Kendo travel diary

December 2011: Visiting USG Kendo club in Copenhagen

2011-12-10T18:31:00.001+01:00

This is the last trip of this year. I was in Copenhagen for the second time in my life. This time I was at the BRIC research centre for a talk and for some discussion about a collaboration project going on. I was invited by Giorgio, which is a very smart PhD student that I met few years ago in Italy. Although December is not the ideal time to visit Copenhagen I had few hours to visit the town.
The trip was a bit tricky. Normally I fly with Lufthansa, but this time I had to use Air France since it was the cheapest flight. The connection between Torino and Copenhagen, via Paris CDG, is not the best. I arrived in Paris about 1 hour before the departure of the flight to Copenhagen but, the connection between the 2G terminal and the 2D terminal is a nightmare at CDG airport. The only way is taking a shuttle bus and pass again the security check. The result of such procedure was that I got on the plane few minutes before departure. Off course, my luggage, i.e. my bogou!, was not loaded on the Copenhagen plane. So at the Copenhagen airport I had to ask to deliver my luggage to the hotel. Fortunately I arrived on Sunday evening and the training was on Monday evening so I was expecting to be so lucky to get the luggage on Monday morning.
I spent the evening in a nice sushi bar with Giorgio and I learned some things about leaving in Copenhagen. First of all bicycles are the most used method of transportation, it is amazing to realize that the main noise in the street is made by the bicycles' wheels rolling on the street!

Furthermore I learned that, as Christmas is approaching, Xmas parties are organized between colleagues, friends and gym people, so the period is very busy! It is notable that Xmas parties are sort of standardized, you start with a "gloog", a wine hot punch, and the party continues with a lot of food and drinking snaps! The party ends with a very good cake made by cream, nuts and cherry glassa. I tested the cake at the caffeteria at lunch time and...I am still digesting it ;-).
In Copenhagen everything is extremely well organized, you can also find indication where pets should walk!

On Monday I spent some time with Giorgiotalking about our research project and later in the afternoon I had a brief walk in Copenhagen. It is really a nice town. I had an early dinner, at 17:00 with Giorgio. This is really very early for an Italian, but since I had to go to the dojo at 20:00 I had to eat early, also because after 22 it is practically impossible to find any food in Copenhagen, unless you look for a kebab.
About 19:30 I walked to the USG Kendo Club, it was only a couple of Kms away from my hotel. I got to the University gym where the USG people practice on Monday, see picture below, the entrace is on the right side of the building. When I arrived I spent some thime talking with two young kyusha that are practicing at USG Kendo Club. I learn from them that there are few little Kendo Dojo in the country. After a while few other people arrived and I met Martin, that was my contact to attend to the practice. Martin told me that, since there was a very nice Christmas party on Saturday

probably we would not have too many peersons at the practice. We started about 20:00 we were six with the bogou and about 10 beginners without bogou. We started a warm up all together. Warming up was very similar to our training in Torino, a little bit of run, stretching and basic suburi. After, one of the students with the bogou took the very beninners, as instead we continue some basic techniques with some the advanced beginners. We worked a bit on the foot work and on big techniques: men, kote, do, kote/men.
After we did the Mentsuke and we had various rounds of kirikaeshi, followed single and combination of techniques. About 21:30 we stop for few minutes and we made a full round of mawarigeiko. The two young students were very committed, and although they need further practice, the were showing a good timing and attitude. Also the jigeiko with the more experienced people was very nice.
It was a very nice to practice. We finished few minutes after 22:00 and a grab all my stuff and decided to have a shower at the hotel. I really hope to get back in Copenhagen in the futere and practice again at the USG Kendo Club, mybe in Spring when the weather is more pleasant.

October 2011: Singapore Kendo Club

2011-10-23T18:25:00.010+02:00

It was totally unexpected, I got an invitation to participate to the 1st NGS Asia Meeting in Singapore in October.

I was in Singapore the first week of October, a very busy week, a lot of science and talks at SiGN. It was a very useful trip and off course I managed to have two session of Kendo!
I was very glad to be back at the Singapore Kendo Club. Going to the SKC is now like visiting some old friends and I have to thanks a lot Yeo sensei and all the students for the warm welcome I get every time I go at SKC. This time I managed to practice twice, on Sunday and on Wednesday, at the Dojo in the Japanese Changi School. This time was my first time on Sunday training, a lot of people, very impressive! On Sunday morning are present many sensei and it was very nice to practice. On Sunday the first hour is dedicated to kendo no kata and I am very grateful to Yeo sensei since he introduced me to the kodachi kata 8 and 9. It was very useful and interesting. Since it was my first time I only managed to acquire the basic movements but it was a very useful start. After we started the usual warn up and suburi. After men-o-tsuke we started kion and jigeiko. During jigeiko I managed to practice with Takamori sensei ->
As suggested by Doug sensei from Seattle Kendo Kai, during my trip in Seattle on last July, I am trying to improve my seme. I tried to make pressure to Takamori sensei but it did not work at all. After the training I asked him about the jigeiko and he told me that I was getting too near before attaching and the seme was not present. I knew that seme is not an easy task, but I am very far away from a correct application. On the basis of sensei comments I realized that, trying to apply pressure to the opponent, I was mainly getting near to him instead to create the right occasion to attach. I have to add to the work with the body also the work with the shinai, to create an opening that will make more easy the attach....I will continue to try.
I really enjoyed the training on Sunday. After I was very grateful to Yeo sensei for the invitation to participate to the lunch for the departure of one of the Japanese sensei. We went to the restaurant where the chef have invented the curry crab. I also learned some new things about Singapore. Specifically Yeo sensei told me that all the Changi area was produced transferring the soil from the internal hills to grab new space from the sea.
We had a very delicious lunch with a lot of food that I never tried before. I had a very pleasant talk with a Kendo student sit near me and with my Greek friend Periklis that is now living in Singapore and practice Kendo at SKC. It was a very nice Sunday.
On Wednesday the training was pretty similar to the one on Sunday although the number of students was little less. The training was very nice and I managed to have some jigeiko with various students that I met during my previous trips to Singapore and also with Renata.
I got back in Italy on Saturday and I was grabbed by the teaching duty and working routine.
Now I am waiting to meet again Yeo sensei and the Singapore Kendo team at the Kendo Championship that will be held in Novara in May 2012.

