Happy Holidays all!

From Eastern Kendo to whomever reads this thing. Cheers! Our last practice for the year is this tuesday. Have a great New Year's eve and we will see you in 2010. Cheers!

Jodan at the 2009 Midwest Taikai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzNrd2mTiC0

This year was by far the most interesting year for me as a kenshi. With my foot injured, I had to rethink how to do Jodan with less fumikomi and more suri ashi. This tournament was the first attempt at fighting like this. Well, the practice paid off and the success was great. I was able to control my aite much more effectively to the point that I beat people that have destroyed me before. I strongly believe that going back to the basics again helped. Comments at the baquent later were more then I could handle as this was the first time that my jodan was complemented and actually critized by Tagawa sensei in a good light. Damn, I must have done something right. Well, let me try to tell you all what happened...

Sandan and up went first in the whole tournament so we could shimpan. That is no big deal and I was aware of it from the beginning, the big deal was that, when I looked at the brackets, I was the first match. Always fun to be the first match of the day after sleeping on a couch. Anyway, I was first up against Okada from Chicago Kendo Dojo. His seme was very good but his defensive kamai left his kote open and I was able to score men morote kote twice. I was able to get through that round and had a small rest while the rest of the round completed. The next match saw me facing my favorite sensei in Detroit Tani sensei. Now when Tani sensei came over here I was always impressed by the cleanliness and strength of his kendo. If you have read previous posts you can see that he has beaten me in the past as well. This time, with the new stance I beat him and it was one of the highlights of my kendo career. The match was very intense, but I was able to control some of the flow of the match and managed to make him miss a couple of times. I was throwing all of my ki and seme at him knowing that I had to beat him this time. As the match progressed I was not getting tired, which is odd for me, and realized that I could control a bit more. I pushed forard and he threw tsuki. Because I had control of the maai I was able to rock back out of the distance from the tsuki and land a powerful and resonating men. The match then ran out of time and I was onto the court semis. After some time, I was up against Inoue sensei from Chicago Kendo Dojo, most known for his purple do and his shiai kendo. It was the first time I have fought him since we were kids coming up in kendo. I knew it would be a tough match and it was. I decided to play a bit more with the seme and maai that had served me well against Tani sensei. The only issue this time was that he landed three hiki do that were not scored. I felt that I had two kote and a men but to no avail. He was off balance at a point and I hit men and "threw" him into the bleachers for hansoku against him. This was a continuation of my waza so no fault was given to me. After 4 minutes we were both even with nothing socred and went to encho. Now I knew he was tired and thought that I had the match won. I went for a kote morote men and I let the shinai go at the kote, as I tried to pull it back he tapped my men. This was called ippon. I, as well as Inoue sensei, were shocked that they called that and none of the dos earlier. I lost but was extremley happy about the matches.

It was then onto the teams.

We were a mixed bunch from Eastern, Detroit and Cleveland but happy to fight. We drew Cleveland first and managed to get through. The most interesting thing was my match against a nito kenshi as taisho. Agian, jodan verse nito. The only difference this time was that it ended in hikiwake because he knew what he was doing and we had the match won already so I was pushing but also pushing for the hikiwake. This was the first nito kenshi that actullay had an idea of seme that I had fought since nationals. The next team match was against Detroit A who won the whole thing. I was up against my old friend Morita sensei, the elder, and was excited to face him again. If you do not know Morita sensei he is 6' 2" and large like I am so the match was very strong. We had lost by then so the match was just a grudge math between him and I. It was a great match and I managed to get men on him. At one point we both hit men and collided. Well, when you have two people of that size colliding, well think about it, he wound up on the floor and I wound up standing against the other side of the court. What a match.

Overall my jodan felt completely different this time and it all has to do with going back to the basics. At the banquet Tagawa sensei pulled me aside and suggested that I work on more katate attacks. A great suggestion as long as I can force people to stay in my maai and not theirs. Tani sensei, Yoshida sensei, Murakami sensei and others all made comment that my jodan was strong which left me utterly speechless and the night ended on a high. Thanks to eveyrone in Chicago, particularly Andy for giving me a couch. See you next year at our place.

A terrific kakarigeiko vid.

Guys, I found this inspiring. We don't do kakarigeiko often for various reasons, but it's a training technique we should all be familiar with and this video shows a great example of it in practice.

Club Update, September 2009

Hello, everybody! This is from a club email, cross posted here at the EMU blog and I'll reference it verbally at practice. If I do not have the correct email for you, let me know.

So next week, September 15, marks the official beginning of Fall Semester classes at EMU. Abbey-sensei and I hope you've had a great summer. Some of you we've seen and practiced with, some of you we haven't seen so much for the usual reasons - work, family, school, the crap economy that has you either hunting for a job or working in remote locatons. Some of you are aware that I've been traveling for work a lot more and that Abbey-sensei has been injured, so it's been a crazy summer!

I want to let you know that we will be doing a lot more to attract students to the club, keep them, and get them involved. This has always been our intention at EMU Kendo but something we need to recommit ourselves to as best as possible. Having stated that I have a few policy items that I will address below. The short of it is, please help us meet our goal of making EMU Kendo the great place it's been and refresh it's goal to grow its membership. I've always been proud of the fact that EMU is very commuter friendly, a dojo that you can always come back to even if work or school or other things take you away for a while. I just want to up our game in terms of making it more involved in the campus that has been so good to us. Plus, I think I got this parenting thing down, so I have a bit more energy for this project. heh!

