Shyugyo 8 - last training

In the last few kendo trainings, Kuroda-san has been very nice to practise with me alone on basics. Men-strikes in particular. It probably looks a little strange to the others that we are doing such basic cuts while the others were doing jigeiko. But neither of us cared. I'm really grateful for his effort, and I'm somehow flattered as well. After my last training, which was yesterday, he took his charm inside of his dou, and gave it to me. I couldn't be more touched.

In my last training on Wednesday evening, many people turned up, and the dojo was very full. About 10 7th Dan Senseis turned up, so it was an eye-candy to see them doing jigeiko with each other. I first had a "goodbye" jigeiko with Ozawa-sensei, which was of course very exhausting and more like a kakarigeiko. I didn't manage have jigeiko with anyone else apart from training with Kuroda san because the huge number of people and limited space. During the final kakarigeiko Kodama-san "thoughtfully" pushed me to Ozawa-sensei for the final kakarigeiko, something that I am so glad to have done. During the cool-down exercise Ozawa-sensei asked me to give a short speech in Japanese after meditation. I was "a little" unprepared, but as I know pretty well what I would like to say to all the people. So I used very limited vocabulary to say,

``Tomorrow I am returning to Germany. Three weeks of kendo practice in Kobukan. Kobukan's kendo and nin-jou-mi (人情味) (hospitality) I like very much. In these three weeks, I made many many friends. Thank you all very much.''

I thanked all the senseis whom I have practised with. Kaji-sensei wished me the best and keep training hard. Honda-sensei, who surprised me with very elegant English, told me that he likes my kendo and that I should continue this style of kendo when I go back to Germany.

After the training we sat in the dojo and had some beer before moving to another Izakaya for more drinking with three other senseis including Hashimoto-sensei. Iinuma-san, and Kodama-san were there too. I had many many fun and enjoyable conversations with them.