to stress that I DON’T regret taking the fight. I would not agree to those terms now, but it did give me experience and I learned a lot about myself as a fighter. The limits I thought I had but overcame, my strengths and weaknesses, and that fighting is what truly motivates and inspires me.

I had taken a break and went home for the holidays. Upon returning January 9th 2010, my coach told me I had another fight offer. This time to a European woman who only had one professional fight, same as me. It would be January 31st however, not much time to prepare (especially after being in America for the holidays) so I jumped right back into training. She happened to train at the same gym as the champion, and I was eager to fight her. I was still angry because I felt the promoters had deliberately outmatched me, and it felt kind of personal since I knew she was training with the champion.

This time I wasn’t fighting for recognition or for the excitement. I was fighting to prove something to myself, to show everyone that I wasn’t a bad fighter, and to let her gym know that they hadn’t broken me. I would be back stronger than ever.

Day of the fight I remember stepping in the ring. It was a different feeling from the first moment. Now the desire to prove myself was focused on giving everything I had, I was just ready to go. If you look at my photos from that fight, you can see it in my face, total angry determination. And it came through, I overwhelmed her and took the win. I ended up with a pretty good shiner from her, but it was okay because that was my trophy. I also felt like I had won my own battle.

"Le tigre attacks! The Claws! The Gnashing of Teeth!"

My training was pushed to a new level in the summer of ’10.

That’s when I met a new friend, an American, a former military guy who was also a pro-fighter named Eric Barnes. It was July, and my next fight offer was in the end of August. But I had totally fallen off the bandwagon since my last fight and gained 20 pounds.

Thankfully Eric had taken an interest in my training and offered to help me get ready for my next fight. I would still be at my other gym, but I would work with him 2-3 days/week. However, it ended up being more than that since I had a 4 week summer vacation with mornings open to train with him, followed up with my gym at night.

I had never trained that much for anything. Considering I was in such awful shape, it was horrendous at first. But he had a positive, no B.S. way of thinking that I grasped onto and really connected with. A good example would be one morning when I went into training with him at 8 A.M., I had only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before and felt like crap, and it was coming through in my training. Well, Eric noticed and told me flat out to snap out of it. I was told to “take 800 milligrams of Uncle Bob’s -suck it the fuck up- and get serious.” He said that being tired is a feeling you can control and overcome. He reminded me that I came here to train, and that I was doing what I loved so I needed to get the most out of it while I was there.

In that instance I was grumpy and annoyed that he called me out like that, but it got my ass moving. Then I realized that I could train a lot better than I thought when I felt shitty and this realization was great. I always try to remember these things when it gets tough. Training for a fight is, of course, grueling and mentally and physically exhausting. But I seem to struggle the most during sparring. I can kick the bag 200 times, and do pad work for hours, but when it comes to being punched and kicked repeatedly, it gets to a point where I feel like I’m giving everything I have and it’s still not enough. And when no one is easing up, or giving me a break it gets so frustrating.

There are no female fighters at my gym, so I have to spar with men. And they definitely don’t take it easy on me because I’m a woman. They know I am a professional fighter and want me to be prepared for my fights, so they push me hard.

That’s why when it gets to that point of being so frustrating that I feel like giving up, I really have to remind myself why I’m doing this.

"Why...do I do this again?"

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July 22, 2010

White Woman : Japan Sex

Posted by gaijinass under Guest posts, Le Tigre, Sex in Japan, Shinjuku | Tags: host, Host Club, Japanese Host, Kabukichou, Laura Janjira, Le Tigre, Sex in Japan, Teach in Japan |
[20] Comments

White Woman : Japan Sex

By: Le Tiger

Sex is an amazing motivator.

There are many things that motivate me to lose weight. Three things in particular right now; One being the fact that I feel like a fat-ass compared to all the skinny/small Japanese people, ESPECIALLY the women. Two is a major one, kickboxing. I HAVE to lose weight for my competition coming up in September, about 7 kg / 15 pounds. And the third one….

I want to have hot sex. I told you, its an amazing motivator.

I want to lose weight, feel sexy, and feel comfortable being naked in front of someone. After my last fight (January 2010)I was at 65 kg / 143 pounds and feeling great about my win, SO great that I decided it was time to reward myself by binge eating piles of junk food everyday. Inevitably, I got depressed and homesick soon after and found I couldn’t STOP eating. I have been trying to diet ever since. I was my heaviest at 75 kg / 165 pounds, and have lost some weight in the last month or so, but I still have a way to go.

I think though, that most of you readers are not here to listen to my lamentations in regards to my attractive binge eating habits so I will just get on with it. About my sex…..

Shion

There were many firsts with Shion. First time I had sex in Japan, first Japanese guy I ever had sex with, first ‘Host‘ I had sex with, and first Love Hotel I ever used. To get the story set up, I want to explain what led me to find and sleep with a guy like Shion. I had just moved to Tokyo after quitting my shitty job at an Eikaiwa down in Okazaki. I guess, the job itself wasn’t that shitty, just a bunch of crappy circumstances. The most immediate disappointment was just my initial impressions about Japan. I have wanted to come to Japan ever since I was 12 years old, and was so excited when I actually got a job and plane ticket to actually fly over here. But that all faded fast after being placed in Okazaki, a very small, boring city. I suppose Okazaki is a nice enough place, but I came here looking for my fantasy, not for real life! Come on Japan, Work with me!

