Random #55: NYC Kendo Club Visit

Today I returned to the New York City Kendo Club to visit them again.  This trip however I didn't have my equipment with me, so I decided to just watch how a "typical" training went.  My last visit, Kataoka Sensei was away, and one of the others led the training.  Today though, he was present.

When I arrived at 3pm, the Iaido class was still going (2:30pm to 3:30pm), and there was a mix of beginner(ish) to obviously advanced (using Iaito, not sure if they were shinken or not) students.  Only one female present at the time.  I watched for half an hour as Kataoka Sensei worked repetitively with one student.  I don't know how well I would have done had I been in his place, but Kataoka Sensei certainly is patient to a degree with this student.

So, when the Beginner class (and warmup for Advanced) started at 3:30pm, a lot more people popped out of the doors and were moving around.  There wasn't really any structure for the majority of it at all.  People did their own thing, the most of them working on men cut without fumikomi and kiai, though the people in bogu were doing other things, but still no kiai.  Towards the end, just before their time was up, Kataoka Sensei then proceeded to do two footwork drills, just regular suriashi, and then kihon fumikomi footwork, this went for about fifteen minutes before the Advanced started.

At lineup, I was pretty surprised to see the number of "motodachi" lined up.  I'm not entirely sure at what grade you count as a motodachi in the club, but I know from situational positioning, there was at least four 6th Dan and higher, but to finish why I was O_O, there was 12 of them lined up at line up.  Mokusou and Rei as usual.

So, Advanced bogu, they certainly use kiai, and the clack clack of shinai is deafening.  The space they use is equal to a small basketball court.  From when I could count them, there was 38, but more people did pop in afterwards, including someone from Columbia (University, club) and even someone sporting a Canadian Zekken.  Exercises wise, it was a bit disappointing to me to see what they did.

Kirikaeshi, Men (your choice of what kind), Kote (your choice), then two exercises of seme/debana waza.  The first was shidachi seme, then motodachi did a men cut.  The shidachi then has the option of an auichi men, or dou cut (of their choice, nuki, kaeshi, debana).  The second was the same except that the motodachi does a kote and the shidachi can do kote or men as desired.  After this was geiko.

Of course this is all personal opinion, but for me, I feel that how their training is conducted, there isn't a great amount of feedback during exercises.  There is a large geiko component, and there is feedback given during it.  I think that it probably would not provide me with the best learning environment for my style of learning, but thats just me.  At the moment, it's not a big issue since I'm not training there as my dojo, but should I ever end up here on a more long term basis, it might, and I guess I would have to adapt to it somehow.

But other than that, it was interesting to watch Kataoka Sensei's teaching style, he's very laid back, and I sense that one of his favourite expressions is "[something done wrong], if you do that, it shows you know nothing".  Oh, and the $100/month fee... -_-;  I guess it's a bit early still to tell if I'll end up here or not.