Random #57 - Return to training

Its been a while since I properly trained, and I have recently started to ease myself back into things after my hiatus focussing upon archery related activities.  Upon my return, we now have a new Sensei, a 5th Dan, from Japan.  His name is Takayama, Katsuhiro.  He is a star pupil of Chiba Sensei, and has been the former coach of 6 different Kendo teams.  He's an interesting person, quiet spoken but often has a mischievous glint in his eyes, not to mention his interest in soccer, like many Japanese people.

Training is vastly different to how training used to be when I last trained, and it is still something I am adjusting to, the structure is different and of course the exercises are also different.  Katsu-san told me that he is looking at ways of changing how Kendo is taught, that makes it more fun, less serious, but still allows the principles of Kendo, good Kendo, grading Kendo, shiai Kendo, to all be learnt and applied.

To this, we do different footwork to what you would expect to see in many traditional dojo settings, and we also run different warmup exercises.  What I do miss though is our waza/suburi rotations, though of course things can still change again as Katsu-san has some kind of plan that just takes time to implement.

In any case, my fitness is being tested, and all the muscles I use for archery aren't the ones for Kendo, so I need to re-develop and rebuild them again, but thankfully so far, my feet haven't suffered too badly.  

Grading is coming up at Picton, but I will give that a miss as I do not feel confident about it, regardless of what the others say, it is what and how I feel in the end as I need to enter the grading confident in passing to perform at my best.

Onwards with the journey.

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.

Random #50: Video from Founders Cup 2009

Here are three videos that were kindly taken by Grace on her hand held camera with movie mode. The video quality is poor because I downsized it to 320x240 and 15fps because the original size was 106mb /min, where as my upload rate is way too slow to upload files of that size.

From the videos, what I can see is, my backswing on small cuts is way to big. I need to work on not bending my arms on the backswing but using my wrists more, so that my line of center is maintained.

My legwork is still pretty poor and bad posture. In the 2nd video against SBK, I could have scored a men ippon however as I was told afterwards, not enough zanshin. In the third match, unfortunately even in the original quality video, I couldn't tell how legit the kote that scored against me was. During the actual shiai, I didn't even feel it, but it looked good from the other side to the shimpan ~shrug~ thats the way it is.

Good points however, I maintained my distance well I thought. Yes, my hiki-men cuts seem to be okay. I also seem to be okay in terms of controlling my court position, ie, not running out of the court and being aware of the boundaries. It's all an experience.

Random #49: Book

Behind the Men

My Journey with Kendo

By Donald Chiou (Ph....

Book Preview

Random #48: Grading Results

I went to grading today, also held at Burwood PCYC as part of the Founders Cup weekend. Since it was Sunday, parking was much more available and unmetered so I drove and parked next to the train station, just the other side of the station from the hall.

There were a lot of peopl grading today, especially in the lower Kyu grades, but at the same time, there were 11 people grading for Shodan, a massive number. For me, there was only six people listed for Ikkyu, and one of them didn't turn up for the event.

Traditionally they split Ikkyu and above to the another court, while NiKyu and below are done on the other court. So I was with the others on the Dan court being pretty nervous. We had a bit of wait time before grading started because they were missing the list of people to check off, and also the chalk to mark our tare but we eventually got going, about half an hour later than scheduled.

Ikkyu was first up, and since we were missing one person, we were made to have one person step out in the rotations. We had to do Kirikaeshi, Uchigomigeiko, Kakarigeiko and Jigeiko in rotation, three rotations each, except when the judging panel requested a specific side to re-do something. It happened twice, once because their men-himo came loose, but I don't know what happened on the second time for them to ask the re-do, since it wasn't ever my side.

It was pretty tiring, and through the process I also got bashed on my right middle finger pretty hard. I didn't see the damage until afterwards when we dis-armoured to prepare for Kata, but the skin on the knuckle had been split and it was swollen. Kinda hurts to flex it at the moment.

We used a small room to the side to practice our Kata while the Dan players went through their grading jigeiko, and then they read out the list to call back those to do Kata. If you failed the components leading to Kata, they don't call you back. My number for today was 1K5, so when it was being read out, 1K1, 1K2, 1K3, 1K4, 1K5, 1K6, I was pretty relieved to hear it. For the Dan however, it was a different story.... 1D1, 1D2, 1D4, 1D5, 1D6, 1D11. That was it, only six of the 11 got called back to do Kata,.... thats pretty bad for the other five.

