Edmonton Seminar

[Neil Gendzwill]

There's a kendo and naginata seminar in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) May 14-16. For the naginata portion, the guest instructor is Tanaka-sensei from California Naginata Federation. If you're interested, let me know and I'll put you in touch with the Edmonton people.

[R A Sosnowski]

There's a kendo and naginata seminar in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) May 14-16. For the naginata portion, the guest instructor is Tanaka-sensei from California Naginata Federation. If you're interested, let me know and I'll put you in touch with the Edmonton people.

FYI, Miyako Tanaka is from the Northern California Naginata Federation (yes, there is a Southern California Naginata Federation too); she is a co-founder of NCNF.

She is the President of the US Naginata Federation, and Kyoshi (no Dan grades after Go-dan; then it's Sho-go: Renshi, Kyoshi and Hanshi); as far as I know, she is the most senior Naginata-ka outside of Japan. She will be eligible for Hanshi in about two years or so.

Aside from very strong Waza in Atarashii Naginata, she also teaches Tendo Ryu Naginata-jutsu, the only person in North America who can legitimately do this.

The first time that I saw Isshu Jiai, it was Tanaka-s. vs Goyo Ohmi of Toranto at Guelph (at Kim Taylor's 3rd annual Guelph School of Japanese Sword Arts) in July 1998; she made a believer out of him real fast. I still get a chuckle everytime I watch that videotape.

[GBN]

Tanaka sensei is also really cool. She's considering bringing some left over t-shirts from the world championships if you guys are interested. Let me know if you are interested and I'll remind her.

Brian

[Neil Gendzwill]

I'm sure there would be some interest in that :)

This will be my first real exposure to naginata. I'm really looking forward to it, hope I can get some of it in alongside the kendo stuff.