It’s a shame about your face
And the sumo-wrestling monkey
I can still clearly remember the phrase I used to learn relative pronouns in Japanese way back in high school:
相撲をする猿
sumo wo suru saru
The sumo-wrestling monkey.
There are tons of ways to learn vocabulary in a second language, but one of my favourites is with silly sentences just like this.
When I was learning Chinese I came up with another:
你的脸很糟糕
Nǐ de liǎn hěn zāogāo
’It’s a shame about your face’.
The thing is though,
it kind of backfired.
Right now, it truly is a shame about my face. If you met me or watched any of my videos from last year you would have seen a red spot just above my right eye. It turns out that spot was a pre-cancerous Solar Keratosis, a spot formed from too much UV.
Having the complexion of a glass of milk and growing up under the harsh NZ sun would do that.
So I got it removed.
And I currently have 21 stitches (yes, I counted them) and a huge bandage on my forehead.
All up, the procedure took about 90 minutes and I was conscious the whole time. Lying there at the whim of the surgeons reminded me vividly of waterfall meditation, when you’re at the whim of nature. You all but have no choice to go with the flow. Logically, I treated it as such and do what I always do in waterfall meditation, I recited the heart sutra.
So there’s that.
But also, the concept of death and rebirth is extremely relevant.
Physically, I will never be the same. It was my first time ever going under the knife. Mentally too, I can’t go back. I just accept the scar as a visual reminder of Mujo, impermanence.
But more importantly, I now know what it feels like to be a sumo-wrestling monkey.
Daily Yamabushi Posts for March 7 to 19, 2026
Daily Yamabushi posts for March 7 to 19, 2026.
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