Kata, man, I was really nervous, first time doing Kata in grading. Everything was going fine until after Ipponme. Instead of waiting for the call of Nihonme, I took a step forward, but as I stepped, the realisation struck me I didn't wait.... OH ****..... >_< I stopped and then waited for the Nihonme before continuing the proper number of steps. The rest went okay I thought, but then I had the sinking feeling of you know you stuffed it. What made it worse was I was closest to the panel, being only two meters from Sano Sensei LOL.

I then proceeded to watch the Dan kata, hoping I was going to pass. Finally when the results came through, I did get my name called, and that was pretty good. ~phew~ but, for sure if I made that mistake in Shodan grading, I would probably fail, so next time, I'm going to have to lift my game.

So, Picton 2010 if I am still here, Shodan here I come~

Random #47: Founders Cup Results

Well, I don't really need to say too much but it was a long long day. I was there at the start for registration and shinai weigh-in. Kata competition went quickly, and so did Womens competition too, which left us at "lunch" very early. They extended lunch quite considerably, and we got a lunchbox of takeaway portion food. I got a rice with chicken curry while others got some other kind of thing. They also had kimchi but I declined.

Then we had a mega mega mega long AGM. Oh my goodness was there a lot of crap talked about there.... I think 90% of the people who attended really didn't care for much of it at all. However, there were some important things though, like how we need to consider that our membership have to be affiliated with NSWKA as well as paying SUSF membership due to insurance issues... which really sucks since it would blow out membership fees by an additional $70/person.

Anyway, then the afternoon session started with the Kyu teams. For us, we played ANU first up. My match was against someone called Semmler, I think Semmler Sensei's son. I didn't go very hard, but I think I overwhelmed him somewhat with something, he wasn't super aggressive, but it was over fairly quickly. We won the round 5-0. The second round we were up against Shinbukan, and my match was against this girl. She seemed to be a bit beginnerish however it ended up being a draw because every time I moved in, she went into all-out defence. It wasn't very difficult to avoid her attacks, but I am not very good at the debana waza and thus could not really take advantage of that. I was however disappointed a little with myself because in theory, I should have won it. I was told afterwards that I landed cuts, but I didn't have enough zanshin, and my playing seemed "loose", which I'm still not very sure what that means.

In the finals match, we played one of the Korean clubs, but I'm not sure which one LOL... in any case, the one I played against I think was a Kim by the character on his zekkan. He was very aggresive. Someone said to me afterwards, it was like he was doing kakarigeiko. By this point, I was actually pretty tired, doing shiai really pushes your physical condition much more than regular training, and having spent all morning sitting around wasn't really that good, nor not having a decent warmup either. No excuses however. I beat around with him for a while, nothing happening either, and then I made a men cut, and I saw his shinai moving as if for a kote cut and the flags went up. For him.

I was very surprised, I didn't hear or feel a cut land, but, thats the way it goes. Cuts are easily obstructed, especially if the shimpan on the wrong side think it landed. ~Shrug~ thats Kendo. Afterwards, our coach told me that the judging was dodgey because he thought I should have also scored a men ippon and the kote cut was no good. My opponent didn't get a second point of me though, I didn't let any openings really happen, but I couldn't pin any on him either. But, at the end of the match, the score was tied on win/draw/losses but because I had managed to lose 1-0 instead of 2-0, we came out with a +1 in points and therefore won the match, giving us first place. ~phew~

Post Kyu was the Dan event where our club made it through the first round, but got knocked out in the next round by SKC who as usual are very strong. Some excellent playing from our team though with a rapid two point win with kote cuts, along with a beautiful tsuki from one of our kyu players who was in the Dan team (since we don't have enough Dan players) against a Nitto Ryu player, and also a very valient effort from our home-grown 2nd Dan against a 6th Dan Sensei.

Presentations and packing up followed, before people bailed the venue to go home or for dinner.
Long day, not to shabby. Tomorrow is grading, so we'll see how that goes. I'm uploading photographs from the event onto my Flickr as I write this and will include a link once they are done.

EDIT: Link to photos is up

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dchiou/sets/72157621787003421/

Random #46: Good things, not so good things, bad things

Training today was a bit mixed.

Good things were doing different waza, different training exercises.

