Andy, Kanae and I passed our tests. I’m now nikyu. I had a lot of help from my mentor Ben Sensei, the kind members of Calgary Aikikai, and all the aite and teachers who helped me practice for my test – especially Chris, Takashi-san and Andrew. I would like to thank Beau and Julian for being challenging Uke’s on my test, and for making randori a real workout. :)

I naturally made mistakes, but it was a different kind of test for me: in preparing for this important test I got training from two different dojos; it was hard to learn modified techniques two weeks before the actual test. When I found out it wasn’t Ben Sensei who was going to test me, but rather the committee members, I had to quickly retrain and modify my techniques to pass the test they envisioned. Andy went through the same re-learning curve and it was confusing for both of us. In the end we internalized everything our friends at Calgary Aikikai gave us. Though on the test some of my techniques were choppy and I wasn’t super proud of myself, I was happy to go through the process because it was not a normal, smooth process.

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