September the 12: Visiting Seishinkan Dojo in Bologna

2011-09-16T12:27:00.004+02:00

Last week I was in Modena to run a course on Microarray data analysis for one of the European ECOST actions. It was interesting, students were all very motivated and I enjoyed a lot the interaction with them. As usual I took the chance to practice Kendo. Unfortunately the dojo in Modena had a training that was not fitting my schedule but I was very lucky since I found that the Seishinkan Dojo in Bologna was training right at the end of my teaching day. It was ideal to get relaxed and enjoy Kendo. I contacted the Stefano Betti, which is the instructor of the Dojo, and he agreed for my visit. Unfortunately the day I went to Seishinkan Stefano was in holiday and I could have the chance to cross the shinai with him. Anyway he put me in contact with Gianandrea Maccaferri, which is the President of the Dojo. I finished my teaching duty at 17:30 and I departed to Bologna. The distance is very limited but roads were very crowded and I managed to arrive to the Dojo just few minutes before the 19:00.
The Seishinkan Dojo practice is at Scuole Grosso, via Cristoforo da Bologna, 29 - Bologna. At my arrival I fund immediately a very nice and warm atmosphere.
Gianandrea gave me some information about the dojo and he also told me that they were starting a new course for children.
The week I went in Modena it was surprisingly hot, but it was shocking the temperature in Bologna. My car thermometer was indicating 32 Celsius at 19:00. Therefore, since the Dojo is located in a gym made of concrete, I let you image the temperature.... I was wet already after the initial stretching.
The training started at 19:30 with a brief run that was followed by a very complete session of stretching. I found it very very useful also because this was only the second training after the summer holidays. After stretching we moved to basic suburi and after we did some basic kion without the men, in part because there was a mixture of experienced and beginners and also because it was HOT!
I got some interesting tips about the kion. Specifically I found very interesting the kirikaeshi made doing the yokomen on the kote of motodachi staying in jodan no kamae. It was very useful to control the right inclination of the shinai and the strength of the hit.
After we did men tsuke and we started mawarigeiko. That was very hard! I was feeling a lot the hotness and I was already tired after the second jigeiko. I think this is the effect of the good food I had during the holidays in Sicily.
Sweating a lot I managed to get to the jigeiko with Gianandrea, which is a quite tall person. I was very much at the end of my energy but I tried my best. After a bit in judan no kamae a moved to jodan also because the change of the kamae provided a bit of time to recover. I liked a lot the jigeiko with Gianandrea but I was also glad it was the last one.
After the rei we got food and refreshing drinks because it was the birthday of one of the students. I was so so thirsty! It took me about half an hour and some litres of water to refill me.
At 22:00 I was back on the way to Modena where I directly went to sleep.
I hope to visit again the dojo in Bologna it was a nice experience!

29th of July: Visiting NORTHWEST KENDO CLUB

2011-07-30T19:09:00.010+02:00

Yesterday was my last night in Seattle and I visited the NORTHWEST KENDO CLUB. I got there thank to the transportation kindly offered by Steve from the Seattle Kendo Kai. The sensei of the dojo is Koike sensei (7th Dan). He travels a lot and I was not sure I could meet him. But fortunately he managed to come back on time from a summer camp in California and yesterday night he was driving the training. The number of members in this period is about 15-20 since many people is in holidays. Steve also told me that, since all the dojo belong to a common association, a student from a dojo that goes for a keiko in an other dojo is treated as guest and he has not to pay any extra cost for the training. Very convenient situation in Seattle. Also at NORTHWEST KENDO CLUB after the warm up we started basic suburi and we finished with three repetition of 30 choyaku men. We then did the men tsuke and we started with kirikaeshi and few other basic kion. Since many of the people of the dojo has to undergo to grading examination we had a mawarigeiko of about one hour. During the mawarigeko I had the opportunity to practice also with Koike sensei. It was very very instructive and useful.

After the training we went out to a restaurant near the dojo for a beer and an hamburger.
I was sitting right in front to Koike sensei and catching his advices. He told me that he observed my posture and he saw that my posture has two main problems. The heel of the back foot is too high and this does not allow me to push enough with the back foot during the attach. The second point is due to the fact that when I do fumikomi I am elevating too much the front foot.
I took in strong consideration the points raised by Koike sensei and I will work, starting from next September, on them.

This is the link to the FB accountof NW Kendo club: www.facebook.com/northwestkendo

28th of July: Keiko at Sno-King Kendo Club

2011-07-29T21:52:00.007+02:00

This is my third day in Seattle, I have not seen very much of the town since I am too busy with the Conference. Also this morning we had quite interesting talks and the afternoon tutorial was useful although not so well organized. Also today I left the meeting at 4.00 PM and at the Hotel I had a little nap before the arrival of Jeff Marsten (7th Dan), the sensei of the Sno-King Kendo Club. The Sno-King Kendo Club is located in the north part of Seattle and we strugled a little to get there due to the heavy traffic. Jeff sensei if a very direct and clear person I liked his very direct way of speaking. When we arrived to the dojo all the members introduced themselves to me and before the start of the training Jeff sensei told to the students that I was coming from Italy and I was enthusiastic to cross the shinai with them.
After the Rei we started the warm up and the suburi. The participants were very variegated there were students with/without bogu and children with/without bogu. In total we were about 30 people. We finished suburi with three rounds of 50 chōyaku men. After men tsuke we started various rounds of kirikaeshi followed by big men, small kote-men and iki-waza techniques. After we had free jigeiko. In Sno-King Kendo Club people from sandan mainly act as motodachi during the free jigeiko and I also started with them. I did not expected to be so popular, in the sense that I was continuously having persons asking to practice with me and jigeiko after jigeiko it was getting more and more difficult. The student quality level is quite high and the vast majority is YOUNG! Never the less I tried my best. Specifically I tried to apply the pressure to the opponent, one of the points raised by Doug sensei at Seattle Kendo Kai club. One think I realized from the keiko I did was that this time the fighting distance was good, I cannot be not sure that it was due on my "pressure" or simply by the fact that they can manage to make a good stroke even from longer distance. The critical issue I found in my behaviour was the lack of control of the opponent at the end of the attach. After an attach I was loosing attention and the opponent frequently managed to apply multiple iki techniques. I have to work on this point. An other issue is the fact that I focus everything in a single attach as instead the Sno-King kendokas always tried to apply multiple techniques. I have to admit that this is actually an issue for me since if I apply multiple techniques I loose precision and posture. Fortunately at a certain point people stop to ask for keiko and I could managed to take off the men and slowly bring back the breath to normality. It was hard, challenging but also wonderful!

