2007.04.23.
This week we will go on with the pictures on aikido life. And the main topic is food and eating. This will be our last "real" aikido-week, as most of the next week is a national holiday. This is called "Golden Week" here, and everybody will be travelling around (they have not too many free days). We will do the same: we are going to the nicest city in Japan: Kyoto, for 4 days. After that we will have just a couple of days left, and then - go home! Many people realized right now that we have not too much time left and they started to invite us. Tomorrow we are going to Masuda sensei. As it seems we will have a lot to do these days and I am not sure I will be able to upload more pictures. Anyway, we will finish this report home and we fill find a final place for it.
The structure of the practices is rather different from the Hungarian method. Taking a 90 minutes long practice, in the first 60 minutes basic free hand technics are practiced, then there are 15 minutes for weapons, and other 15 minutes for free practice. You can practice freely at least 10 minutes even in the end of one hour practices. And after the training, one can sit and have a tea and a small talk with the sensei and other people, or can practice more 30-60 minutes. This way everybody can prepare for his/her next promotion test or can practice whatever he/she want. You can learn a lot from higher level people, as higher level technics (e.g. kaeshi-waza) are practiced much often than in Hungary.
This board is hanging in Kodaira dojo. There are names on the small panels: the names of persons who were practicing and taking their exams here. When somebody passes a new promotion test, his/her panel will be relocated to the proper place. The lower row is for shodan, the second for nidan-sandan-yondan, and the upper row for roku- and nanadan people. Kobayashi sensei's name is the first, of course. It is nice, is not it?
A moment from a practice in Tokorozawa-dojo.
This is Yamawaki sensei (Ukai-san's father, by the way). He is a famous person here, for many reasons. For one, he spent his youth in South-France. He got his degree and started practicing aikido over there:-) For two, after he returned to Japan, he built his own dojo somewhere in the mountains. We have only one practice pro week with him, but we like him very much.
The usual tea-time after practice.
The calligraphy-studies on Saturdays go on, but Ildi is more enthusiastic than me. Kobayashi sensei is correcting Ildi's work all the time.
On Monday all uchideshi have the breakfast together, this picture is from today. Before you start blaming me, that red thing on the plate is melon not meat;-)) I always take pieces of meat out of the soup and somebody eats them. Well, as a big family...
There is a small restaurant called Murayama near here, we have lunch there once or twice a week.
Lunch is not expensive, there is food for approximately $5.5 on each server, which is really enough for one person.
Coffee-machine, our best friend. The drinks marked by red are hot, and those marked by blue are cold. Everybody has his/her favorite one, and finding cocoa is a big fortune, as it is much rarer and is often out. And if you find one machine that contains it, you can not be sure next time you will be lucky again, as drinks are often changed, unfortunately.
Hiroaki sensei is going to Poland for a training camp and he will return only one day before we leave. That could be the reason we were invited for a lunch. As you might see, the conversation was very serious. The first topic was mimicking the vocalisations of different animals in our native languages. Hungarian version of cook-a-doodle-doo was quite popular, although the Swedish version was very close to it. Then we played this well-known game (stone-paper-scissors in Hungarian...), and the bet was paying the dinner for all (not really, just for the concentration). Björn, Ildi and me were the losers, but the senseis paid the bill.