Not so good things were people doing poor cuts, while I'm not blaming them, there really is a kind of limit in what people should be thinking when doing. Kote cuts do not come down at 45° angle like dou cuts. Don't hit so hard, tenouchi. Simple things. I had ringing in my ears today from a men cut which did not hit my megane, it was *that* hard. I also got clobbered on my elbow, on the bone, by an attempted dou cut *when there was no opening*. One of my biggest grievances in regards to some people and their playing in jigeiko is, they have no idea of openings. Yes, as a beginner, you should be attacking, and attempting to take advantages of openings and creating openings. This does not mean you randomly cut where you think you should be. I have no problems with people missing kote cuts and hitting my arms, I have no problems with mis-cuts to my men, but a pet hate is where people swing for dou cuts when they shouldn't. I'm not talking about when I have been drawn by a feint to block, and then dropped my arms to defend, I'm okay with that, but when I'm standing there in Kamae and I don't move, and you swing straight into my elbow, ok, I *do* have a problem with that.

Bad things, warmup that is too quick with not enough stretching. Exercises that strain muscles that were not warmed up properly. Too dry skin on toes and feet leading to cracking and pain.

Less than a week to grading and Founders Cup. Who knows if I'm really ever mentally ready for either. Just have to see I guess. It's kind of tragic to see that someone goes to Japan for a year, and comes back as a Ikkyu when they were of lower grade than you before they left.... Though I ponder what their skills are actually like, as someone said to me, there are Shodan, and real Shodan players. The difference is, a real Shodan actually has the skill to be a Dan player, while the other type is just someone who passes the exam because they have done Kendo for long enough.

Random #45: Founders Cup 2009

Founders Cup 2009 is almost upon us. I'm actually a little nervous because for the first time in almost 4 years, I will be competing lol. I was put into the Kyu team, but I do have the option to chicken out if I want it since the team does have a reserve, but I guess I should step up as a Senior in the club and compete, even though it isn't really my thing.

Of course, I have always been told that shiai is important as you need to do it to improve your Kendo, but I have my personal doubts about it. In any case, today I had just a idle daydream about competing, and I felt nervous thinking about it. I have no idea how I will do on the day, but like advice I gave to someone else, the use of insanely strong Kiai will help blow nerves away. Channel that energy into ki and attack!

So, I will probably get wasted by my opponents but hey, learning experience LOL.

Random #44: Even more Kote repairs

So, another friend needed kote patching.

This time, it was only on the left kote, and it was a large tear and a small hole that was forming. So I used one long line of double thread, and stitched dual layers on both spots with the result looking like this:

This time however, I managed to do better stitching I think, a bit neater, though I don't know how well it'll hold up. In any case, hopefully it'll make their kote last longer.

Random #43: Tsukagawa Art

I got a new shinai a little while back to replace one that was broken beyond repair. When I received it I thought to myself, the tsukagawa is nice and clean and white. I should do something funky with it.

So I did.

Masking tape. Training.

While I realise that the effect won't last (and have two training sessions with the masking tape taken off, it has already started to colour again), it was still really cool to have the effect visible to start with.

I guess this is sort of a minor customisation, not as glaringly obvious or flashy as like a bright coloured patterned dou or a plexi-faceplate with the Hasegawa Mengane..... Either way, anyone can do this with practically no cost if you have masking tape and a clean/new shinai/tsukagawa ^_^v

Random #42: More Kote Repairs

I helped repair a pair of kote for someone in our club. The result is below:


It isn't the prettiest job in the world, quite similar to my repair on my own pair of kote that I did a little while ago. I can't remember how long it took me to do it last time, but this time it was just over two hours, so one each it would be roughly. As before, they are double layered, one layer inside and one outside to prevent opening up the hole more.

At least it is functional and saves him needing to replace the whole leather or new kote entirely.

Random #41: Return of distance problems

Bah.
I used to have distance issues, and now they are back. I guess things are cyclic in the sense that if you fix something, a part of your focus has been working on something and other problems may creep back somewhat. I don't think it is a major problem, and it certainly isn't a difficult one to fix anyway, just more observation and concentration to re-find my distance.

I spoke to our coach today and I have been creeping in too close distance wise again, something that I fixed a little while ago, but of late I have been working on other things and I think this has caused the change back to my old distance. I also spoke to another senior player who I think is lighting fast, and his explanation is it is his distance. I am "tall" according to him, and thus, I should attack from further away, and this will make my speed seem faster, or something like that (he said it in heavily accented Chinese....)

So, while I have developed some in other areas, I have slipped in others. The ongoing battle to have everything on the right level is a challenge, but I shall certainly fight on to make them all balance out.