I like the training very very much, but, as I highlighted at the end of the training, I was also very happy that it was finished! After , we went out for dinner and it was the first time I tried a Korean Barbecue, it was a delicious dinner with a lot of beer and nice talk about kendo and other general topics. Great night! Jeff sensei was also so kind to bring me back to the Hotel. It is clear that also this night I had no problem in finding my way to the arms of Morfeo.

27th of July: Keiko at Cascade Kendo Kai

2011-07-29T01:56:00.009+02:00

This night I slept like a baby and I weak up at 7:00 right on time for going to the Developer day at BioC2011. Very interesting day, I got a lot of interesting information that will be useful for my work in Italy. I left the Conference at 4:00 and I got back at the Hotel. At 6:00 PM Gary Imanishi sensei picked me up and we went together to the Cascade Kendo Kai. Cascade Kendo Kai is located in Mercer Island, which is in the middle of the Sattle lake. It is a very beautiful place, where buildings are very well integrated with the environment. During the trip to the dojo I had the opportunity to talk to Gary sensei, he is a very pleasant person and we had a very nice time discussing about Kendo. When we arrived at the dojo I met again Brian, which is the sun of Gary and run the dojo together with Gary sensei. Brian was at the training at Seattle Kendo Kai the day before. I met all the other people of the dojo and at the time we started the training we were about 15. Also here the environment was very pleasant. Gary sensei is tightly linked to very traditional Kendo. After a warm up and suburi we started practising Kendo no kata and we focus only on Ippon me, but not simply repeating the movements, but trying to get the mental contact between the opponents. Gary sensei told us that shitachi should press uchitachi in a way that uchitachi is forced to attach. It was very difficult but very interesting. After we put the men and after few rounds of kirikaeshi and basic techniques we practised Ippon me with the bogu. It was very very difficult, I was unable to get the right distance from the opponent, timing was no good....it was a little disaster, but useful since it highlighted the critical points in my Ippon me, which were less visible with the boken practice. After we did few round of mawarigeiko and I nearly managed to practice with all the people. I had a very nice keiko with Brian which is very smart and quick.
Unfortunately we run out of time and I could not managed to practice with Gary sensei, but I had the opportunity to see the last keiko that Gary sensei had with his sun Brian.

After the training It was a very nice surprise the invitation for dinner, we went to a pub were we got very good food and gorgeous fresh beer! We spent the evening talking about Kendo and other topics like very old friends. The time passed very quickly and Gary sensei was so kind to take me back at the hotel.

26th of July: Keiko at Seattle Kendo Kai

2011-07-27T22:15:00.011+02:00

Flight from Frankfurt to Seattle was fine and, most important think, my bogu arrived in Seattle with me, giving the possibility to have keiko at Seattle Kendo Kai. I got a lift from Steve, a second generation Italian living in Seattle. At the dojo I met Doug Imanishi sensei (7th Dan) which told me that he met in the past my sensei.
As usual I found a very friendly environment.
Before starting Doug sensei presented me to the dojo people and he said a very important think in my opinion. He highlighted that anybody practising Kendo visit an other dojo he will find friend to whom he can exchange knowledge and he can practice with the others without any problem because Kendo is "Kendo" everywhere.
The training started together for people with or without bogu. After a brief warm up followed by basic suburi we did basic ashi sabaki training with the beginners. Subsequently the training was splitted in two groups: people without the bogu and people with bogu.
We put the men and started with slow kirikaeshi to acquire the right posture and zanshin. We also executed single and multiple techniques as, big men, kote men, kote men men and some counter attach techniques as debana men.
After we started mawarigeiko, changing partern every 4 minutes. This part was very hard also considering the fact that I had 11 hours flight and 7 hours je-tlag (it was 8 PM in Seattle but my body was still feeling I was in Italy at 4 AM!).
I was trying to find the right opportunity to attach but I only succeed few times. I realized that I was loosing rapidly the right distance as the opponent was entering in my space.
After the mawarigeiko we had the opportunity to practice with the sensei and I had a brief keiko with Doug sensei.

After the end of the training I asked Doug sensei for some suggestions and, on the basis of his answer, I realized why I was loosing the right fighting distance during mawarigeiko.
He told me that he was not feeling any pressure from me and this is expected from a sandan. I realized that, during mawarigeiko, I was too much thinking on the search for the opportunity to strike and I completely forgot the seme.
At the endo of the training Steve took me back to the hotel and I rapidly searched a restaurant to eat a quick dinner. I found I nice fish restaurant on the 4th avenue and I got a very good wild Alaska salmon cooked perfectly and very tasty. I finished the dinner with a creme brule' and I got back to the hotel. I had a quick shower and I have to admit that I lose conciousness as sonn as I got in the bed.

Below the video, kindly provided by Seattle Kendo Kai, that gives an overall view of the training:

SEA Jul-26 2011 from Seattle Kendo Kai on Vimeo.

