Andrea asks, "why are you getting so fightey lately?" That question has nothing to do with a deteriorating marital relationship. She's talking about Pride, K-1, and most recently kendo, Japanese fighting sports which I have been taking in an interest in. She wants to know, why the interest? Well, it's because I have a sports-shaped hole that yearns to be filled. And in Canada, it was never an issue. Between basketball, football, and hockey, I was never less than satisfied. And lots of people to do those sports with too.

Not so in Japan. I am starting to accept the fact that if I want to keep up with basketball, well, more than just reading yahoo sports reports, I am going to have to get satellite or something. Because it appears that on regular TV the only thing I will have the opportunity to see are the NBA Finals. And every basketball fan knows that these days they mean nothing. The real finals are already over. Lakers won. Damn Lakers. The rest is just formality...

But in Japan the really popular sports you can get together with some guys and watch without worrying about a 12 hour time lag revolve around fighting. Pride is the best one. Pride is to boxing what a street fight is to ballroom dancing. K-1 is pretty good too, just a little boring of late, with lesser known names than Pride.

But as far as actually getting involved, you are not going to see me fighting Pride anytime soon. I value my teeth, bones, facial structure etc (though who knows - maybe Pride fighting could help in re-aligning a crooked chin...). Kendo looks interesting though. Kendo is what the actors from Star Wars studied before doing the light-sabre fight scenes. So I am looking into it.