銀の道

So... from Friday-Sunday, I was in a training camp which included tai chi, kobudo and yuishinkai karate. Friday was all about tai chi. It didn't have many people, but the people there were all nice. Tai chi had a really nice and soothing effect, the sword form was had some "nice" low stances. Much to my surprise, I was told to do my yellow belt exam in kobudo on that day, instead of the next day. I was nervous as hell, I even did one part in shuji no kon sho kata where I have to do the same thing 3 times, 4 times. After I finished, sensei told me that my 10 kumite was great, my kihon was good and that my kata's form was good but I lacked power. He passed me, but told me that I were to do my kata for my dojo's sensei 10 times again, with more power until I'll be allowed to wear the new belt.

The next day, we fully concentrated on kama, mostly paired exercises. I was paired up with a Finnish white belt, or so I thought. He seemed to know all of the things we did, his form was excellent, great power and he did a lot of "snapping" sounds when he did his moves also. I thought that he was way too good for a white belt so I asked him if he really was that. He told me that he was. I felt really weak compared to him, as I just passed my yellow belt exam. He was doing a belt exam as well, but he was doing a LOT more then I did. At that time I thought that Finnish people must have a lot harder training program then or something. After the day was over, I found out that the guy really had a blue belt in kobudo and that he was doing the exam for a brown one. He was also supposed to have a black belt in yuishinkai karate and that he was also learning to use the naginata (samurai's spear).

On Sunday, we started off with karate. We learned a kata - Pinan Nidan and we also did it's bunkai (application for the kata). The diagonal parts of the kata confused me quite a lot, but I kinda got it at the end. Bunkai was really fun, the things we did there were mostly self-defense situations so I really enjoyed that. Every time my partner asked for help, our guest sensei showed him how to do something, on me. Due to that, I got hit in the groin, solar plexus, jaw and some pressure point on the neck, got pulled from my hair, ear and was thrown to the ground. Fortunately, my partner didn't do those hits as strong as the sensei did. I enjoyed doing those things myself later though.

After a few hours of karate, we went on town to get some lunch, which was really enjoyable. After we returned, we were taught a new bo kata - Sakugawa no kon sho. It was pretty confusing for me, but thanks to Mr. P, I kinda got it. Although, during the entire bo class, I managed to hit the mirror with the back end of my bo at least 3 times (all of them were when we were practicing the kata). That felt pretty horrible. We also did a bunkai for that kata, it wasn't as fun as karate's bunkai but it was pretty good.