On the way to Seattle

2011-07-26T07:34:00.004+02:00

I am at the Frankfurt airport nearly ready to board to Lufthansa flight to Seattle.
It is my first time in Seattle and is also the first time I participate to the Bioconductor Meeting in USA. I am very excited of that, since the meeting program is very very interesting.
As usual when I travel I bring with me my bogu and this time it is going to be also very very interesting for the Kendo side.
Seattle has a high number of Kendo Clubs and in the four days I will spend in Seattle I will visit four of them:
Seattle Kendo Kai
Cascade Kendo Kai
Sno-King Kendo Club
NORTHWEST KENDO CLUB
I think this time jet-lag will not be an issue since I will be so tired every night and I will sleep like a baby.
The first impression I got was incredible nice. I got an enthusiastic answer to my request to practice in the various dojo and people were so kind to provide me also transportation from the Hotel to the dojo and to lend me a shinai.
Shinai transportation actually became an issue since the majority of the airlines move to the one piece concept that mean only one piece of luggage can be loaded on the plane. It mean that a shinai has to be shipped as extra luggage and a round trip on overseas flights is going to cost 300 euros. Therefore it is really not feasible to carry it any more.
Thank to the kindness of Seattle kendokas I will get one for the training on each dojo. Actually I am looking forward for the one I will use at the Seattle kendo Kai since Doug Imanishi told me that: "We will make sure to let you borrow one that is guaranteed to hit your opponent!"
Now is time to board.......

July 2011: Visiting Vienna Kendo Club

2011-07-14T23:33:00.010+02:00

I am in Vienna for the HiTSeq workshop a satellite meeting of ISMB/ECCB 2011. Today was a very long day I departed for Torino by car at 5:oo AM to go to the Malpensa Airport. This time I had to depart form Malpensa since Torino airport is closed for maintenance. Getting to Wien was a long trip, I had to travel via Zurig and finally at 3:00 PM I got in Vienna. MY hotel is practically in the centre of Vienna.
I had just the time to have a currywurst and I had to move to go to practice kendo at Vienna Kendo Club. I was in contact with Vanessa a nidan from the club that take care of the contacts. She was absolutely wonderful! She was so kind to offer me a lift to the dojo. I met her and Stephan, another kendoka of the dojo, underground station that was suitable to get to the dojo.
I knew by them that in Vienna there are two dojo that share the trainings, therefore during the year it is possible to practice kendo every day of the week. However, in summer, since many people is in holidays they have only two days of training every week.
I got with them to the dojo and Vanessa was so kind to lent me a shinai and a booken since, due to the recent changes in the transportation rules of Lufthansa,I was unable to carry my shinai, due to the fact that bring a shinai as extra luggage cost 140 euros, therefore is much cheaper to buy a new one un Vienna and leave it there.
The training was in a dojo located a little outside Vienna, since, due to school holidays, the dojo in Vienna is closed.
Fortunately it was quite fresh and ideal for a training with the bogu.
I had the possibility to meet Ryutaro Kamemoto sensei (nana dan) that was directing the training.
The training started with bokouto kata. I have heard about the that specific practice but I never did it in my dojo.
The sequence of the kata was quite complex:

me, kote, do tzuki
kote men
arai men
men hiki do
men nuki do
kote suriage men
debana kote
men kaeshi do
do otoshi men

I am pretty sure that I forgot some of the kata.
I started to practice with Kromp, a nice lady that introduced me to the kata.
Initially, I was simply memorizing the kata, since each technique has to be followed by zanshin and by a controlled step back to get to the initial position.
I was very lucky since Ingo, a yondan of the dojo, highlighted to me some critical issue of my way of doing the katas.
The main issue for me was that I place to much of my weight on the right foot. Instead during all the steps of the kata the weight should be more located n the back foot to allow an efficient step forward. Furthermore, all the timing was incorrect and I have to relax the shoulders. Definitively I need to practice bokuto kata to improve my overall posture.
After we put individually the men and we had open jigeiko. I practice with Ingo, Martin (the Chairman of the dojo), Stephan, Vanessa and with few other students.
It was a very nice time, I found really very challenging to strike men to Ingo and to Martin since they are very very tall!
The only regret is that the jigeiko with Vanessa was very short since the training ended. Vanessa has a very strong seme and very clean techniques.
After the training Vanessa and Stephan took me back to the underground station. During the trip they told me that will be in Alessandria in October for the Trofeo Internazionale Citta di Alessandria which will be held in October. If everything will go smoothly I will also be in Alessandria for the individual competition and I will take the chance to bring Vanessa and Stephan to visit Torino and to enjoy some of our local cuisine.

June 2011: Ken Zen Kan Dojo

2011-06-30T11:34:00.003+02:00

Back again in Heidelberg for the course on Whole Transcriptome Data Analysis. Another great time at the EMBL training facility. The course was very demanding this year. A lot of questions and a lot of information to be provided to students. The organization was perfect and I managed to run the course also thanks to the help of one of my students, Matteo, that was extremely helpful to supervise the exercises and providing support to the course participants.
I have finished the course few hours ago and now I am at the airport waiting for the boarding. Also this year I could not miss the possibility to visit the Heidelberg kendo Club. This was my third visit and I was very happy to meet Volker sensey and all the other persons I met previously. During these three days in Heidelberg we had an incredible nice and hot weather. I would say that Yesterday, when I went to the dojo, was really too hot, aprox. 35°C.
The training started at 20:15 with a brief run, some stretching a basic suburi. After we put the men and we started the training. I was happy because Volker gave me the opportunity to record the training using my videocamera. Because the lesson was in German I had to make all my attention to understand the Volker’s explanation of the exercises. This was very helpful since I managed to catch some interesting tips that I have always missed till today. The training, that is summarized in the videos below.

The training was mainly focused on practising attach and counter attach techniques cleanly and with the right posture. Specifically I realized that in the men (attach), debana men (counter attach) I was doing a big mistake when performing the debana men. I realized that I was raising the tip of the shinai during the attach of the opponent and this make me loose time in realizing the debana men. I realized that simply stretching my arms in direction of opponent he will be at the right distance for debana men before he manages to finalize his men. Another counter attach that is quite well suitable for me is debana kote in men/debana kote kion. During the kion, kakaritè, the one that has to do debana kote upon attach of men, is making a little seme moving the tip of the shinai ahead but lowering its level, this make the opponent thinking that he can strike men, and suddenly the kote is at the right position for debana kote. I am normally very frustrated by debana kote, because although I am able to make debana kote with a reasonable timing the shinai always touch the tsuba instead of the kote. Now following the indications of Volker sensei I managed finally to strike a reasonable debana kote.
The last 15 minutes were dedicated to jigeiko and I had a very nice time. After we had a little party for a birth day of one of the student and because many of the students succeeded in passing the grading exam the week-end before.
After a refreshing shower Volker offer me a lift to Bismark platz were I finished the evening with few beers together with one of my friends that was also present at EMBL for another meeting.

