Wednesday August 8th

I'm just in the door from the dojo and I have tuned into RTE Radio 1 in order to listen in to Katie Taylor's Olympic boxing semi-final bout... Hopefully she will have the job done by the time I have this post finished!

I was out and about in Suidobashi area today... I wanted to go to a Budo store there to pick up a couple of things.  I stopped into to a general hardware shop while I was there as well.  They had a fine array of different tools there... I'm sure my Dad would have been very impressed!

Wow... the atmosphere in the Excel Arena sounds incredible... It's times like this when you wish you were at home or even in London!  I'll just have to settle for live radio commentary from the one and only Marty Morrissey now though!  Okay... I just have to stop up and listen to this.....I can't concentrate on this post for the moment!

Incredible....!  An Olympic Final for Ireland's Katie Taylor... the finest female boxer on the planet!  Superstar!  A great lift for the people of Ireland!


Fair play Katie Taylor!

 Anyway... getting back to Tokyo!  Yamaguchi Sensei, Kanayama Sensei and Matsue Sensei were in the dojo when I arrived this evening.  Kanayama Sensei was drilling the 6-7pm kids class very hard when I arrived.  Kanayama Sensei really gives 110% to his training and teaching... Over the last couple of years I have seen a huge amount of progression in some of the kids.  I can't help but wonder how the instructor's are going to nurture one of the young girls who I mentioned earlier in my blog... This girl must be only 4 or 5 years old... she's like a doll and very very timid!  The instructor's do their best to encourage her but it would be hard to excite her... They really enjoy her I'd say!  There will come a day when all this will stop and she will need to step up to the mark...  Of course this will happen naturally but it must be interesting to see when the instructor's decide to change their attitude and expectations of her.

Matsue Sensei took the 7-8pm class while Yamaguchi Sensei drilled behind us at the back of the dojo and Kanayama Sensei looked on from the side.  There was five of us training tonight.  Started off with 60 squats from shiko-dachi... then holding in shiko-dachi and 30 punches... Then 60 lunges... We then practiced the pulling and pushing of the back leg from zenkutsu-dachi... squeezing the inner thighs and Matsue Sensei wanted us to concentrate on keeping the moving foot parallel at all times... Then we progressed to switching between sides in zenkustu-dachi rapidly... 30 times first and then a further 30 times with gyaku zuki.  Then we did two switches one count.. 10 times... We did the exact same thing for mae-geri... Very hard going at this stage!

For the remainder of the class we went through all the Junro kata's in great detail.. As I have said in previous posts, Matsue Sensei is very particular about the technical aspects of kata and he is excellent to explain different aspects. The Junro kata's are considered very important here in Japan.  Coloured belts are expected to know all of them.  There are a couple of brown belts in the dojo who told me that they failed their black belt examination because they made a mistake in one of the Junro kata.  Nothing other than perfection is required here... and rightly so!  We did each Junro kata twice "to the count" and once all the way through.  I was pretty wrecked come near the end... this is compounded when you have Kanayama Sensei standing beside me with his arms folded watching my every move and Yamaguchi Sensei breathing over my shoulder as he also performs the kata!

I gave Kanayama Sensei a gift after training... A little piece of Waterford Crystal.. Same as what I gave Yamaguchi Sensei.  I gave three of the students a little lapel pin of a shamrock each as well.  They were bowled over with these and really delighted!  See the pictures below of these students and the below that I am pictured with Yamaguchi Sensei.




Hombu Dojo students pictured with the shamrock lapel pins!



Pictured with Yamaguchi Sensei (JKS 6th Dan and Hombu Dojo Chief Instructor)