Bogu

meh, tonight was a bit crappy...one of those nights when i new it would be before i even left the house...
lots of dodgy men, all over the place..and i just couldn't hit kote to save myself...
still don't know if i'm just being paranoid about sensei not saying anything to me after i hit him...
oh, and he made us do men while each person took a turn to count to 10...totally killed me...
so yeah, still feeling down...
quick quote from noma hisashi sensei:

Moreover, the one thing that is especially important for the shugyosha, or trainee, to keep in mind is never give up or quit Shugyo During the course of Shugyo training one develops and suffers from many doubts and dilemmas and because of these ones zeal for training disintegrates. However it is only by resisting the urge to quit and carry on that such problems that do arise will eventually solve themselves and without fail ones vision will become clearer.

believing that is all that's keeping me going just now (and having spent shitloads on dogi...)

on the brighter side...sensei said we're all doing so well they're not doing a bogu test (cept for Men)...so by mid-april we'll be wearing tare, kote and do...:D

just need to find money to buy them now...

Kata Videos

I think (if it works...) this should be a video of kata...always nice...

Kata

did kata for the first time tonight...it was fun...didn't sweat nearly as much, so not as blue as usual! and it doesn't hurt!
was doing it with a little 12 y.o. girl who didn't quite seem to get the whole kendo thing...which got annoying...but i can't claim to be much better....

Kiaaaai

i think i really understood kiai tonight...basically kept shouting until i couldn't do it anymore, then it just seemed to come out of nowhere...i gave myself a fright...it helps though...
my legs are aching, as ever...
did lots of men, with seme (??)...did men against sensei and another bloke in armour...he didn't say anything to me when i was doing it, but he did to other people...i'm not sure if that means it was good, or just too bad to bother giving tips on...the latter's quite possible and i'd doubt it was the former...
i donno...apart from that i guess it was ok...
i can't see myself passing the bogu exam later this month though...

bit down

i'm feeling a bit down about the whole kendo thing just now...well actually feeling a bit down abt most things...school's going alright actually...apart from all the work that's going to come soon...it just keeps piling on, cos i don't do anything about it...not good...
and yeah, caroline...i miss her...it feels like it's so long...and the whole thing seems to go up and down a lot...with more downs than usual...i guess it's stress and lack of sleep on my part...

but back to kendo, i just don't feel like i'm going anywhere with it, i don't think i'm really much better than a few weeks after i started...wednesday's practice was quite cool, a bit boring if anything...but thursday's really good me down...we were doing men against motodatchi in bogu, and i just could not seem to get a decent men in there at all...i have done before, against a raised shinai and all, so i'm not sure if i'm getting worse or if it was partly nerves...i remember being scared by them in bogu...especially when they kiai to themselves...
sensei kind kept telling me to relax my shoulders and hit with my left hand...i'm trying concentrating on the shoulders, which gets me more stressed abt it...i guess that's partly where the whole no thinking thing comes into it...but there are so many things to think abt...i guess it's a matter of thinking about it until they become programmed into the body like walking or the like...might end up in suri-ashi going to the shops...
sensei kind of took me aside too and said that chacun a ses qualités, et chacun a ses propres difficultés...[mais je pense avoir plus de difficultés que de qualités...]
that actually helped me to feel a bit better...i think he actually notices me more than i'd always assumed he did...guess that's why he's sensei and i'm not...
bought a skipping rope in the hope that owning it will somehow make me fitter......

Kendooo

i'm not sure how good i'll be at doing thig...i find it quite hard to be honest when i'm writing...always try to hard to make it sound good...

my hope is that i can write a little journal type thing, in theory about kendo, but probably about everything else too...
i'm hoping that taking a note of each practice and how i feel will help me progress, or at least i can look at it and see if i have progressed or not...

if you're reading this, i guess you're either a strange person i don't know who's came across this, or a strange person i do know who's came across it...either way...clicking the google ads will help me by bogu...which is nice...