Omamori

Holy Schmoky! I was completely exhausted from tonight's training. I got up this morning having a sore throat. (Incredible isn't it.. getting a cold in the summer. I blame it on the weather. ) And wondered if I'd go to the training. Anyhow, I brought my armour to the office, and at the end still went to it.

The training was about an hour. But we got on with it very fast, spending relatively less time on kihon than usual, in order to have more time for waza and jigeiko. We did some men-uchi, kote-uchi, kote-men, and hiki-men. I'm quite pleased that I now don't forget the zanshin after the hiki-men strike, namely, arms straight up, loud kiai and quickly shooting backwards.

• The men-strike of the kote-men is still too weak. The problem is the feet.
• Stephan adviced that I should fight for the center instead of just moving my kensen around.

In the jigeiko I fought with 6 people, the last one being Georg. Four of them were new in the armours, so I had to take some care to motivate them instead of just trying defeating them. I was pleasantly surprised that most of them were making nice straight men- and kote-men strikes. The major problem is that they tend to be afraid of strike and also move back during the jigeiko. A common mistake when a beginner fights with a more senior person. How the sempai motivates the beginner is not always easy. A good kendo player doesn't mean that he is necessarily a good teacher. Which is kinda true for almost every other things. Teaching is itself an art.

The jigeiko with Georg was the climax of the training. I completely switched off my brain (especially the parts that respond to pain), and just gave everything. I made some good continuous strikes occasionally, though sometimes I was too tired to care about passing through the opponent from the side instead of running into him and be knocked out. This always happens to me if I fight with a much taller person. The solution is the fast footwork. FOOTWORK again!

One interesting moment to note is that, at one point when we were at the chikma distance, we both froze. I had my kensen upwards point to his men, and he had his off-centre point to my left side. We held for 5 seconds still. WHAM. He did a men-debana-kote. When thinking back I was not active at all. I was waiting to see what he wanted to do, and this slight hesitation was enough for him.

After the fight I could hardly keep my back straight, while we still had to do ai-kakarigeiko!

Well, time for bed! おやすみなさい!

I attached the photos of the Omamori (お守り), or the Japanese amulet, that my brother sent me, who lives in Taiwan and regularly visits Japan for business. He got it from the Astuta shrine in Nagoya. Now I tie it to the inside of my do for good luck and safety! It reminds me of my childhood when I'd take similar amulets from Taoist temples.