Interloper View

I took my children to watch this movie last night. It is a Japanese live action version of a popular anime series (with English subtitles). I was surprised that both of them immediately agreed to watch the movie at night.  This is the first time my daughter has been to the movies at night. The poster for the movie is a picture of a person with a smiley face was not very impressive. However, after watching the movie, I found it funny and understand why my children wanted to watch the movie. The story is about an octopus-like creature threatening to destroy the world on March of the following year. The creature had just destroyed a large part of the moon leaving only a crescent. It is strange that such a powerful creature wants to be a teacher for 3-E of a prestigious Kunugigaoka Junior High School. It appears that the creature was fulfilling a promise to a former teacher to class 3-E. The students gave the teacher a  nickname Koro Sensei. As the movie progress, we get...

My son wanted to learn Aikido so I decided to accompany him in the class. Learning any kind of self defence is important. Learning self defence is more than just learning how to fight. It is about how to observe and beware of our surrounding. It is also knowing how to avoid getting into threatening situation and what to do when we are not able to avoid the situation. Sometimes I wonder if I could have avoided getting mugged had I taken up the lessons earlier. I learned how to position my body to avoid injury when falling. That knowledge might have helped save me from losing my teeth . In order for the training to be useful the movements need to become natural and be part of our instinct. This is the same like learning how to ride a bicycle. When we ride a bicycle, we do not need to think of how to balance or turn, we just focus on where we want to go and just go. In order for the movement to become natural (or second nature), frequent practice is necessary. It is also necessar...