Random #40: Training at New York City Kendo Club

The New York City Kendo Club operates in a small space on the fifth floor of a church building. The space is a small basketball court size, about one-fifth the size of the size of HK Ward Gym, or about one court from the two and a half courts we use for our regular training. Apparently it is one of the largest dojo spaces in New York, which makes me wonder exactly how small they do get for the smallest ones. The number of people at the training is quite large, I’d say about thirty to forty people.


They have training broken into beginner/basics and then advanced afterwards. For beginner/basics, they wear bogu but no Men, and concentrate on footwork and suburi. We did a little suriyashi up and back forwards, then backwards, then some fumikomi footwork with a five count footwork (crossing over footwork 1, 2, 3,4 and then kihon fumikomi on 5), and then the same with non-crossing over footwork on the five count, Then some suburi with shinai, focussed on Men cuts (both kihon and small) with changing footwork and distance. We finished off with hayasuburi in thirty cut lots, with the cuts hitting against a held up shinai. This pretty much concluded the basics training.

At this point, I should mention that it was insanely hot in there and very dry. I was sweating heaps and losing water very quickly and I must have drank about three litres of water in the space of the training, which is much more than I usually have at training back at home.

With bogu training, they had a side of motodachi seniors who did not rotate but the others did. There was more non-motodachi than motodachi so you had to line up at the end of the line for your turn to enter the rotations again. For bogu training, it was five cuts each of men-uchi (kihon/small cuts, entirely up to you) for a few rotations, then kote-men cuts, then kote-dou cuts. Then it finished off waza training with Jodan Men/Katate Men cuts. The club seems very orientated towards the Jodan style of play, with a lot of players using katate men and kote. The exercise for the jodan men cut was to hold it up in Jodan and then cut the kihon men with both hands if you were a beginner, or to do the proper katate men cut if you weren’t. For me, I went with the both hands option.

After that, there was keiko. I played four people and was pretty buggered by the time it started, so was even more tired by the time it finished. Two people came and sought me out to play, because at the start of bogu training, the leading Sensei (David Hiromura, Kataoka Sensei was away in Japan for an exam or something) made an announcement that I was visiting their dojo. I then played someone who was really tall, before I had a short jigeiko against the leading Sensei.

They are a really nice group of people. They were going to a bar afterwards for beers and to celebrate the birth of someone’s child apparently. They offered for me to come along but I was pretty buggered and didn’t feel like drinking so I went home instead. One of them, Becky, also asked for my contact details as they were going to do some kind of cherry blossom thing on the weekend and wanted to invite me along if I was available for it, which was very nice of her.

They seem to be quite competitive and strongly competition orientated, with their usual Tuesday training having a shiai focus or something like that. They also have storage space above their training area for their shinai and bogu, which sit on a rack of sorts, so I guess it’s quite secure to some extent that no-one goes up there to steal the stuff since it isn’t locked down or anything. From the session, I didn’t really get that much feedback on my own Kendo, except for one person who I played against, Don Suh, who told me to follow through on my cuts, which isn’t really new to me either. But it was good that he told me regardless.

I think that if fate lands me the area, I probably wouldn’t mind being part of their club. It seems like a rather close knit community, and while their kendo doesn’t seem particularly instructive, I guess it’s good practice anyway for yourself to develop your own play. So after that, I went back to 77th Street station on the 6 line and then went home. A tiring evening.

Random #39: NY Kendo Club Article

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/nyregion/28kendo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=kendo&st=cse&goback=.hom&scp=5

Random #38: Vid Clip of Something

http://www.break.com/index/modern-samurai-cuts-flying-bb-in-half.html

Not bad....

Random #37: Visiting Dojo's in New York City?

I will be taking a holiday of sorts to New York City later in the year, in just over a months time, for nearly three weeks. Doing a Google search, I have found a few Kendo Clubs in the city, with New York Kendo Club being a distance away, and another one closer located at Astor Place, near my accommodations.

The duration that I will be gone for, if I do not train in some way, is probably not too much of an issue since I did not train for much longer when I had injured my wrist. However, with at least one dojo within an easy walking distance of sorts (NYC Kendo Club is 3.2 Miles away but can be accessed via the Number 6 subway and then another short walk), it would be nice to be able to train/visit.

The question is, do I bring my bogu?

