A Beginner's Point of View 172-173

Day 172:

I’m back to class after being sick all last week. It’s great to be back in uniform. As Sensei was dismissing the beginner class, he called myself and another student up before the class. He had received our certificates from the Kendo Federation declaring both of us at the rank of Ni-Kyu (2-Kyu). Sensei made it a point to relate to the class about our accomplishments during our testing. My classmate had successfully performed a pair of doh strikes, including a men-kaeshi-doh strike that was perfect. I had performed several perfect men strikes and nearly accomplished a perfect kote-men. The class all clapped for us.

Class started out the same way we’ve been doing it for a while. We did kiri-kaeshi and one-step men. This led into more drills about oji-waza. We practiced men-suriage-men and kote-suriage-men. We also practiced tsuki and tsuki-suriage-men. I’m still very nervous about performing tsuki, I tend only to touch rather than tap. We finished class by having two rounds of keiko and then kata.

I love kata. I got paired with someone I’ve never practiced kata with before. He’s very experienced at it, but hasn’t done kata in a long time. We practiced the first five kata in sequence. I needed a refresher on the fourth and fifth kata. In the fourth kata, the uchidachi moves into hasso with left foot forward. The shidachi moves into waki with left foot forward. This is the opening setup which keeps me confused. I mix up roles. In the fifth kata, the uchidachi moves into left jodan while the the shidachi simply alters his chudan kamae to threaten the kote. After the counter strike, the shidachi traces the bokken down the nose of the uchidachi and then moves backwards into left jodan and then backwards into chudan. Then the pair moves three steps towards the uchidachi.


Day 173:

Today Sensei was at an Iaido seminar and couldn’t teach the class. One of his colleagues took over the basic and advanced classes. He had a more free-form approach to Kendo. He asked us what we would like to learn. We were at a loss to decide what to learn, so we just asked for some kata at the end of class. We started off with kiri-kaeshi and one-step men drills.

Soon, our guest instructor began to notice things about us. He asked if we had ever trained in sashi-waza. We said we had not learned it formally, just informally. So he taught us slowly about sashi-men and sashi-kote. It means a smaller swing, not bringing the shinai over our heads. For sashi-men, we do not rotate our shoulders. Instead we bend our elbows until the shinai taps our men-gane, then step forward and swing down. This is not the correct final form, but it teaches us not to swing our arms up. Then we refine it to lift our arms just barely and bring them down quickly. It is a much faster waza than oh-men, but harder to score points alone. You must be very decisive. We did the same for sashi-kote.

We also reinforced the idea with a drill where a student would receive oh-men from the class one at a time and respond with sashi-men. Once the class had taken their turn, the next person would rotate in the receiving position. We did this for much of the class. Then we had three keiko matches at the end.

Then came kata. I love kata. I paired off with a partner close to my rank and we practiced the first three kata under the watch of our guest instructor. He told us that for the ik-kyu and ni-kyu ranks, it is more important that we learn to bow in properly than our overall form. It is looked for that we place our hands in front of our tare as flat as we can without touching it in front, not off to the side. Also, when we bow to shomen and each other, we must bow slowly, not in a hurry. I remember that uchidachi must keep the spacing between the two partners, but I learned that stepping to keep spacing is bad. You must twist your wrists up or down to keep the bokken tips touching, rather than your feet.