Last week (15-17th of Octoper 2021) I was in Bergen, Norway. The local kendo club, run by my friend Ioannis Karampatsos, organised a seminar held my my sensei Walter Pomero (7 Dan) with the support of Edwin Soldati (6 Dan) and Laura Imperiale (5 Dan). It was very nice to meet the friends I could not meet since the beginning of the covid pandemic.
On Friday we had 1 hour practice suoervised by Edwin. In this hour, we focused on subury and practice without men. The aim of the lesson was the improvement of shinai control. After we had about half an hour of jigeiko. After keiko, all the italians, together with Ioannis, were invited for dinner at the Stephanos home, an instructor of aikido. Stefanos has a very confortable house and the dinner was tipically norvegian.
The main part of the seminar was on Saturday, 3 hous in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. In the morning, after suburi and practice in pairs without men, the participants were splitted in two groups: ladies and man. Ladies were trained by Laura as instead mens by Walter. Walter highlighed that having so many ladies offer the possibilies to them to practice together, which is a quite rare event in the every day practice in a dojo. During the morning, we practiced chudan and jodan basic techniques as well as oji waza techniques. In the afternoon we focused on kata for 2 hours and then we had open jigeiko. The night finished with the sayonara part in the italian restaurant Boccone. Two year ago we were in the same restaurant, that was at then time "Oliver Italy" and I had to admit that food was not particularly exciting. This time, it was different, we had pizza, ravioli and salad as buffet dinner. The overall quality of the food was quite good, although it seems that the chef likes a lot galic 😂. The sayonara party was very nice and the time flyed away very rapidly. On Sunday, there were exams from shodan to san dan and the overal quality was quite good since all applicant passed their exams. In the afternoon of Sunday, we grab our flight to Italy and we left Bergen.
Looking forward to participate to the 2022 Bergen Kendo seminar.
