This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

Jodo

All week I had been going over the japanese commands for each of the techniques in the warm-up in case Sensei decided it was my time (it has been more and more threatening each week :)). This week however he didn’t make a particular person do the entire warmups (probably due to last weeks disastrous effort…), rather he randomly picked people for each different technique. It came time that he eyed each of us off and then he picked me for one which just happens to be one of the latter and longer ones. But I was on the ball and up to the challenge remembering that it was time for ‘Tsuki Hazuchi Uchi’. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware that ‘Tsuki’ is actually pronounced more like ’ski’ but overall a good result. My japanese is rather terrible understandably.

We spent quite a while working on a couple of these techniques trying to polish them up. After which we went onto kata. My kata 3 really sucks, the other ones are not so bad. Getting into kuritskae and catching the swordsman I find tough. However the thing I am getting killed over every week in kata practice is that I don’t appear threatening enough. Bah! I can’t figure it out. Obviously more defined/precise (through practice) movements and maintaining focus on the opponent are a step in the right direction but obviously I’m really missing something. Hmmm…

Iaido

I got to learn 2 new kata today, 12 and 11 (which is the order I learnt them). With 12, the swordsman steps back one step while drawing his sword very vertical in order to evade an opponents cut. Then in a rather fluid fashion you step back in towards the opponent and cut through their body. The key difficulties here are drawing vertical, if you draw flat even a little you will generally lose your arm. You also have to make sure you don’t step so far back in the dodge such that you can’t get back to the opponent quick enough.

We practiced this in paired form. First I practiced with one of the middle-level students and that was difficult enough considering I had just learnt the kata. But at the end he was swapped with one of the senior students who was doing his attack from the draw (meaning it’s harder to judge distance) and very fast. Basically if I did it wrong here I certainly would have felt it for a few days.

The other kata I learnt was 11. This is a long kata involving 5 cuts to a single opponent (plus a glancing parry). All 5 cuts come in at different angles ranging from vertical to horizontal. All 5 cuts are to different locations of the body (chin, sternum, waist, horizontal through waist, vertical through body). The last 2 cuts ’sort of’ bleed together (I’m told they are supposed to be fluent but must be distinct from each other) and it is a really nice sweeping motion. After running through it on my own 5 or 6 times one of the senior students arrived telling me something along the lines that ‘now that you know the basic moves it is time pick it apart’. She then proceeded to tell me all the things I was doing wrong and what all the key issues to remember for the kata are. Sessions are brutal and intense but they can’t really be any other way. Always striving for perfection means always improving and finding faults.

I’m very tired today so I’ll leave it there. Oh actually I forgot to mention that I changed my cutting technique a little. Now at the very beginning of my strike I really focus on the right hand going forward and left hand staying where it is or almost moving backwards. This makes the sword ‘flick’ over and forward cutting into the target before you slice down with both hands. In practice the hands at the start still move down a little but I need to focus more on getting the right first motion so I’m thinking like the above. In cutting to the contact point of the opponent sensei said ‘Pretend that you are cutting a fly that is sitting on your friends’ head’. He is a classic