May 2011: Great time in Singapore Kendo Club

2011-05-30T18:09:00.020+02:00

I arrived on Saturday the 21st and I stayed there for one week. Time in Singapore flew away. At my arrival I had a nice week end with my friend Francesca, that recently moved to Singapore. I enjoyed very much Singapore city and its food. On Monday I was quite nervous about the talk I had to do at Singapore Network of Immunology (SIgN). Fortunately everything went smoothly. Also the talk I did on Tuesday was OK. On Tuesday evening I went out of dinner with my friends. We had delicious pepper and chili crab. On Wednesday, after various meetings at SIgN finally arrived the time to go for keiko at the Singapore Kendo Dojo.
This was my third time at the Singapore Kendo Club and this time was really special.
On Wednesday the keiko is at the The Changi Japanese School. The training is both for beginners and advance students.
I met various students I knew from my last year visit and it was very nice to meet again Periklis, an IT person I met during one of my visit at the Cambridge Kendo Club in UK. He is actually working in an IT company in Singapore and he regularly practice at the Singapore Kendo Club
This time I also met Yeo sensei, that introduced me as guest from Italy.
We started the training with warm up that was followed by various rounds of kirikaeshi. Subsequently the training was focused on multiple techniques application. From a certain point of view the training remind me some of the kion we did during last visit of Sumi sensei at our dojo last April. We also did some rounds of kakarigeiko.
After there was about 30 minutes of open jigeiko. Normally when I go to a dojo I try my best in the keiko, but I avoid to push forward, I am normally quite shy.
This time, I invited for the jigeiko a student I have met on my previous visit and suddenly a queue of persons waiting to have keiko with me appeared. I was very surprise since normally I the queue as the other students to practice with sensei. This was the first time I acted as motodachi, it was a very interesting experience. I tried to follow the suggestion given from Sumi sensei during his last visit in Torino: "press the kakarite' with the body but leave them able to express themselves". I tryed my best and I hope the other students enjoyed the keiko with me. It was really a special keiko although quite physically demanding. At the end I was very tired but extremely happy. The night did not finished, since I was invited by Yeo sensei to join him and the students for a beer and something to eat. Great! Good food and beer and very nice talk with Yeo sensei and students.

I met again mr Jafar which is maintainer ofg the web pages of the dojo and a young lady that came in Singapore from Korea. I also knew from Yeo sensei that during the Kendo World Championship in USA he fought with my sensei Walter Pomero (I asked my sensei and he remind him and the shai in Santa Clara during the kendo World Championship). Yeo sensei is also friend of Lancini sensei, from Brescia dojo.
I told the Yeo sensei that I am writing my kendo experiences on a blog and that I have set up a videocamera to record during practice. I asked him if I could use it during the keiko on Thursday and I was very happy when he agree with it.
It was a very nice night and I left them with the promise to meet them again for the Thursday training at the The Japanese School in 95 Clementi Rd.
Thursday training is for advance students, at least shodan. The training was very demanding for me since the dojo does not have ear conditioning. At the end of the training I swet so much that it seems that my keikogi was soaked in water.
Since I had the possibility to use my videocamera you can see a summary of the overall keiko in the video below.
We started with kirikaeshi then we move to single big techniques and after to ouji-waza.

After we practice Jigeiko and due to the hotness I managed to do only two. After I did some mitorigeiko.

Very kindly, Yeo sensei organized a nice picture at the end of the training.
Very nice training!
After I got back to the hotel, had a shower and went out for a dinner snack. I stopped at the Mariott bistro' at Orchard rd (tempura oysters and chiken/beef satay delicious)
My stay in Singapore ended with a dinner at my friend's home, on Friday.

I was very glad to test the Durian, the "king of the fruits".

It has an interesting taste but it has a very strong smell.
The time in Singapore was really amazing, I hope to be back there soon.

April 2011: Sumi (8 Dan), Tashiro (8 Dan) & Sotaro (6 dan) sensei in Torino

2011-04-17T08:14:00.022+02:00

On Friday the 22nd of April Sumi sensei, from Fukuoka, visited our dojo in Torino. Everybody in the dojo was looking forward to learn from him. Sumi sensei usually comes together with Tashiro sensei, but this time also Sotaro Honda (6th dan) came. Honda sensei was the coach of the British Kendo team some years ago and now teaches at the University of Education in Fukuoka. Furthermore, the Italian Kendo team, that will be part of the European Kendo championship (Poland May), was also present.
Friday Sumi sensei started a training session that continued also Saturday and Sunday. The main topics of the lessons were:

BODY POSTURE,
DISTANCE
KIAI (SPIRIT STRENGTH).

On Sunday morning the seminar ended and in the afternoon there was a special training dedicated only to the Italian kendo team. I will describe here the events on Friday and Saturday since on Sunday I could not be present to the final part of the training.
On Friday the 22nd we put immediately the men and started with few rounds of kirikaeshi made of three repetitions, then we did Do kirikaeshi. Sumi sensei told us that the Do kirikaeshi was useful to improve the diagonal position of the sayu men in normal kirikaeshi, which should be done with an angle of about 45 degree.
After we move to kion on men + tsubazeriai. After few rounds, Sumi sensei told us that the critical issue in the above mentioned kion was the body posture: body should be always strait to keep the body balance in a condition that allow to make men and then to move to a correct tsubazeriai. Furthermore, we have to carefully consider the beating distance, since if we are too near and we bit the opponent with the shinai below the naka-yui we are too near to make a good tzubazeriai. Next exercise was as men + tsubazeriai but motodachi has to step back to avoid to be bit. An other tip on the kion was related to the men cut, that have to stop at the throat. The stop is controlled mainly by the posture and specifically by the back muscles, as instead very little work should be done by the arms. After we made a bit more complex kion; men + tsubazeriai, kote + tsubazeriai, do + tsubazeriai. All series done with a unique breath. After we move to jigeiko. Motodachi were alowed to practice only oji-waza.
In the following video you can see pieces of the training that are related to the above description.

