Or, “It’s cold. It must be mid-winter training.” In the Japanese martial arts tradition, students of each of the various schools typically hold a special training session called “kangeiko” (寒稽古 in Japanese), which means “mid-winter training.” No one is certain of the exact origin of the kangeiko, but the tradition appears to have started in [...]
Finally. After a year on the sidelines, I’ve finally returned to aikido! This morning, I decided to go to the afternoon 2 pm aikido session at Shodokan honbu, hoping for a small class size. Almost a year ago to the day, I broke a finger (the proximal phalanx of the left pinky, to be precise) [...]
The aikido seminar on July 27th was well-attended by both university students and adult aikidoka. It was held in a really superb dojo, which sported three full-size judo competition areas. By my recoking, that’s about 20×8-jo, which is quite large.
It was really hot and humid. By the time the morning session had ended, I think that the entire dojo raced to the nearest vending machine for a cold bottle of Pocari Sweat. My judogi was completely saturated before lunch, and the afternoon was even hotter than in the morning. (…)
On the weekend of August 26 & 27, the JAA is holding a training seminar at Kokushikan University (map), which is situated in Tsurukawa, northwest of Yokohama and west of Tokyo. The Sunday session is reserved for instructor training, which means I’m not attending, but I am joining the contingent that’s going for the Saturday [...]
In June, 2006, I headed out for the United States to attend a professional conference in Baltimore, Maryland. I hadn’t been to Baltimore in years, but remembered (correctly, it turns out) that, in addition to the beautiful Inner Harbour area and the expansive convention hall, there’s also quite a rough quarter near the city centre.
Before traveling to the conference, I decided to seek out an aikido venue in which to train whilst there. Finding a venue turned out to be an adventure in and of itself.
Sometimes I really feel as if I live on an airplane. If you’re a die-hard traveler, you’ll be instantly in synch with the concept. If not, imagine being away from home upward of 50% of the time. While I enjoy traveling to new and exotic places, sometimes it gets tiring and dull.
But aikidō has given me a new opportunity: now, before I travel, I look for shōdōkan aikidō venues in which I can train whilst away. This has been fun and, frankly, quite enlightening in a number of ways.
