Training with legend, missed two earthquakes and ate raw horse.

The first real MMA video I ever saw was “Choke” about Rickson Gracie fighting in Japan in 1995. One of the opponents were Yuki Nakai, the japanese Shooto champion. Being greatly outweighed by his opponents, and with sustaining a serious eye injury, he still managed to fight his way to the finals, where he ultimately was beaten by Rickson Gracie. His fighting spirit and courage won him a lot of fans world wide, including a young, danish teenage boy, who at that time just had found the interest for the exciting world of grappling and MMA.

He retired from MMA after that tournament and dedicated his time to learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yesterday, I visited his gym and had the honor of training with him and his team. It was a very cool experience, he was super nice and funny. Very interested in my trip.

I came at a technique class starting 6:30. There was only two other people there, so it was basically a private. We worked on some nice details on how to break the lockdown and pass halfguard. Good stuff I had never seen before.

Sparring started at 20:00 and went on till about midnight. People only showed up for the sparring really. About 25-30 people came and left during that period. The level was really high and everyone were super nice and friendly. I rolled with many black belts and brown belts. There were also some very game blue and purples. I ended up rolling for a few hours, before I called it a night.

After training, I felt so good. Endorphine rush like crazy. I can’t wait to do that again, what an experience!

When I got back, Ryan took me out for some super good and very interesting Japanese food. We had some strange stuff, my favorite being raw horse sushi :D

There has also been two earthquakes while I have been here. One was in the middle of the night, so I slept from that. The other one was on the way home from the gym, but I didn’t even notice it. The earthquakes now are very small, just like little shakes. I can’t in my wildest imagination see how these could harm me. Maybe if I stand naked under a bowl of acid, that balances on a rope and at the same time I am trying to sneak past a mad, hungry tiger, that is sleeping or something?

Location:５丁目,Shibuya,Japan