I will obviously decide upon if I will be visiting, and contact them beforehand for permission since that is the correct approach and polite instead of just turning up. I would be happy to pay for visitors fees for my visits to them, but I am not really sure about dragging two bags around on the subway and walking to my accommodations from and to the airport. At other times, it really isn't an issue since I wouldn't be taking my luggage if I go train... Depending on the club too I guess, they may have club bogu there I could borrow, and it wouldn't be difficult for me to bring my gi/hakama only though. I guess then the first step would be to contact them to enquire about what options there are.

If anyone in the vicinity of NY City has experience about this, I'd love to hear from you for sure.

Random #36: Katana Umbrella

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Random #35: Redbubble Art on Kendo

I have made several pieces of purchasable art that are all available through my RedBubble account.

As blatant advertising for myself, the account profile is here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/flehrad

Under the T-Shirt section there are some shirts with Kendo related designs, and under the Calendar segment is a calendar I have recently created called Inside the Men, using photographs I took from the SKC Friendship Cup 2009.

If you like them, feel free to comment on them or even purchase them if you like to support my work and Kendo.

^_^

Random #34: Sydney Kendo Club Friendship Cup 2009

I attended the first ever Sydney Kendo Club Friendship Cup event yesterday, held at the Sports Centre in Cumberland Campus of Sydney University in Lidcombe. The event is supposed to be an annual event to promote friendship and more shiai practice between fellow kendoka in Sydney and surrounding regions to fill in voids of the competition calendar.

I originally did not want to compete in the event, but I was asked to turn up anyway as a reserve player in case something happened and they needed a filler. It turned out that I could have entered to join another club's team originally, but as the registration proceeded to fill, more cancellations and no-shows ended up with me not having a spot to play in after all. It wasn't a big deal really for me, except the first time in ages that I felt like competing (after getting there with my gear) I couldn't compete. I ended up taking photos which was fine.

The competition went fairly smoothly, and there was a lot of really nice kendo being played, but there were also some very scrappy kendo including rough-housing like much much bigger players forcing players off the court with pushing and not proper tai-atari waza.

After the closing ceremony and awarding of the placings, we had free jigeiko and I managed to play seven people. I got to play a gentleman by the surname of Maruyama, who was from ANU (Australian National University) but was Japanese and returning to Japan. What I learnt was that I am definitely getting better and faster, and my reaction speeds were better. While I didn't manage to cut a point on men, I could cut onto his megane, meaning my speed was better to even reach him like that. Further more, I could see his waza even if I wasn't fast enough to avoid or block it on his attacks.

I also learnt that I'm still lacking that explosive power from my left leg. Playing Brendan Kee, also from ANU, I couldn't explode out from stand-still position to cut like everyone else can. I don't know if it is muscle issues, reflex or a combination of those plus more, but I will continue to train and seek my own way.

It was a pretty tiring jigeiko for me, and I did enjoy it though I am suffering for it now since I had no warmup and am decidely sore from the experience.

The pictures are here on my Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dchiou/sets/72157614542366622/

Random #33: Accomodating different levels of skill

At training lately, we have been doing what is being called "fast rotation". This is something different to the norm. In waza training, usual rotation occurs at the end of each set by both sides, and the shinai is put away through osemeto. In "fast" rotation, you do not acknowledge your partner, nor sheath the shinai but instead move directly to the next spot in the line. If the person opposite is ready, then you go straight into the waza, but if they have not completed, you wait until they are and the people rotate through.

Some thoughts. It only really works under two conditions. Firstly, that everyone finishes their waza at the same time, so there is smooth movement from spot to spot. Secondly, everyone is at the same skill level.

The first point about everyone finishing at the same time is difficult to do if people are not at the same level. Beginners can not be expected to finish their waza as fast as more advanced players, and if they do, most certainly unless they are very good and skilled (thus being a higher skill level automatically), they will be sacrificing their training quality for the speed of finishing. Secondly, it causes rushing, even for more advanced players and does not really allow you to work on the cut. We currently only do this type of rotation for small men cuts and other small cut waza.

I can handle it, but I don't think in our situation it is an effective method because we always get building up points and lag where people wait for others to finish. It also gets confusing because holes open up in the line and people are not sure who they are meant to be facing.

For me, I would prefer to do the normal rotation, but to cut down on time by not putting shinai away etc, but not rushing to the next spot. The person leading is most likely going to be finished faster than most anyway, being advanced, and thus as soon as everyone is finish, make the rotate call.

Just my two cents.