Day 1 – Friday

五十嵐先生

弘明先生

Kobayashi H. Sensei and Igarashi Sensei gave a beautiful two hours on the first night of the seminar this Friday. Below are the review posts. I was very fortunate to have 白川さん and 五十嵐さん as my practice aite, as well as some other very nice Japanese people. Photos have been uploaded for Friday – see the photo section.

UPDATE: Actually, I had no idea 白川さん was 白川先生’s son! I misread his name and called him シロカワさん so I didn’t make the connection. When I look back now, I feel silly that I told him on Friday (in Japanese) that his movements are soft and graceful, and his ukemi are beautiful – he’s a 29-year-old 4th dan and the Master’s son. エリック：「シロカワさんの受身は美しいな」とか、「すげぃ柔らかいよ」などって言った。ワシはバカだ！

Review: [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ]

Day 2 – Saturday

白川先生

Shirakawa Sensei helped me understand funakogi undo better by showing us to open our scapula and to really pull back hard. He formally explained furitama undo / chinkon kishin, which I am glad he did because I wrote about it previously. We did Jo work and he had a very clear message about pulling and pushing. We finished up with kaitennage and ryotedori themes. Lastly, we learned about 出前ソバ.

Review: [ 9 10 11 12 ]

荒井先生

Arai Sensei has a different aikitaiso than most shihans. I paid close attention to how they warm up because they figured out how to stay flexible in their advanced ages. The first thing we did was zagi kokyuho very slowly. Then we worked on ki-no-musubi with tension with open palms and taisabaki. He taught a lot more.

Review: [13 14 ]

久保先生

Kubo Sensei introduced a modified way to do iriminage to start, then we went into katate-ryotedori techniques. He showed us a very nice uchimawari way to do several waza from this start. Later he demonstrated nikyo gaeshi waza taking advantage of Tori‘s lose thumb. We finished with yokomenuchi taisabaki practice.

Review: [ 15 16 17 ]

浅井先生

Asai Sensei started by explaining he was not an uchideshi, and he went to great lengths to explain what ushideshi means because he fears Westerners may not have a good concept of this. He did this to honour the two true uchideshi of O-Sensei who were in attendance at the seminar. He Started Aikido at age 13 on March 31st, 1955. A good deal of my notes are on his taisabaki. Next, we went into shiho undo, shihonage undo, then happo nage undo. He explained that from 8 we can go to 16, 32, 64… in any direction. He also said for everyone to not stop what they are doing when he explains something during practice time.

Review: [ 18 19 20 ]

小林先生

Kobayashi Y. Sensei started us off with a detailed taiso, then we did zempo kaiten ukemi and koho kaiten ukemi. We went into two jo awase kata, the first had 12 steps and the second one involved hasso gaeshi. Later, he explained how Uke can take koshinage safely by hooking on Tori‘s arm.

Review: [ 21 ]

Day 3 – Sunday

荒井先生

浅井先生

小林先生