Below are some photographs from my weekend adventures around Tokyo!
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| Riding up front on the Yamanote Line through downtown Tokyo |
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| The busiest pedestrian crossing in the world at Shibuya |
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| Soaking up the early Sunday morning atmosphere around the trendy Harajuku district |
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| Spectacular entrance to the Meiji Shrine |
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| Inside the Meiji Shrine area... no photographs allowed up close! |
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| Tokyo Green Park... Activities of all sorts taking place here! |
I arrived at the dojo around 6.15pm this evening. Kagawa Sensei, Kai Sensei and Watanabe Sensei were teaching the 6-7pm class when I arrived. All of the Sensei's were teaching small groups of students. Kagawa Sensei was teaching two young black belts.. I sat and observed in both awe and keen interest for 40 minutes! Kagawa Sensei was teaching the kids Kanku-sho. The kids must have been maybe... 13 years old (a boy) and 11 years old (a girl). They have really nice karate and you could see that Kagawa Sensei was trying to fine tune everything. Kagawa Sensei spent quite a bit of time working on the spinning movement where you strike the open left hand with your right foot and spin around and land on all fours... Kagawa Sensei was stressing the importance of keeping the head in the same position for the spinning element and the immediate rebound into low shuto-uke (gedan). This was almost like plyometric training to look at it! Kagawa Sensei gave the kids a break on three occasions and he performed the kata each time! He was impressive as always... very relaxed, exceptionally dynamic and brilliantly powerful! He did seem a little out of breath each time he finished and he used to joke about something with the kids... He is human after all!
There were six of us training in the 7-8pm class. There was a visitor in for one night. A man maybe in his mid to late fifties I'd say.... From Montreal... He told me after class that he had been in Tokyo for the last three weeks and that he thought that he couldn't pass up the opportunity to train at the Hombu Dojo! I can tell you that he got an almighty experience!! It was an exceptionally hard but brilliant class. Kagawa Sensei certainly wound up through the gears tonight!
We started off the class with "simple" kizami, gyaku-zuki, kizami from zenkutsu-dachi. First two punches (one count)... 20 times and then three punches (one count)... 10 times.. we did the exact same on the opposite side... Then from zenkustu dachi... Mae geri, yoko geri (to the side) and then mawashi-geri (to the front)... Individual count first... 30 kicks... Then three kicks one count... .10 times... Exact same on the right side...
Next we progressed to a very intensive 15 minute spell of ido-kihon... up and down the dojo. Every technique seven times forward and seven time backwards (or the other direction)... Starting with oi-zuki.... age uke gyaku-zuki... mae-geri... soto uke gyaku zuki... mae geri, oi zuki.... uchi uke gyaku zuki... mawashi geri... shuto uke.... mawashi geri gyaku zuki... Yoko geri keage and kekomi.... ushiro geri... ushiro geri gyaku zuki... We had a very small amount of time to recover from each technique... I'll be honest... I was fairly struggling when we reached the ushiro-geri's.... it had become very difficult to keep snapping everything.... You are just in survival mode at this stage.... You can only think of one technique at a time....
With only about 10 seconds of a break, Kagawa Sensei paired us together and we each got a towel... Sit ups... 140 sit ups... straight off... When we finished we turned on to our stomachs and did the inverse of a sit up to strengthen our back... again 140 times... Absolutely wrecked at this stage... I could see the guy from Montreal... he was hardly able to pick himself off the floor... Welcome to the JKS Hombu Dojo sir! We had a quick one minute break where we wiped our sweat up off the floor and tried to intake some much needed liquid!
After this Kagawa Sensei brought us through a very nice drill wich involved all sorts of elbow strikes... Starting from shizen-tai and then using these same strikes in a variety of stances... straight stepping and spinning movements... Very nice and I think the purpose of the techniques were to encourage us to relax and to use our whole bodies... We also did a very nice technique where you start say left side zenkutsu-dachi and open left hand straight out in front... Strike the left hand with the rear leg (somewhat like Kanku-Sho)... bring leg back to starting position... next you left your front leg straight out as if pulling in a leg with your front foot (like ashi-barai I guess)... squeeze the leg into the chest and then push forward qyaku-zuki.... We did this 20 times each side... Very nice technique and one to practice..
We then went through all the Heian kata... Watanabe Sensei and Kai Sensei took one of the beginners and the visiting Canadian aside to give them individual tuition on their kata... This was very nice for the Canadian guy... It must have been a dream come through to be experiencing and class like this and then getting individual attention... Kagawa Sensei worked on the Heian kata and Tekki Shodan with four of us... He spent quite a bit of time on the "foot lift" inside movement in Tekki Shodan... We did a very nice exercise to help with this and it resembled some sort of a dance... It was very effective and kind of fun as well!
Finally we finished with Jion... Kagawa Sensei spent quite a bit of time helping us with the transition into and the execution of the age uke's and gyaku-zuki's before the first kiai. Absolutely shattered at the end but it was a really brilliant class and lots learned... This included the observations during the 6-7pm class which are also very important for me. I'm pictured below with the famous Sensei's Kai and Watanabe after training. Back in the dojo again tomorrow morning. Time for the leaba now... Getting to sleep can be difficult when you're still wired after training.
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| Pictured with Kai Sensei (left) and Watanabe Sensei (right). |
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| A little treat after training! |
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