Even the taste buds.

Nodotsukiage. Put hyphens or spaces pretty much anywhere you want in that word/phrase, it still means a strike to the throat, moving upward. In other words, nodotsukiage is a full speed strike, the whole body behind it, right into the neck, with an upward push, knocking the opponent backward and into the air. Of course, after that, the opponent still has to hit the mat. Also: that strike to the throat-part-of-the-neck (close to literal translation) often involves striking the sternum, nose, or anywhere in between. It often involves striking the opponent full in the mouth. Of course, this is a strike in the "ai" sense, as opposed to the "go" sense. That means more bruising than a leaking-sort-of-bleeding. Trust me, as I've suffered plenty of both nodotsukiage and plain-old punches in the mouth: you want neither, and you want even less to have to think about which is worse.

Just now, though, I have a firm opinion: nodotsukiage is worse.

When your ukemi isn't fast and/or limber enough, and you catch a nodotsukiage the wrong way, your whole face gets kind of smooshed into your mouth at the same instant in which your teeth get clacked together. It hurts the teeth, the lips that run into them, and the cheeks you (read: I) inevitably bite during this process. The result is basically a canker sore from hell. The Orajel I'm using calls it, simply, a "mouth bite". Orajel's marketers either are masters of understatement or have never even seen nodotsukiage, much less felt it.

The part that makes all of this even worse than a plain-old punch in the mouth: the particular privacy of the problem. You get punched in the mouth, everybody knows it. You've got a fat lip, and that says: "yeah, I've been punched good and hard right in the mouth, and I'm still here; what else ya got?" With a tooth-hole on the inside of your cheek, you suffer in silence. If you do mention it to anyone, they ask why you don't just use Orajel. You explain that you do, and the person you're talking to never really understands that Orajel just doesn't cut it.

I'll give Orajel this much: it cuts down on that salt-and-blood taste you suffer the duration of a mouth sore's healing process. Especially now, because, apparently, Orajel now tastes like peppermint. The last time I used Orajel, I think I had braces. I hadn't even discovered aikido yet. I don't remember it tasting like peppermint back then. So, I've learned that, at least, from the stinging and burning pain that's been haunting every bite of food I've had since last week when my ukemi just wasn't good enough for that one nodotsukiage.

I took pictures; they were just too gross to post.