Hard Rain

Katsuhiko."
    The eyes didn't blink. "Ishihara-san never mentioned your name."
    "Was he supposed to?"
    Still no blink. "Our club has a custom. If a member mentions the club
    to a nonmember, he also mentions the nonmember to the club."
    No blink from me, either. "I don't know your customs. Ishihara-san
    told me this would be the right kind of place for me. Can I train here
    or not?"
    The eyes dropped down to the gym bag I was carrying. "You want to
    train now?"
    "That's what I'm here for."
    The slat closed again. A moment later the door opened.
    There was a small antechamber behind it. Cinder-block construction.
    Peeling gray paint. The owner of the eyes was giving me the once-over.
    He didn't seem impressed. They never do.
    "You can train," he said. He was barefoot, wearing shorts and a
    tee-shirt. I placed him at five-feet-nine and eighty kilos. Tending
    toward the burly side. Salt and pepper crew-cut, age about sixty. Past
    what I sensed had been a formidable prime, but still a hard-looking guy
    with no bullshit, no posturing.
    "Sore wayokatta," I replied. Good. Behind the burly guy and to his
    right was a smaller, wiry specimen, dark-complected for a Japanese, his
    head shaved to black stubble. I recognized the bloodshot eyes the same
    pair that had initially regarded me through the mesh. Though slighter
    than the first guy, this one radiated something intense and
    unpredictable.
    The smaller guys can be dangerous. Never having been able to rely on
    their size for intimidation, they have to learn to fight instead. I
    know because, before filling out in the army, I had been one of them.
    The antechamber was adjacent to a rectangular room, about twenty feet
    by thirty. It smelled of old sweat. The room was dominated by a judo
    tatami mat. A half-dozen muscular specimens were using it for some
    kind of randori, or live training. They wore shorts and tee-shirts,
    like the guy who had opened the door, no judo gi On a corner of the
    mat, someone was practicing elbow and knee drops on a prone, man-shaped
    dummy. The dummy's head, neck, and chest were practically mummified
    with duct tape reinforcements.
    In another corner, two canvas heavy bags dangled on thick chains from
    exposed rafters. Large bags, seventy kilos or more. Man-sized. A
    couple of thick-necked guys with jakuza-style punch per ms were working
    them, no gloves, no tape, their blows not quick but solid, the whop!
    whop! of knuckles on leather reverberating in the enclosed space.
    The lack of wrist and finger tape interested me. Boxers wear tape to
    protect their hands. But you get dependent on the tape, and then you
    don't know how to hit someone without it. Even Mike Tyson once broke a
    hand when he hit another fighter bare-handed in a late night brawl. In
    a real fight, you break your hand, you just lost the fight. If you
    were fighting for your life, you just lost that, too.
    And no judo gi That was also interesting, especially in
    tradition-loving Japan. Purists will tell you that training with the
    judo gi is more realistic than without, because after all, people
    rarely fight naked. But modern attire a tee-shirt, for example is
    often more like naked than it is like the reinforced, belted gi.
    Training exclusively in the gi, therefore, while traditional, is not
    necessarily the height of realism.
    All signs that these were serious people.
    "You can change in the locker room," the salt and pepper guy told me.
    "Warm up and you can do some randori. We'll see why Ishihara-san
    thought this would be a good place for you."
    I nodded and headed to the locker room. It was a dark space with a
    floor of dirty gray carpet. Its half-dozen battered metal lockers were
    positioned on either side of a solid-looking exterior door, secured
    with a combination lock. I changed into cotton judo pants and a
    tee-shirt, but left the jacket in the bag. Best to blend.
    I returned to the main room and stretched. No one seemed to take
    particular notice of me except for the dark-complected guy, who watched
    me while I warmed up.
    After about fifteen minutes he walked over to me. "Randori?" he
    asked, in a tone that was more a challenge than an invitation.
    I nodded, averting my eyes from his hard stare. In my mind, our
    contest was already under way, and I prefer my opponents to
    underestimate me.
    I followed him to the center of the mat, slightly meek, slightly
    intimidated.
    We circled around each other, each looking for an opening. In my
    peripheral vision I saw that the