A Beginner's Point of View 579-580

Day 579:

No class today because of a holiday.

Day 580:

There was a great deal of traffic today. I arrived late to the dojo but still first. I only had enough time for two sets of Iaido and a few spare kata. There was a person who showed up as a prospective student. I told him a few facts about Kendo and Iaido to keep him interested.

In Kendo, the day wasn’t too hot but it was humid. After suburi, we lined up for kiri-kaeshi and men-ouchi. Then we had a surprise round of uchikomi-geiko. We got back to kote-ouchi and then split up into lines. I was in the instructor line while the rest of the class rotated into and out of my line for sixty seconds of keiko. I got my second wind and kept in line the whole time.

We then broke into groups and did some practice ippon-shobou matches. Sensei wanted as many lower-ranking students to fight me as possible to get them to try hard against a harder opponent. I remember being on the other end when I was san-kyu and forced to fight a ni-dan. It made me bring out higher levels of effort. My first fight was embaressing because my Sinai kept getting caught in my opponent’s arms and tangled. The subsequent fights went my way, though.

We then had a long lecture about what not to do in a match, leading to hansoku calls. Things like being bumped out of bounds, pushing others out of bounds, falling down, etc…