A different type of night-out

It is called "Figure Four Club", named
after a particularly painful and difficult
wrestling move!

Last night I accompanied my wrestler to a practise at his new club. It is a simple 45-minute two-train journey.

This was his third time there, and though we're accompanying him at the moment, the goal is for our son to be comfortable managing this whole thing on his own. On the previous two occasions David went with him, but I was on duty last night as David had already spent more than three hours on six trains and needed a quiet evening.

I think our son will manage the journey okay, even though it means changing trains at one of the largest railway stations in the world (Ikebukuro). The biggest challenge is not the trains or the wrestling, but the Japanese conversation: eg. introducing your mum, saying when you're ready to leave (we've asked him to leave at 9, not 9.30 on a school night) etc.

I am happy that he's getting plenty of Japanese listening practise. The coach instructs in Japanese and so our son's learning all sorts of new vocab. Last night we both learnt "touritsu", which means handstand. I'll leave you to imagine what sort of wrestling move requires someone to do an handstand! It was pretty impressive. I saw first-hand how quickly my son picks up new moves, even when they're explained in Japanese. That too was impressive.

This is our wrester pinning anther middle
schooler. And you can see it was nearly
9.15pm we had trouble leaving—
it really is quite addictive. I love watching
people do things that they're passionate
about, this is a good example of that.
Our son was a tiny bit reluctant to attend last
night's practise as he felt a bit tired. Afterwards he was
glad I'd persuaded him to go as he felt very
energised.

They train in a tiny room in a basement that I'm guessing is not much bigger than 7 x 5 metres. Really, like not that far removed from wresting in our lounge room, except this room is covered from wall to wall (and part-way up the wall) with wrestling mats. A boy's paradise!

I didn't hang around in the tiny, sweaty room for long, I basically "delivered" him and then went and read at McDonalds down the street. I came back a few minutes before 9pm and got to see the last 20 minutes or so before we finally left (before everyone else). The only place to "be" in the room was on the floor next to the door, so I did feel like a bit of an intrusion (a woman, at that). Two of the wrestlers nearly landed on me at one point!

It is nearly 14 years since I first entered into parenting and I could never have imagined that I'd spend a night with my son doing this!

By the way, travelling on public transport or walking in our quiet suburban streets at 10pm isn't dangerous here, so we're not too worried about him on that front. But hopefully soon he'll be able to do this on his own. Though we enjoy the one-on-one time with him and seeing him enjoy training like this, I'd much rather spend those 3 1/2 hours at home and get to bed a bit earlier.