Recent Blogs Posts

As usual I wrote ahead and set an itinerary down for myself for the 14 day trip... 7 days training at Seinen no Ie Ozu, down to Kannonji to visit sensei's grave, then back to Kyoto for a bit of iai related shopping/touristy stuff, with night time training...
The original plan was to hammer away at the partner work with Neil after the days' main training was over... That went out the window as Dirk, Neil and Yuriko were translating Iwata senseis notes every evening! Fortunately Chin san from ...

Been ages since I posted, but there isn't too much to tell really. Up until about a week ago I was practicing regularly, but now our dojo is in summer vacation hibernation until the 22nd. Most Monday's for the past month and a half I've been connecting with the capo to do some endurance training at the start of keiko. The heat has been seriously daunting, but I'm learning loads about relaxing my grip and shoulders.

Last week I took a boat ...

Updated 27th August 2011 at 04:36 AM by tyler

Tags: bonin islands, relaxing

Categories

Training Diaries

Assisted by my brother Blake, and supervised by Satō Nariaki-sensei, for the past year I have been working hard on a translation of the Kendō Shidō Yōryō (The Official Guide for Kendo Instruction). This book, as the title suggests, is the official be-all and end-all textbook authorized by the All Japan Kendo Federation. This is the book that outlines the “correct” way of executing all of the kendo techniques, and definitions for terms and concepts. It is ...

I thought it was all just superstition, but yakudoshi really are the “years of calamity”. This is a Japanese belief that people who are at the “age of yakudoshi” are likely to experience some kind of catastrophe or illness. If you believe that new-borns start at one year old (kazoedoshi), yakudoshi for men is generally believed to be the ages 25, 42 and 61, and for women 19, 33 and 37. One’s yakudoshi is measured by adding one to your actual age, and as I was born in 1970, I fall plum into the 42 ...

Tags: クライストチャーチの震災, 液状化, christchurch earthquake, liquefaction

Categories

Uncategorized

I took a spill a few weeks ago and have been out of commission, but went to the dojo last Saturday to spectate practice. My dojo is a bit small, it being built in the middle of a tight residential neighborhood in Tokyo. The changing space (I don't say changeroom because it's really more of a hallway - you have to spread up against the wall like you're getting arrested if anyone wants to get by) is upstairs. The floor and surrounding area becomes ...