After also Sumi and Tashiro sensei joined the jigeiko.

On Saturday morning the lesson continued focusing on the opportunities to attach: SEME. Specifically all kion were based on the use of "far seme", the one that is normally used to practice big techniques starting from long distance and of a "near seme" that can be applied when kensen are in contact. The second seme was particularly intriguing. Sumi sensei said that when both opponents have the kensen in contact the spirit is very high for both of them. The attention of both opponents is very very high and therefore it is difficult to make an effective attach. Therefore a very little seme, made stepping few centimetres with the right foot, will disrupt the concentration of the opponent facilitating the attach. We then applied these two types of seme using various combination of kion. Subsequently the topic was the KIAI. Essentially the point is that kiai keeps high the spirit and when we stop it spirits and attention are reduced and this is an opportunity for the opponent. Therefore kiai should continue even after the end of the technique. When the kiai stops we have to keep the concentration high not giving the opportunity for an attach.
These concepts were tested in uchikomigeiko, kakaritè has to make at least five consequent attachs without interrupting the kiai. In this specific exercises motodachi made a very particular kamae, with the tip of the shinai pointing up to the left, i.e. pointing up to the kakaritè right eye. This kamae allows kakarite to attach easily men kote and do. After the same approach was made mixing the above mentioned specific kamae and ojiwaza by motodachi. Then the morning training finished.
Unfortunately the video for this part had a very bad quality and I could not upload it.
In the afternoon after a brief break for lunch Sumi sensei run a very nice lesson for our little group of children. In Torino we are running various courses for children but, since we were during the Eastern holidays, the vast majority of them could not come. However our little five kendokas got a wonderful lesson with Sumi sensei helped by Tashiro sensei (8 Dan), Moretti sensei (7 Dan which is also the President of CIK) Pomero sensei (7 Dan) and Honda sensei (6 Dan).

After children lesson we started a one hour of training on kendo no kata focusing on the important points of the katas. This part was very similar to the one given by Sumi sensei two years ago:
Kendo no kata tips part 1
Kendo no kata tips part 2
After we put men again and we warmed up doing kirikaeshi, three set of sayu me, sayu do, sayu men. After motodachi used again the particular kamae used in the morning that allows kakaritè to attach men, do, kote. Motodachi was allowed to move back and forward and kakaritè has to make, with a unique kiai, at least 6 attachs. This kion was repeated three times. Subsequently motodachi were allowed to make some oji-waza during the attacks of kakaritè. More important motodachi has not to press physically kakaritè but only using the spirit. I found very interesting the ability of Sumi sensei to make a lesson that works at different level for kakaritè and for motodachi. Both were very pressed to make their best on the basis of Sumi sensei advices. The next step was normal jigeiko but with motodachi allowed only to make oji-waza and pressing kakaritè with strong spirit. Sumi sensei highlighted that it possible to make pressure to kakaritè even stepping back. Finally motodachi has to keep the centre but occasionally also making opening.
The video below summarize the afternoon session with Sumi sensei.

Last but not least I got three videos of the jigeiko between Sumi sensei and Tashiro sensei, Pomero sensei and Honda sensei.
Sumi versus Tashiro

Sumi versus Honda

Sumi versus Pomero

March 2011: Cambridge Kendo Club

2011-03-06T16:50:00.018+01:00

Arrival in UK on Sunday the 6th of March, no Kendo till Wednesday, sigh!.
It is incredible, I am again in Cambridge, this time for the Hands-on training at EBI - Advanced RNA-Seq and ChiP-Seq Data Analysis. The course is held at EMBL-EBI, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK.
The course will cover very important topics related to the use of Massive Parallel Sequencing technology, which is getting very important for the research works I am involved in.
I departed from Torino on Sunday the 6th of March (today) with RaianAir. This was my first time with this low cost company. RaianAir is very convenient to arrive in Cambridge from Torino. Only with two hours flight and 30 minuts train and you are in the middle of this lovely town.
The flight was OK although I had the sensation that RaianAir is trying to get as much money as possible from you keeping the cost at the minimum. I was really surprise when I realized that the seats are fixed in a unique position, I think because they cost less than a conventional airplain seat or more simply because the space between sets rows is not enough to allow to change the position of the seat back. Furthermore, you are soaking in a constant advertisements to buy food, duty free and lottery. Even in the toilette you get such advertisement just in case you are not realizing that you are loosing an incredible opportunity to win something with the flight lottery.
The flight was also teaching me something else. I was flying with a group of students from the high school getting to UK for a cultural holiday with some of their professors. I realized that I am getting really old, because I am unable to understand this young generation. They were 16-17 years old but the brain age was much much lower, maybe 6-7 years old. I am pretty sure of this because I help teaching Kendo in an elementary school and those children are behaving in a way very similar to the students I met on the flight. I have a very high consideration for theirs teachers that have to control and take care of them.
As you can see I was a bit shocked by the flight. But finally I arrived in Cambridge, drop down the bogou at the hotel and I had a walk in the town. Weather was fresh but quite sunny. I stop for lunch in a Cyprus's restaurant.

It was a quite small restaurant, but the Cyprus chicken brochette was very good and the feta salad was seasoned perfectly with a very good olive's oil.

Now I am back in the hotel and I will get over some work that has to be done and I will refresh my broken Japanese since in about 20 days I will go in Japan for a 10 days of Kendo at Fukuoka.
For today is all. I will be back on Wednesday when I will join again the Kendo training at Tsurugi Bashi Kendo Kai Club.

Monday: first day of course. I arrived at EBI-EMBL in Hinxton by taxi. It is a very nice research centre.

