Tomorrow is Tai Sai Festival the 40 year anniversary, so its a special one. Should be an interesting event, we have spent the past few days helping out the Shiba dojo uchideshi making the prepairations. Cleaning and sweeping leaves mostly, today we pitch forked the pile into the truck, it took 5 loads and many hours to complete. Now the place looks very nice and ready for all the people to turn up. I will try and post some photos and will video the Doshu demonstration if I can get close enough. The Omotokyo Shinto ceramony should also be interesting to watch.
Everything else is ticking along nicely, the two long term uchideshi have there shodan tests in June 14th (my birthday) so today we went through a mock test and got to watch them do a mock test. It was interesting to see what sort of standard they are at and what is expected from them, as was the earthquake that happened half way through the test.
The 4 germans and one sweed uchideshi will leave on Thursday, and next week 5 russians will arrive, so there is a bit of break before the place becomes completely full again.
Aikido Iwama Uchideshi
This Blog originally tracked a three month period during which time I undertook training in Iwama under the supervision of Nemoto Sensei. We also trained at the Shibu Dojo, O'Sensei's Dojo in Iwama located in the Ibaraki Prefecture of Japan.
I have returned this time for a shorter three week stint in January 2011.