There were many other things that went on in those first two months, but that’s another blog. I finally had to quit that job and move to Tokyo. Also around this time, I was getting out of a relationship with a guy from back home. There were feelings of depression, loneliness, anger, and of course a lot of horny hot energy which for the most part, had no good place to go. (This would be because I went for having sex-sexy-sex-sex ALL THE DAMN TIME to not having any, at all, for months.)

The first job I found in Tokyo was at a ‘foreign ladies’ bar in Tokyo. This is where I met my awesome friend, Hannah, who is a singer from LA. She had also moved to Tokyo recently, so we were both ready to party it up. This is where Shion came into the picture. Hannah and I had started off going to normal bars and clubs, which were fun. But then we discovered ‘Host’ bars. For those of you who don’t know, a Host bar is like a Hostess bar; where young, pretty girls are paid to sit, talk, and drink with men; but it’s the other way around; young, attractive men are paid to talk, flirt, and drink with women. We visited quite a few bars over a couple of weeks, having fun getting all this attention from guys. We ended up finding a favorite bar (in the middle of Kabuki-chou, a very classy area.) which is where Shion had worked. We invited him and some of the other guys out for more drinking after they finished work. We ended up going to a karaoke bar and Shion and I hit it off. He was your typical Host; anime-styled hair, fashionable (yet ridiculous clothes, good looking, skinny. But he had half-sleeve tattoos on both of his arms, and I’ve always had a thing for tattoos. After hanging out a few times, it was set up that Shion and I would end the night in a Love Hotel. (By the way, he didn’t speak English, and my Japanese was still awful at the time, so that’s why it was set up with one of the other guys who spoke English, and of course, Hannah.)
So we were off! We checked into a hotel nearby, went up to the room…which was everything you could expect from a Love Hotel; blacklights mixed with soft lighting, music playing in the background, and a drawer full of condoms. So we started undressing each other, I had a condom with me, so I gave it to him, he put it on and we started. Then, about 2 minutes into it he stopped and said, ‘Too big’ while making a frowny face and motioning at the condom. I said, ‘Ooooh, whoops!’ Then he asked, ‘American?’ I nodded and we both laughed a bit while he threw the condom away. Now, just to be clear, he wasn’t THAT small, he was normal in length but I guess he had just slightly less girth than the average American guy. At any rate, he pulled out a condom from the drawer and we went along our way, and surprisingly he seemed completely unphased by what had just happened.

Then there was the time we got it on in my guesthouse. This would have been the second time we had sex. Neither one of us had money for a hotel, so I suggested my guesthouse in Ginza, as he told me through translation of his friend, that he shared a room. So we were off to my guesthouse, THIS time with Japanese condoms in hand. My room was really small, about 10 ft by 8 ft, and I had a futon on the floor with some clothes and stuff next to it. We started getting it on, as people do, and about halfway through, there was a strange noise coming from nearby. We both noticed it, looked around briefly, and then kept going. We finished, but the noise had not stopped. I sifted through the items by my futon, the pile of junk, and oh yes, of course, somehow my vibrator had switched on. I pulled it out to turned it off, and out of nowhere, this cartoon character of a man, someone that hadn’t spoken 3 words to me in English, the guy that couldn’t order fries with his Big Mac if his life depended on it, Shion yelled, ‘Laura!…. Masturbation!!’

AWESOME.
Guest house with walls of cardboard and the monolingual gent in bed with me manages to yell my name at the top of his lungs and follow that up with “Masturbation??” Somethings, truly are priceless.

Guys in Japan

In America, I usually had a boyfriend or a special friend, and often with good, sometimes great chemistry. In Japan….one year and 5 months later, I am still waiting. I believe there are a few reasons for this.
First being the language barrier. It’s true, I have been in Japan over a year, but the first year I was here was hell for me and I didn’t really care about learning Japanese as much as I cared about having someplace to live, some food to eat, and NOT getting groped or forced to give BJs (As explained in my last post.)So my Japanese level is not where I want it to be. But I am starting to change that this year.
Also, I think my self-image, at least lately, has affected my sex life. Obviously, if I don’t feel sexy or attractive, guys are not going to find me those things either. And I can honestly say I haven’t felt very attractive for the last 4 months or so. But that will change soon too, as I plan on getting my ass in top shape this summer.
As for guys in Japan….well, this may be a bit unfair, but I have narrowed it down into 6 categories…
1) Young, Japanese guys who aren’t interested at all in foreign girls.
2) Young, Japanese guys who are interested, but usually just for a one-night stand.
3) Old, Japanese guys who are ewww.

4) Foreign guys who are only interested in Japanese girls.
5) Foreign guys who are interested, but who want just a fling, and are usually loud, drunk, and on vacation or something.
And….

6) Married or taken guys.
I guess there is a seventh category…Japanese and foreign guys who are interested in foreign girls and are looking for more than one night stands, but this group is pretty illusive.

I guess I’ll just have to be patient. Hopefully I can have hot sex before the one year mark, but considering that’s about 2 weeks away….it might be cutting it close.

Footnote: Hot sex pre-one year mark NOT ATTAINED. How do you spell F-A-I-L-?

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Gaijinass