We were about 40 people participating to this course.
I do not want to border you with technical stuff, but it was very very interesting.
The course ended at 17.30 and I got back to the hotel room to fix at least part of the work that is necessarely left behind since I am attending to this course.
I am very tired.... I will go to sleep.
Tuesday, Whoow Sun shining in Cambridge! There is little to say about tuesday, I spent all day in the Computer room for the course. Everything was very interesting. At 6 pm I went out with a frend of mine working at Sanger and we had Japanese dinner. I decidend for a ramen since was a long time I did not eat it.... It was reasonable but never as the Fukuoka ramen, that was really delicious.
Wednesday was the last day of the course very very interesting the part on chip-seq. Finally the day I am back to the Tsurugi Bashi Kendo Kai dojo. It was nice to meet again the Tsurugi Bashi Kendo Kai student and Frank Stajano the sensei of the Dojo. Getting back to the training.
After the warm up, we started suburi:

Jo ge suburi
Men uchi ni kyo do suburi
Zenshin kotai men suburi
Zenshin kotai sayu men suburi
Sonkyo suburi
Matawari suburi
Kote men suburi
Katate suburi
Haya suburi

we did 30 times each suburi.
This time the training was fully held by Stajano sensei. The focus was basic kihon also because there were a lot of new beginners. Frank highlighted the importance of the kihon as the basic for an efficient and consistent growth of kendo performance.
We spent about one and half hour on basic kion and kirikaeshi then the persons with the bogou wore the men and we did mawarigeiko. After since were left only few minutes we practice katas and I did the first seven katas with Frank. He gave me some interesting suggestions how to improve the 6th kata. It was a very nice night. Furthermore, thanks to my friend Cinzia, that was with me at the dojo. I assembled some photos and video that she did and are summarizing the overall training.

CUS Modena: Kangeiko 2010

2010-12-02T21:24:00.042+01:00

Thursday December the 2nd:
tomorrow I will go to Modena for the Kangeiko 2010. We will have two days of Kendo with

Shigeaki Inoue Hanshi 8th Dan
Kazuo Furukawa Kyoshi 8th Dan (video1; video2)
Hiroshi Kanzaki Kyoshi 8th Dan (video)
Shuichi Kamikokuryo Kyoshi 7th Dan

Inoue, Furukawa and Kamikokuryo were the coaches of the Japan National team at the Word Championship 2009 (S. Paolo, Brasil).
We are going to have two session of Kendo on Friday and Saturday, one at late morning (11:15-13:15) and another in the afternoon (16.15-18:15). I am very happy to participate to this Kangeiko and I hope to learn a lot from such high level Senseis. Furthermore, on Sunday morning I will try to pass the san dan exam.
I will write some comments for each of the days of the Kangeiko and I hope to make some good picture and video giving a brief idea of the overall training.

Friday December the 3rd:
I left Torino at 6.30 a.m. together with Paola, a Kendo 3 dan instructor of Shisei Dojo. I was a bit worry because I was feeling sick: sore throat, which is not ideal to make kiai :-(
Fortunately, we had a soft trip to Modena, without traffic jam and fog. We arrived at the CUS University gymn at 10:30 and, after registration, we got ready for the first session of the training: 11:15-13.15.
Before starting we were divided in three groups: kyusha-nidan, nidan (doing the 3dan exam)-yondan, yondan (doing the 5dan exam)-rokkudan.
Our group worked for one and half hour on Kendo no kata under the supervision of Kanzaki sensei. We got quite a lot of information on the meaning of Kendo no kata and how to perform them correctly. We deeply analysed kata from 1 to 5. After we did a quite intensive warm up with a lot of subury and, due to the limited amount of time, we could not do more than that.
We then went out for lunch, since the afternoon session started at 16.15. We decided to have a quite light lunch and we stop in a bar near our hotel for a quick snack. The group was made of me, Paola (3rd dan), Sergio (2nd dan), Cinzia (2nd dan), Laura (3rd dan) and Claudio (5th dan). Claudio is one of the sempai of the Shubukan dojo in Torino and run together with Laura a Kendo/Iaido course in Voghera. After a brief nap at the hotel we got back to the gymn and we started the afternoon training. The first 45 minutes were dedicated to basic kion but with a lot of focus on the right way to make the cut. This part of the training was run by Furukawa sensei. He has a tremendous power and speed. He highlighted the importance of kiai, posture and correct cut. Specifically on the cut he showed us that the shinai has not to hit the metal part of the men but above it to produce a nice and round sound. Also for this part we were divided in three groups as in the morning. Subsequently we did 40 minutes of mawarigeiko with senseis as part of two groups: kyusha-san dan/yondan-nana dan. That was very exhausting, we were doing 2 minutes jigeiko with each new partner, I was very lucky since I managed to practice with Inoue and Kanzaki senseis. After, it was possible to make jigeiko with senseis, but I was very tired and I decided to do mitorigeiko. In the next video some of the Sensei's keiko.

After a refreshing and relaxing shower we did what you are normally expecting from an Italian: we went out for good food and wine. My wife managed to find for our group a nice "Osteria" few Kms outside Modena. In the next video you can have a brief view of the friends that joined me for dinner.

From the beginning to the end of the video: Sergio, Cinzia, Laura, Paola, Lorenzo (and other 2nd dan from Shubukan) and Claudio the sempai.
Knowledgeable were the "tortelli di zucca" and the "filetto all'aceto balsamico di Modena" off course we had a couple of bottles of sparkly "Lambrusco", a local red wine that very well cross-talk with the local dishes.
After we got back to the hotel, and it took me less than a second to fall asleep.

Saturday December the 4th:
Wake up at 8:00, it was quite unpleasant to enter in the bath were mine and Sergio's bogu and keikogi were placed to dried up.
After a quite good buffet breakfast, we got back to the gymn. In the morning we worked on the katas 5 to 7 for 45 minutes and the rest of the time was dedicated to kihon no kata not done with the bokuto but with shinai and bogu. From a certain point of view it was very similar to the training we had at Shubukan an year ago during the seminar of Sumi sensei:

Morning was not very hard and at the end of the two hours of training we got back to hotel for a quick snack and nap :-)
The afternoon was more challenging. We started immediately with few runs of kirikaeshi and some oji waza, After we focus on the use of tzuki to get the right posture to execute men and we also worked on the combination of tzuki and men. This was quite challenging and sometime painful. We also did some rounds of kote men. Furukawa sensei was supervising the training and it was incredible his precision and power in each of the technique he was demonstrating.
Subsequently we did a different type of mawarigeiko, all person with al least 5th dan behave as motodachi for the rest of the people and at the end of each jigeiko kakarite had to move to the next line. Since the motodachi were quite a lot we could do a lot of jigeiko but it was not exhausting as the day before. After 40 minutes of mawarigeiko there was the jigeiko with senseis and motodachi had the possibility of practice with them before the rest of the people. Since the lines were very long I decided to do again mitorigeiko as you can see in the video below.

