This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

Today before arriving I was totally dead tired. I spent 6.5 hours unloading stock off a truck last night and my whole body ached. Today’s class while physically and mentally grueling still had it’s light-hearted charm which is always a blast. It’s amazing what a little laugh will do for your kata.

Jodo

Today I started to learn the first kata. Now trying to remember both the jo and bokken side after only seeing it demonstrated a couple of times was crazy and really brain fried me. With some guidance I eventually got the gist of it and I think I’ll be able to remember the general moves although probably not all the little specifics.

Remembering the names of techniques is still an issue, I only know the order in which they come for warm-ups. Which reminds me that I also need to learn how to count to ten in japanese.

Iaido

The opening and closing ceremony still totally befuddles me. One of the senior students who has been providing me with a lot of guidance (thankyou :D) mentioned that we should go over it some time next week. So I think I might see if I can learn the procedures during the week. Next week one of the senior teachers is coming over from Japan so it’s likely to be a very packed class. It will also be interesting to see how a student who is starting next week is going to be handled.

The more and more I come to practice the more I notice how bad my technique is. I guess this is actually a good thing as it means I’m noticing more. Sometimes I would be about to make an adjustment to a action and I would see sensei start to approach me. Then when he sees me make the adjustment he will change direction to attend to something else. So the next step offcourse is to iron out all the mistakes so I don’t need to make the late adjustments.

At the end of class I got to have a look at and a go at kata no. 2. My gosh, the turning around 180 degrees feels so weird!!!. It’s gonna take a lot of practice to get this smooth and not over balance. In regards to my number 1 kata, I can see so much ugly stuff going on in it… oh well.

Practice until next week I say, or rather just practice

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