Sunday February 27th

Sunday, a day of rest!  When I got up this morning I carried out my usual routine of watching the Nine O'Clock Irish news (from the previous night) online as I ate my breakfast.  Wrote some emails, looked over some of my research and at around 11am I decided that I deserved a little luxury... So I hit off for Spa La Qua in the Tokyo Dome (Kasuga) area of the city.  I took my PhD thesis, a guidebook for Japan and my iPod with me.  This spa is noted as being Tokyo's most sophisticated bathing complexes and uses real onsen water pumped from 1700m underground.  So I enjoyed some time between the different baths of varying tempertaures, steamrooms, jacuzzi's and plungepools.  I also had a Thai massage for an hour (expensive but I think I deserved it!) and I spent the remainder of my time in the healing baden area where I slept, read and listened to my music as I looked out over Tokyo as day turned to night! 

Spoke with my parents, my aunt Christina and uncle Pat when I got back to my apartment.  It's always great to hear from home and Skype is a great job!  In terms of my week ahead... I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in in the dojo again this week.  I'm feeling fresh again after the weekend..  My research is going okay.. Feeling happier in myself about it.. This time two weeks I will hopefully have it wrapped up and emailed to both Niall and Seamus (my research supervisors) for them to review.  When you are near the end of a PhD you go through this process several times... Refining and more refining!  But I think/hope I'm nearly there.

I'm anxious to correct this little timing error which Yagi Sensei pointed out to me.  I know its very minor but I always had an idea that it was there as I feel that my gyaku-zuki zuki on one side is a little bit more natural/smoother than the other.  So I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to practice this in front of the mirrors in the Hombu Dojo during the week!  Everyday over the past three weeks I do about 45 minutes of stretching in my apartment, particularly focusing on the inside of my thighs/groin area.  I know that it is benefiting me in terms of my flexibilty and my kicking but it is a slow process!  So looking forward to a good hard week of training and hopefully a little bit more improvement!