Читать книгу The Mushin Way to Peak Performance - Veltri Michael - Страница 9

After two years in California, I was deployed to the Marine base in Okinawa, Japan. I went looking for an aikido school on the island, and as it happened, there was only one. That school was run by the man who became my teacher, mentor, and lifelong friend, Professor Iwao Yamaguchi.

I was originally stationed on the island for just a year, but I extended my deployment through the end of my enlistment, in 1993. I advanced to become a first-degree black belt in aikido while I was stationed on Okinawa – and I also started to learn my way around Japanese culture.

Of course, I made plenty of mistakes. I remember I visited this beautiful Buddhist temple pretty early on in my time on Okinawa. I was studying Japanese at the time, but I wasn't very good at it yet. I thought I was asking this monk what the name of the temple was – but every time I asked, he kept pointing down the hallway toward the bathrooms. Was this some kind of mysterious Zen nonanswer? Nope. Turns out, what I was actually asking him was not what is the temple called, but “What is the name of your honorable toilet?” The Japanese word for “temple” and “toilet” are very similar, and I was using the wrong word! This very patient monk was just pointing out the bathroom to me, over and over.

By the time my service in the Marine Corps was finished, I had learned a lot about aikido and about Japanese culture. But I knew I had more to learn. I decided to stay on, and I found a little-known visa that would allow me to stay for another year to study the culture. So for a year I lived the life of a traditional martial arts apprentice, studying with my teacher, Professor Yamaguchi. I also studied the Japanese language and Zen meditation. By the end of that year, I was approaching fluency in Japanese, and I was a second-degree black belt in aikido.

After that, I finished my college degree, studying part time at the prestigious International Christian University in Tokyo. I stayed on in Japan after I graduated, spending a year researching keiretsu, the large Japanese corporate conglomerates that dominate Japan's business landscape. My professional experience in Japan culminated in working for many years at a large international consulting firm helping Western Fortune 500 companies succeed in the Japanese market.

Finally, in 1999, I moved back to the United States, began working in the corporate world, and teaching aikido on the side. And then, in 2003, everything changed.