Visit to Indi

This past weekend I visited my sensei in Indianapolis. It was a great time with a lot of keiko and work on jodan for me. The amount of items that I need to work on continues to grow and it seems to me that I am again a beginner at kendo and that is extremely exciting and frustrating all over again. One of the best parts of doing jodan is experiencing this feeling again. The main things we worked on was to control your opponent without seme at their throat and continued to work on being more confident in the kamae. After the first practice kareoke at Dr. Wu's house with lots of whiskey and your's truly singing Danny Boy with Dr. Wu. Kendo is great for all of these things combined. See everyone at practice. Cheers!

Another name on the blog...

This is just a quick post to let Eric and some others know that I am able to log in to the blog and create posts. Thanks for the invite, Abbey-sensei!

As some of you know I am a san-dan and an "assistant coach" of the EMU club. It's gonna be a great year - every year has been a great year for this club because we have always had such a fine group of folks and are privileged to be in the vibrant Michigan kendo community, the "family" as we call it.

Here's a little something interesting about new year's kendo resolutions. Every year I write down on a piece of paper something I want to concentrate on and tuck it into my nafuda. I think about that piece of paper when I practice and replace the maxim annually. This year, I have decided that my resolution is:

ichi gan, ni soku, san tan, shi riki

which means "first the eyes, then the feet, third 'guts,' last strength," if I'm translating that right. This is an old kendo saying. Matsuura-sensei of Battle Creek drew my attention to it after he watched one of my shiai. He said there were opportunities for ippon that I did not see, that I was sticking too closely to my patterns of attack, trying the same waza, and that I should learn to use my eyes more. So, I have been trying to keep sensei's advice in mind ever since.

A note to some of you mudansha reading this: while this is good advice, don't let it contradict what we keep telling you about attack, attack, attack. Don't spend too much time thinking and looking for openings - at this stage, you must attack, attack, attack in jigeiko.

Anyway, let's have a great year! *rei*

1/24 practice

Hello all, Last night's practice was great. Thanks to everyone that made it out. We had a great turnout and the energy was extremely high throughout the practice. The continuation of compassion and sutemi is starting to come together for many people. Even the newest members of the bogu squad came along nicely. Nathan and Daniel nice job and look at that shiny bogu! Anyway, the Detroit taikai is coming up and we are all getting ready. Team seletions have already started to form in my head and I am working on people getting ready to test. More keiko and more sutemi are all I can ask for. This weekend will be my visit to my sensei for work on Jodan and hopefully an improvement on seme and waza. Hope to continue to see everyone at practice. Cheers!

Party

This weekend was the Eastern Kendo start of the year party. A great time was had and it was great to see everyone outside of the dojo. To those of you who missed it hopefully next year you will be able to come. To everyone else, thanks for coming. Cheers!

Last Practice

We have continuously been working on being positive in our kendo and last practice was no different. The focus was on making every cut with sutemi and with compassion. I demonstrated the theory from jodan and continued to work on this thought process with my waza. I am also playing with different methods of cutting from jodan. "Flinging" the shinai is a newer version and worked effectively in Jigeiko. The beginning of the year seems to find everyone well and the club continues to grow. The class has an enrollment of 13 students and all have remained in the class. This is also a great sign for Eastern Kendo. The more new people the higher the retention rate. As those of you who have university clubs know, retention is one of the most difficult things for kendo. Anyway, some more thoughts on jodan, the limitations of the kamae really force development of seme and maai and when students begin to "figure" the defense out it is extremely challenging for me to respond. To be honest I haven't felt this way since beginning kendo and it is one of the great things about taking jodan fully. Enough rambling., back to keiko. Cheers!

Jodan

This blog is also to allow for me to discuss some of the issues I have with Jodan no kamae and other technical applications to kendo. Most importantly to me is the ability to write about teaching kendo and the challenges and pleasures involved with doing so. To begin, I was taught the basics of jodan from my sensei when I was sho-dan and then put them aside for a long period of time. After gaining success with chudan, and after founding the club, I began to reconsider the kamae. When I attained san-dan I began to work on it myself and have been only using the kamae ever since. I have now reached yon-dan and am fairly comfortable with jodan but still feel like a beginner with the kamae. The biggest issue for me in all of my kendo has been maai. I constantly strive to develop the proper maai for myself. To me jodan changed this drastically. The beginning of my jodan career also found me rethinking all of the aspects of my kendo and my life. I strongly believe that my sensei guided me down the proper path and that this is the way for me. This is just the start to the many discussion based on jodan kamae that will appear in this blog along with discussions on eastern kendo. If anyone is reading this, cheers!

The Beginning of the Year

To begin the year we had a great practice with a good deal of people. The traditonal red and white tournament was a great success and the focus and issues for the club were discussed. The focus of this year is the club maxim of strength, compassion and honor. We are also focusing on Leaving it all on the floor. With the success of Tagawa-sensei in Detroit with the Hachi-dan exam we are looking forward to a great and improving year for Michigan kendo.

Hello World! Nice to have a blog up and running. This is for information on the Eastern Kendo club and continuing thoughts on kendo related issues that I run into and would like to share. Thanks for visiting and keep coming back for more updates and trivial nonsense.