Going up to the Sensei After Class

[Lill Murveln]

I live and practice in kasugai, Aichi. How about you?

Hi,
I have some friends at work living in Kasugai.
I live in Gamagori and mostly practise at Okazaki Iryou Kemusho, with the prisonguards. Otherwise I go to dojos in Nagoya and Gamagori etc.

Martin

[Erikku]

But, I get to go to class 4 times a week (I could attend twice as many classes if I had the time and the inclination) and classes are available 6 days a week.

Man, I wish I lived in Jersey! I have the means and the will to attend a school like yours. Unfortunately, I could only register for a short 9 weeks semester beginner's kendo class at Laval University in Quebec city, and our class is on Monday. No other day. I'm glad my girlfriend took up kendo with me, so we can practice a bit together, but I'm afraid we're only strenghtening (sp? I'm French, forgive my bad English) our inadequate technique, and that we'll have to unlearn what we did by ourselves once in the Dojo. Sort of like playing piano for 5 years before taking your first lesson. You have to break bad habits.

Anyways, this was completely off-topic, so as an answer to er... I don't remember his name... Yes, we do go to our sensei after class and chat with him, but we haven't made it to the pub yet

hopefully on the right track,

[gsx1100s]

If you pay for the class you have every right to ask anything you want. A teacher should be happy to help.

cheers michael

[Sithlord]

In our dojo it we thank whoever we trained with individually, and we also run up to the sensei and bow to him also after the formal rei.

[utsutsu]

In my first days at the dojo, the most ranked student (a great person and very kind with newbies) teachme the basics. The basics included the basic reiki ( he pointed me that like i was newbie it didn't mind if i didn't know it how to say properly or know something).

At the end of a class, everyone go up and salute to your partners, saying domo arigato goisamasta, etc. etc., then we go trough the middle of the field and make a circle and everyone sits down to hear the sensei. He's japanese, it has more than 50 it's a 5th dan, and it's a great person, the other it's 40 years old and it's a 5th dan too and they're both kind persons. After hearing all the points, everyone goes to pack their bogu and hakama, and some people sempais, kohais or newbie ones can go to the sensei and ask something you might want to know more...

I almost every class go to the sensei to speak with him, i give him all my questions, doubts and ask him how to void this or get this things better, he is so cared about he never said me "go back, or don't disturb me"...

Sometimes, i do give thanks to my superiors for teach me things or have the patience to spent time on my and not in his training for competitions so i give thanks (sinceresly) every time i can do.

It's a matter to be kind and respectuful and not to be a lover or get a date with the kohai

In my dojo, they speak spanish but most of the time they teach me in japanese and i try to learn it the highest as possible to get better advices...

domo!

[enkorat]

A good key to the wonders of the Japanese language is to remember a rather simple rule:

The shorter the phrase, the less formal it is.

This explains why in Japan, the announcement that your flight has been delayed takes about 4 sentences to say.

Generally if your conversational partner is of the same age and same gender, and generally younger, you can get away with "short phrases". In fact when I was in junior high and an exchange student came from Japan, he said that I talked like an adult and not like a kid.

That being said, as an adult I can't really say certain things even if its to a social equal anymore without seeming crass. Unless of course, I am of greater social status and I'm deliberately being less formal to hint to the other person that I consider them to be a confidant of sorts.

But, speaking from my experience of practicing in the US, I don't think it really makes that much of a difference to people. We're supposed to be learning kendo, not learning Japanese conversation.

If you want to be "authentic", you have to shift your degrees of formality on who you're talking to based on context, seniority, age, and gender. All within the same practice session.

For example if you want to say "Thank you", you have the following choices:
1) domo
2) domo arigato
3) arigato
4) arigato gozaimasu and arigato gozimashita
5) domo arigato gozaimasu and domo arigato gozaimashita

These are the commonly used forms of "thank you" in japanese. There are several more, but they're archaic and aren't used in normal conversation.

If I'm speaking to one of my sensei's who is of much higher rank than I am, but is relatively similar to me in age, and not within an instructional capacity, I would probably go with choice 1,2 or 3.

If its in a instructional capacity or in a formalized situation (like he's leaving the country and its the last time I'm going to see him) then I would never use choice 1,2, or 3.

If the sensei is much older than me in age and higher rank then I would never use 1,2 or 3 regardless of context.

And this is just with "Thank you". Things get much more complicated very quickly. If I'm speaking in Japanese during class I have to shift my sentence endings sometimes depending on what the other person is doing.

But again, we're learning kendo, not learning the Japanese language. So again, I'd go with what the tradition of your dojo is, and if you're doing something wrong your sensei will probably say something.

If you're interested in learning Japanese because of kendo, more power to you. But if you are interested, we can always go over how Japanese people count things....

[senki-kendo-jos]

personally I go ask the sensei if I have a taikai or grading coming up. If i'm visiting a dojo U always go and rei to all the sensei and sempai.

[taganahan]

it's not enough to practice kendo in the physical form, but you also need to learn kendo mentally. like, ask for some guides on how to or not to do things, and those kind of stuff. if you have the resource to borrow kendo books, i suggest you borrow one too just to balance out the body and mind.

[Marquis]

At my club everybody goes to the sensei after the class... No exceptions

[tapioka]

same here. after doing "wakare" with the head sensei, everyone shifts down to the next sensei, bows, goes to the next sensei, bows, etc. is this something not done very often nowadays?

[Apostrophe]

Recently at a Kendo clinic I was told it is not only proper, but rude if you do not go to a visiting Sensei. Or if you are visiting another Dojo.

[Ishii]

I have two sensei in my dojo. After each keiko everybody goes to sensei bow and exchange few sentences about practice.
But recently only younger sensei (about my age) was present in dojo and when I went to him he said "we didn't practice together today, so you don't have to come to me". But he saw me during practice and said few things about my hand movement in suburi.
I was little confused for a moment but now I see you can always come to sensei and ask your questions. If you have ji-geiko with him, sensei will tell you what you should improve without your questions.

[kusunoki1209]

Mokuso...just to clarify. Mokuso is the command to meditate followed by yame (stop) and rei (bow). Is that what you are refering to?

[Gerald Audette]

In my experience, the ususal course of action is if we have a visiting Sensei, such as during a seminar, we go and bow to them after we get any special instrcutions or comments from the various sensei on a whole. Also, if we are visiting a club, we would go to that club's Sensei in thanks of allowing us to practice with them.

On average, in our club, we don't go to Sensei after every practice - our thoughts here are to ask questions often during practice. This allows sensei to explain to the group, as it may be a point that Sensei would like to clairfy for the group.

hth - GA

[nalogg]

At our dojo (etobicoke olympium) we go up to the sensei after every practice. every person.

we all crowd in and go up to the senseis in groups of 4 or 5

we say domo arigato gosaimashta, bow, and then they say what they need to say to us, or we ask them questions...

it adds about 15 minutes on to the end of class, but i like it.

Some sensei won't say too much, the only sensei who really takes the time to talk to every student that comes to sit in front of him is Ma sensei. He often causes a traffic jam in the dojo because he takes so long to talk to us, but he's cool and he's always got something helpful for you.