Year: 2014

From Shiro Kuma's Blog by kumafr

For my 55th trip to Japan, I hoped that everything would go fine without any problem. Wrong again!
I booked my hotel online. Nothing new. And the hotel I wanted to go was the Mitsui garden, but last July they were doing some heavy refurbishing. So when I checked online I was happy to see that they opened in July, so I booked my stay. Wrong again!
Yesterday night after traveling from India through Dubai for many hours I ended up facing the hotel but it was still in works. Wrong again!
After a call I found out that my hotel was in fact 5km away! Wrong again!

The beauty of traveling to Japan is that whatever you do you will be facing your limits. Now being wrong can prove to be a good thing. In fact my new location is the best I ever had. It’s new and modern, and the prices are not that bad. Also I now need 2 trains to reach the honbu or the Budôkan. But I can live with it.

But being wrong is an unbending path. On the way back from the honbu, after two classes with Nagato and Noguchi Dai Shihan, I took the wrong connecting train and ended up in Moriya. Nice city but wrong again! I arrived back at the hotel half hour later.

The lesson of the day: in Japan don’t take anything for granted and keep your options open. Being in Japan to train is not limited to the dôjô, training is 24/7. And if you lower your level of awareness you are wrong.

Many friends are here for sensei’s birthday and is always nice to meet them at the other end of the planet whether they are coming from Spain, the USA, South America, the UAE, or the rest of Europe. We have been meeting here for over twenty years and this gives a social feeling during the classes.

Nagato Dai Shihan, covered many waza from the shinden Fudô ryû, mainly based on the Nage Kaeshi. With my Spanish brother Juanma we were training with the Greek twins Adonis and Harry, they had a hard time with the jûdô guys.

Nagato sensei was following the densho, as it is now the way he teaches, and I really liked it. The Dakentaijutsu of the Shinden Fudô is really fun when done by him.

Kaname: the ura gata is the official set of henka of the ryû. It is teaching how to do the basic form reverse

Then after a short bite we went to Noguchi Dai Shihan class. We did a lot of the Takagi Yôshin ryû shime waza. His taijutsu is still fun to train and the shime waza were not that painful. Anjaan my partner from the Dubai dôjô might not agree though.

Kaname: shime refers to choking but also to applying pressure on Uke’s structure. Very interesting as always.

I’m happy to be there again. Even if there is no more daikomyôsai, the feeling remains the same. Next Sunday after class, some will have a Shidôshikai meeting. With the new honbu being near completion I guess he has a few things to tell us.

________________
Did you read my first eBook?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Of-Movement-Student-ebook/dp/B00PUKZY9C

From Shiro Kuma's Blog by kumafr

For my 55th trip to Japan, I hoped that everything would go fine without any problem. Wrong again!
I booked my hotel online. Nothing new. And the hotel I wanted to go was the Mitsui garden, but last July they were doing some heavy refurbishing. So when I checked online I was happy to see that they opened in July, so I booked my stay. Wrong again!
Yesterday night after traveling from India through Dubai for many hours I ended up facing the hotel but it was still in works. Wrong again!
After a call I found out that my hotel was in fact 5km away! Wrong again!

The beauty of traveling to Japan is that whatever you do you will be facing your limits. Now being wrong can prove to be a good thing. In fact my new location is the best I ever had. It’s new and modern, and the prices are not that bad. Also I now need 2 trains to reach the honbu or the Budôkan. But I can live with it.

But being wrong is an unbending path. On the way back from the honbu, after two classes with Nagato and Noguchi Dai Shihan, I took the wrong connecting train and ended up in Moriya. Nice city but wrong again! I arrived back at the hotel half hour later.

The lesson of the day: in Japan don’t take anything for granted and keep your options open. Being in Japan to train is not limited to the dôjô, training is 24/7. And if you lower your level of awareness you are wrong.

Many friends are here for sensei’s birthday and is always nice to meet them at the other end of the planet whether they are coming from Spain, the USA, South America, the UAE, or the rest of Europe. We have been meeting here for over twenty years and this gives a social feeling during the classes.

Nagato Dai Shihan, covered many waza from the shinden Fudô ryû, mainly based on the Nage Kaeshi. With my Spanish brother Juanma we were training with the Greek twins Adonis and Harry, they had a hard time with the jûdô guys.

Nagato sensei was following the densho, as it is now the way he teaches, and I really liked it. The Dakentaijutsu of the Shinden Fudô is really fun when done by him.

Kaname: the ura gata is the official set of henka of the ryû. It is teaching how to do the basic form reverse.

Then after a short bite we went to Noguchi Dai Shihan class. We did a lot of the Takagi Yôshin ryû shime waza. His taijutsu is still fun to train and the shime waza were not that painful. Anjaan my partner from the Dubai dôjô might not agree though.

Kaname: shime refers to choking but also to applying pressure on Uke’s structure. Very interesting as always.

I’m happy to be there again. Even if there is no more daikomyôsai, the feeling remains the same. Next Sunday after class, some will have a Shidôshikai meeting. With the new honbu being near completion I guess he has a few things to tell us.

________________
Did you read my first eBook?

From Shiro Kuma's Blog by kumafr

The “Spirit of movement” is a mix of live experiences with sensei, my personal path in budô, and general thoughts on the martial arts.
It is easy to read and will please both the beginner and the advanced practitioner.

Below is an excerpt of this book:

“When you see the shihan move naturally and always being well positioned, you get the impression that they definitely knew where the attacker would head for and what he intended to do. But once you accept that intuition is fuelling our actions and unifies our two hemispheres, their reactions seem normal. In combat and in life, the exterior conditions are imposed on us, and if we are able to observe a situation and adjust our actions rapidly, only the intuitive adaptation which will only come after years of polishing will allow us to achieve mastership.

This simplified efficiency is the result of the “cleaning” of the movements through repetition. The more we do these basic forms, the more they are concise and precise. This is exactly what Musashi means when he writes: “don’t do anything useless”. Because at the same time your expertise is developing, you create parasitic movements. And you have to get rid of them in order to reach the true essence. In 1997, during a seminar in New Jersey, we were, a friend and I, in sensei’s room after a day of training. What he told us that night is still present in my mind. “I gave you everything you need. Now your training will consist in getting rid of all your parasitic movements and speeding everything that is useless”. With the many years of training every practitioner develops a series of bad habits inbreeding with the researched purity of the movements. Becoming concise therefore depends on this cleaning process. This phase of practice is the one requiring the most as it demands order and a deep consciousness of what is correct. Again, this bio mechanical consciousness in the movements has a deep impact on our daily lives and influence all our actions outside of the dôjô. With this physical work, the Budō practitioner becomes more efficient and direct in whatever he is doing but also in his relations with others.

Thus, budô is not limited to a system of fighting techniques, but offers us a means to approach the truth by putting us in a war-like situation. The technique is only valuable if it teaches to recognize a situation, and to respond to it most effectively. My master likes repeating that if you apply a technique of a given ryûha, of a fighting style, you are dead. Even if it is perfect, the technique activates the left part of the brain whereas intuition is located in the right part of the brain. This intuition of things always allows you to know what to do, and the benefits of martial arts begin to lap over our daily lives.”

Get the book and read the rest, here