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Jeff Bristol
22nd September 2000, 01:42
Recently I incurred Athlete's Foot, I THINK during my training, which made me wonder something. How common are these problems in your dojos, or in Japan? I supose this part of the question may fit soemwhere else as well, but could this be a reason that, as I have heard, the bottom of the foot is considered unclean in Japan?

Jeff Bristol

Aaron Fields
28th September 2000, 17:45
Jeff,

Athlete's foot from mats is very possible. At the dojo I teach in we keep our mats really clean, so we've had no problems. Now the high school I coach wrestling in is another story. I've had guys catch ringworm and a couple of other mat nasties. The problem is that the kids hate mopping the mats so when I give the order it is only done so-so. Also non-wrestlers get into the wrestling room and play around on the mats with their street shoes. Usually all it takes is the first case of mat nasties and the hygiene issues clear right up (it is difficult to get girls with ringworm.) Anyway, sorry about your feet.

Regards,
Aaron

hyaku
29th September 2000, 01:11
Unbelievabley I have no athelets foot problems in Japan.

On the good side in walking about inside one does not wear shoes, so the feet get a chance to breath more. Even in buidings with normal floors one wears sandals. Shoes are more formal footwear.

Opposed to this there are visitors slippers, toilet slippers and worst of all hospital slippers. I always remember a man with a terrible skin problem smiling and offering a visiting friend his slippers.

One should not show the feet in the dojo when sitting. People who cannot sit in seiza for long should tuck their feet in as much as possible.

Hyakutake Colin

P.S.I have a special Ogasawara Ryu practice coming up. I will try and get some more information as to why and when this came about. Perhaps someone else on the Forum has some good information. Mr Svinth?

Jeff Bristol
29th September 2000, 20:25
Thanks for the replies, I am kinda puzzled by it, cause our mats are usually pretty clean, but ah well. I used to wrestle in high school, so I know all about the problems with ringworm, those mats were like the ninth level of hell, things were growin on there science probably couldn't explain.



Jeff bristol

Joseph Svinth
30th September 2000, 00:57
On Ogasawara Ryu, my spies tell me this. Professor Bodiford is probably the one to ask, however, as all I know is what I find by typing "Ogasawara etiquette feet" into Google's search feature.

There are two "Ogasawara", one refers to etiquette and the other to horseback archery.

Here's the etiquette school: http://www.ogasawara-ryu.com/en/indexe.html
http://www.embjapan.org.uk/info_etiq.html

Beyond that, the connection with iai is that in the 1600s, after Omori Rokurozaemon left Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu, he reportedly combined his iai with Ogasawara reiho and came back with the seiza set called Omori-ryu, which is why people today do iaido from seiza.