Next item: the annual Midwest Kendo Tournament will be in Chicago on November 13-15. If you're interested in competing, testing or both, please let Abbey-sensei and I know as soon as you can.

Next item: this weekend, 8/12 is U of M's first official practice of the new semester. I'll be there! Who's with me? Don't forget we can also be visiting the kendo clubs at Detroit, MSU, Battle Creek etc.

Right, some policy notes.

-Going forward, EMU kenshi must be responsible for running the practice. If Abbey or Kondek are not there, the ranking EMU kenshi must start and stop the practice and must be the principle instructor for beginners. Training in instructing beginners will be provided although a certain freedom (and responsibility) in instruction will also be assumed. If Abbey or Kondek are not there and the ranking EMU person is busy instructing beginners, leadership of the mawari-geiko, the rotation practice, should be extended to visiting sensei (usually Ponchart and Ken though this will not always be the case; could be visitors from Detroit or whomever). One reason for this is that U of M kenshi - and others, but especially U of M - are part of our family and such frequent visitors that we don't even think of them as guests - but they are guests, and as such should not have to address running practice. That goes for everybody. Moving forward, Kondek will be much more long-view in planning practices and will make use of a monthly calendar to help recognize when EMU kenshi will be in attendance.

-Any new beginner must first watch a practice before deciding whether to join EMU kendo. This has been our policy in the past and we've bent on this one quite a bit but I think we should stick to it. You come, you watch your first practice, you decide if it's what you really want. Then, if you come back - and we hope you do - you get on the floor with shinai.

-No beginner can start without Abbey or Kondek in attendance. Abbey or Kondek should be the one to give them their first lesson and start their expectations. Other EMU kenshi should be prepared to do this as well but we'll visit it over time. We will also put together a one pager of what to expect at EMU kendo, as well as some terms and resources online.

Guys, that's it for now. Hope this finds you well and we'll see you soon!

14th World Kendo Championships Results

By Charlie

Guys, the results of the 14th WKC have been known for a few days but details on them are still emerging. You can see a snapshot of them here. Thanks Neil Gendzwil-sensei! All these matches are important but I'll just paste the men's team results here because this was such a story at the last WKC.


1st Place: JAPAN

(JPN 1 - Ryoichi Uchimura; JPN 2 - Daiki Kiwada; JPN 3 - Kenji Shodai; JPN 4 - Sussumu Takanabe; JPN 5 - Shoji Teramoto; JPN 8 - Tadaomi Hojo; JPN 9 - Shinsuke Matsuwaki)

2nd Place: USA

(USA 1 - Christopher Yang; USA 2 - Daniel Yang; USA 3 - Marvin Kawabata; USA 4 - Brandon Harada; USA 5 - Sandy Maruyama; USA 6 - Kevin Huh; USA 7 - Simon Yoo)

3rd Place: BRAZIL

(BRA 1 - Jogi Sato; BRA 2 - Julio Kenji Toida; BRA 3 - Ernesto Eisaku Onaka; BRA 4 - Vitor Zen Moreno Tachibana; BRA 5 - Coichi Urano; BRA 6 - Heiji Kariya; BRA 7 - Alberto Massumi Takayama)

3rd Place: Korea

(KOR 1 - Sung-Hong Jang; KOR 2 - Kang-Ho Lee; KOR 4 - Du-Hwan Baek; KOR 5 - Wan-Soo Kim; KOR 7 - Yong-Chul Kim; KOR 9 - Chul-Kyu Choi; KOR 10 - Jin-Yong Jo)

So it was Japan and Korea for one side of the final and USA vs. Brazil for the other. According to the news coming in at Kendo World, this is how it went down:

Mens-

Semi-Finals:

Japan beats Korea 2-1-2

USA beats Brazil 4-1-0

Finals:

Japan beats USA 4-1.

KW's Michael Komoto said the nail biter match of the day was Japan and Korea for the tie-breaker. Videos starting to appear at Kendo World's YouTube channel here.

2009, The Summer of Aggression

By Charlie

Well, we've all been busy, and I'm sorry I haven't been updating the blog as frequently as I should. Gonna be a nice hot summer of good training, we hope. And we have a theme.

Coach Abbey said a couple weeks ago that he wants us all pissed off in our training, asserting aggression, going after ippon with everything we've got, with a feeling of "I'm gonna put this damn shinai through your skull." When sensei lays down a theme like that, you've got to pick it up and run with it, I feel, so I've been calling this The Summer of Aggression. By that I mean this summer, our training focus is going to be on fighting aggressively, on taking ippon.

I think the drills that will best help us train toward that goal - and I articulated this on a couple of occasions - are:

-footwork
-kihon
-uchikomigeiko and kakarigeiko

And of course spirited jigeiko. Fundamentals, basically, but with this particular emphasis and goal in mind. I'm sure Abbey-sensei's words will be interpreted by everyone individually, but I wanted to articulate this here so you could keep in mind during the summer.

As always, don't forget to hydrate properly! See you on the floor.

Family Tournament

Thank you to everyone that came to the annual Family Tournament. It was our sith one and iit was a great turn out and event. Here is just one pic from the banquet. See anyone you know? More are available online at http://picasaweb.google.com/ktwakaba/MichiganFamilyTournament2009#

Thanks to Ken and Matt for taking the pics. A full recap will follow shortly. Results are below.