Angry White Pyjamas is a book written by Robert Twigger about his time in a one-year intensive program of studying Yoshinkan aikido. The book is set in Tokyo in the mid-1990s. Twigger is living with two friends in a tiny apartment near central Tokyo. They all decide to enrol at the Yoshinkan Hombu Dojo in order to get fit and break out of their sedentary life-style. Soon after beginning regular training, Twigger decides that the only way to truly experience aikido is to do the Yoshinkan Senshusei course, a gruelling 11-month program to train up instructors of Yoshinkan aikido. The course... consists of four hours of training, five days a week, in addition to dojo-cleaning duties, special training weekends and demonstrations. Twigger spends the majority of his time describing the rigor and sometimes agony of the very intensive course. He refers to doing kneeling techniques, or suwari-waza, until his knees bled, only to practice the next day and in so doing tear open the scabs. He describes techniques being performed with such vigor and intensity that smashing one's head into the mat was a frequent occurrence.
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| Author: | Robert Twigger |
| Genre: | Autobiography, Biography, Sociology |
| Number of editions: | 3 |