Seattle Bound

Courtesy of Kendo Photography

The last few weeks I've been able to attend a special practices in Seattle, courtesy of JM Sensei. The focus has been on shiai, mostly, but a lot of the tidbits of information are practical for all aspects of kendo and improvement, and I'm slowly working them into my regular routine here at home.

The drives over haven't been bad.  Seattle is about four hours from my house and I've had to wait until after work to jump on the road so it's been a lot of late nights driving over.  Fortunately, the pass has been good to me going over and back and I haven't been stuck or delayed at all.  It's always a gamble this time of year how the weather and conditions will be going over, but I only ever saw snow on my last drive home, and it was barely snowing at that.  Of course, the evidence of the week prior were all over the side of the road, as I heard it dumped about fifty inches in a couple days up there a few days before I came through.  In fact, the pass and freeway through there had been closed down for a couple days while they cleared it out and made it safe enough to drive again.  But enough about that, onto kendo!

My first practice over there was at the tail end of January.  I was not only looking forward to the training itself, as it was an all-yudansha training, but also to hanging out with my buddy and PNKF teammate Ian.  He's been gracious enough to let me stay at his place during my trips and it was good to hang out and catch up with him over a few beers again.  After a late night and not near enough sleep, we headed over to the dojo for training that Saturday.

About fourteen people showed up for that practice, and JM Sensei went over many, many aspects of success, both mental and physical.  He gave me a lot of info and had new insight into things that I had (or hadn't) thought about before.  After a brief warmup we jumped straight into kirikaeshi and drills before dedicating the bulk of our time there to shiai practice and jigeiko.  We were broken into 3-man teams and instructed to make our own orders, based on how we thought we could achieve success.  My team consisted of myself, another friend of mine from Sno-King (3 dan), and another Sno-King member (1 dan).  We decided on 3D, 1D, me for our order.  After watching a couple of matches between the other teams it was our turn.

Each match was fought as ippon shobu, which meant that first person to score would win the match.  JM Sensei was not necessarily acting as shinpan, as he wanted us to try and agree on our own points, but he would interject regularly if he thought there was a good point or not.  Our first two matches ended in losses, unfortunately, so we were already done by the time it got to me.  I fought a young, fast 1 dan from UW.  I was quick with him but unfortunately my kote were off, either because of my shinai position or my posture as I struck, so I tucked that away to work on later.  There was a time when we both struck and a point was called, but I think we both assumed the other person got it.  He hit my kote just as I hit his men.  We still don't know who actually won that match, but it was a good match, nonetheless.

We watched a few more matches and then decided to change our order up for our next match.  This time we ran 1D, 3D, and me.  Unfortunately we may have been out-gunned on the match.  Our first two matches were losses again, with me left to fight for pride at that point.  I was facing none other than my friend Ian.  I've faced him many, many times, as anyone who has read my posts (especially my taikai posts) can attest to.  So we started.  He is sharp and very fast, so I knew to be wary of moving in on him when I wasn't completely ready, and also to be ready for him to try and close the distance on me.  We went back and forth, with neither of us getting anything in.  Finally, about a minute in, I was able to tap one side of his men to get him to move slightly, then came around and struck the other side as I moved out of tsubazeriai.  JM Sensei called the point and we ended the match.  It was a good feeling to finally beat my friend, even if it was just in a practice match.

We moved into jigeiko for the last hour and I was able to get in a lot of good rounds with everyone else.  I only missed a few people in the rotations, so I'm hoping to pick them up again sometime later.

My next practice session was actually last weekend, and not only was I able to attend the practice that morning but I was able to catch a bit of our local shinsa that afternoon and stay for some godo geiko.  So all in all it was quite the day of kendo!  During practice we did a few more drills than we did the time before, as well as jigeiko first, then ended with shiai geiko.  This time we did single matches, first to two points, and we had an actual shinpan.  Only one, though.  My first match was with, you guessed it, a young, fast girl from UW.  We exchanged points, with me taking the first one off of a kaeshi men, although she came back with a kote to tie things up.  She did get the final point on me, though, when she caught me with a nice hiki kote.

My next match was with my friend Frank.  He's always fun to fight as he, and I mean this in the nicest way, is a tad unorthodox.  We started off and he took my men pretty quickly, as my kaeshi dou was not up to par that day.  We restarted and I was able to catch him with his arms up to deliver a, in my opinion, fairly lackluster gyaku dou to tie things up.  We restarted again and I got a hiki men on him as I turned after we clashed and both missed our initial attacks.  Good times.

My last match was with the same UW kid that I fought last time.  This time we ended in a definitive tie, although we both fought hard the whole time.  This was one of the last matches of the day so we closed up practice shortly after.

I got a lot of good feedback from JM Sensei, mainly for my footwork and posture.  During the first session he told me to move more, and to watch my posture during kote.  I've been working on both since I was there and I think it's starting to show up.  This last time he added to that, telling me that my stance was too wide at times.  I have been working on pushing in and pressuring with my footwork, but sometimes I extend too much.  He says this causes my weight to shift and puts me in a bad position if I want to try and move quickly afterward.  I've been thinking about that and working on not letting my stance get so long, instead opting to quickly snap my back foot into a good position again if I extend too much.

After a nice lunch with another one of my kendo buddies, I was able to stop into the shinsa and watch the end of it.  Actually it was more like the the middle of it.  I caught a little bit of the 4 dan group, as well as some of my friends in the 1 kyu groups.  Everyone looked really strong that day, and results were posted a while after kata.  I was happy that a lot of my friends were able to pass their tests and gain new ranks, and hoped that those that didn't pass were able to get good feedback for next time. 

We had godo geiko for around forty minutes, and they decided to put all of the 4 dan and up on the high side.  I'd never been on the high side at the shinsa, so this was a new and somewhat unexpected experience for me.  After we bowed in and I put all my bogu on, I looked out to see a line of about 8-10 people deep.  this line stayed with me right up until the end.  It was nice, because I was able to keiko with many people, but unfortunately I wasn't able to break away from the line and go with any of the other kodansha that were there that day.  Next time!  I was also approached for feedback after, and I did my best to remember each person I practiced with.  I don't think I did too bad, as I was able to recall almost all of them.

All in all, it was a great trip, and I'm glad I was able to make it.  I'm looking forward to the next training in a couple weeks, and will be working on the feedback I received between now and then!