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Our Trip to the Morikami Museum (2004)

By Sherry Femal

Saturday and Sunday February 28^th and 29^th we went to the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach for their Hatsume Spring Fair.  It marks the celebration of the beginning of spring.  Both Mike and I had been before, but Mike had never been for the fair. We surprised our friend Jason Carrol for his birthday and took him and his girlfriend Kat Blixt for the weekend. Little did Jason know that he was going to do a demonstration both days.  When we broke the news to him on Friday night around 8:30, he was so excited and extremely surprised.  We had worked out all the details with Kat so she could make sure he was packed and ready to leave, even though he didn’t know he was going away for the weekend.

Friday night on our way to Delray Beach (it was a five hour drive for us) we stayed in a Howard Johnsons in Vero Beach. We have nicknamed it the screaming HoJo.  It was the worst room some of us have ever stayed in. Thankfully it was so bad, because we had to soak the tatami mats (for Saturdays demo) in the bath tub.  Wasn’t that a smell!! We had to put it in the tub, cover it with water and put two cement blocks on top so it wouldn't float. Well the drain in the tub didn’t work to well, so we had to keep the water running all night. If that wasn’t bad enough, when we woke up on Saturday, we had to shower with it.  Since it was 6:00am, and dark, there was no way to take it out to the truck before showers. You can only imagine how many times that story was told over the two days at Morikami.

Saturday night we stayed in a beautiful Hampton Inn about ten minutes from the museum and thankfully we didn’t have to soak the tatami there or we would have had to take it through the lobby (marble floors) and on the elevator to the 3^rd floor. You can only imagine how happy all four of us were when we saw this hotel.

The demonstrations went very well on Saturday and Sunday. We had to be on stage at 1:30 both days. Our demo lasted for twenty minutes with all of us on stage doing something. I was the only one of the four not swinging a sword. I was in charge of narrating the entire demo. I'm not sure if my college speech class helped for this or not. Mike, Jason and Kat said they could not tell I was nervous at all.  I think I had goose bumps for a solid twenty minutes both days.  Mike, Jason, and Kat all did Kata first (slow and precise movements that you do by yourself), then Mike and Jason did kumitachi (the same movements as kata but they have to face each other and attack without cutting the other with their sword.  The last ten minutes Jason and Mike both did a series of cuts. Jason did a very good job cutting and I know Mike was very proud of him.  Mike cut after Jason and did much harder cuts.  He did one handed cuts, a cut that he has to cut the tatami twice before it falls and for the finally he cut three tatami rolled into one. To give you an idea, it measures about 7 or 8 inches in diameter.  That was quite impressive, since he cut it twice.  The audience was very impressed and asked a lot of questions after each demo.

If anyone is interested, you can go to their website at www.morikami.org. If they have the schedule on the website you will see us at 1:00 along with the Jujitsu dojo that performed.  I think the most exciting thing that happened all weekend was after the demo on Sunday, when one of the representatives from the Morikami asked if Mike and Jason would like to be in a commercial for the museum for the next fair. They both were glowing with pride. We didn’t think they would ever come back to earth after they were done filming.  They took quite a bit of footage of both of them and Jason even got to do some kicks, after he did his sword portion.  We are going to keep in touch with the museum to find out when the commercial will be done and if we can get a copy.