At the end of the training Furukawa sensei made some comments on our Kendo. I admit that those were not particularly good, his overall comments indicate that we have to work hard to be able to combine together kiai, posture and cut. So still a lot of work to do for everybody.
As the day before after shower we had a quick beer with our sensei Walter Pomero (7th Dan) and we had dinner in a pizzeria near the hotel, this because me, Sergio and Simone (2nd dan from Shisei) have the 3rd dan examination the next day.

Sunday December the 5th:
The big day! Today we have the examination for san dan. We are four that did the ni dan exam all together: me, Sergio, Simone and Stefano. They are a lot younger than me.

I am 50 years old but I was feeling really old being the last of last pool of three. In my pool there was also and other kendoka that was my partner at the shodan and nidan exams. In our pool there was also another kendoka that I never met before.
I do not want to make comment on my jigeiko, you can see it in the video below. The only this I can say that I was absolutely happy that I managed to pass the examination. It was a wonderful Christmas present ^_^. The only side effect is that I am actually without voice.

Here you can also find the video of the final part of the exam: kendo no kata

September 2010: back again in Cambridge, UK

2010-09-12T19:12:00.014+02:00

Monday 1st of September
Today I arrived in Cambridge, UK, to participate to a workshop on Cancer Bioinformatics at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute.

I found a relatively cheep B&B on the opposite site of the town. The place was very quiet and the room very clean. The only problem with the room was its size that remind me the room I got in an hotel in Fukuoka, Japan.
To give you an idea, I could not walk around the bed if I was keeping opened my suitcase.
I have been in Cambridge about two years ago and I visited the Cambridge Kendo Club. I contacted again Frank Stajano which is the instructor of the Dojo and I asked him for the possibility to practice again with them. Then, I got in contact with Matt Jackson which is running the Dojo practice, since Frank is actually in sabbatical outside UK.
I joined the training twice during the week in Cambridge, Monday the 1st and Wednesday the 3rd.
The training was at The Leys Sports complex in Trumpington Road.
The location of the training was the same where I was two years ago, but the people was different due to the University holidays and the students turnover.

Monday the 1st was for me the first training after the summer holidays. It was incredible the fact that a Dojo students was one of the co-organizer of the Cancer Bioinformatics meeting and an other one was a Greek student that worked in Singapore in the institute that I visited in June this year.

We started at 6:30 pm with bokuto kihon. I did bokuto training the first time in Cambridge, but I heard about this type of training during the latest SUMI's seminar at our dojo.

The kihon was made of men, kote, do, kote men, kote do, men. Each technique was done trying to make a good big technique and keeping the control of the opponent at the end of each technique.
After, we did a brief worm up and we put the men. We started with few rounds of kirikaeshi, some rounds of big and small techniques and we completed the training with mawarigeiko. On the last ippon-shubo with Matt, I moved to Jodan kamae and he managed to get the final ippon by men since he was pressing so much with his seme that I stepped back giving him the opportunity to attach.
The training was basic but useful to set my mind in the right mood for a new season of Kendo.
After the training I met few other Italian researchers that work in Cambridge and we had all dinner together in a nice Algerian restaurant.
The training on the 3rd of September was very similar to that of Monday but in the first 30 minutes we did Kendo-no-kata. This was very useful, I got quite good tips to improve the 6th and the 7th katas, which are going to be quite important in the next few months ,since I will try the 3rd dan exam in December. Also on Wednesday we did mawarigeiko and on the last ippon shobu both Matt and me played in Jodan kamae. This time I did not stepped back but he was very effective in counter attach and he strike a very effective men during my kote attach.
I got really a great time in Cambridge and I invited Matt and all the students to visit our Dojo in Torino. I really hope that they could come to Torino, since Cambridge is very near to Stansted airport and there are very cheap flights to Torino by Ryanair. Since we have some spare bogus they only will need to bring their keikogi and akama.
Before departing from Cambridge I could not resist to try again fish and chips. I went in a very traditional fish and chips shop and my mind got back to some years ago when I was student and I was visiting UK to learn English.
In conclusion, I need to point out that I had 5 days of warm and sunny weather in Cambridge, which made my stay there even more enjoyable.

June 2010: Back again in Singapore Kendo Dojo

2010-06-24T16:52:00.028+02:00

I was in Singapore only for four days about 4 years ago. Now I am back for a full week.

I have a talk at the 1st BIT Neuro Talk meeting but I also took the chance to visit the Singapore Immunology network (SIgN) , which is a big department under the direction of prof. P. Castagnoli. I will also make a talk there and I will have the possibility to talk to many researches hoping to set up new collaborations. Prof. Castagnoli was very kind since she advertised my arrival in other institutes therefore I will also make an other brief talk at the Bioinformatics Institute (BII).
So, these are going to be very busy and interesting days.
I arrived at Singapore airport on the 22nd perfectly on time, thanks to Lufthansa precision. Weather forecast were giving raining all over the week but I was lucky and I did not got, till now a sing drop of water on my head. From airport I when to my hotel, that is in the centre of the town. On 22nd evening I had dinner with my friend Francesca, which is the director of a microarray core facility in Milan but she has very tight collaborations with SIgN groups. We had one of the Singapore specialities: chili crab. Actually we have eaten a 3 Kgs steamed crab covered with spicy chili sauce. It was delicious although quite complicated to be eaten since chop sticks are not very useful to handle a crab.
On Wednesday the 23rd, I was all day at the SIgN to make an introductory training to young bioinformaticians on microarray data analysis. I finished the training at 5 pm and I rushed back to hotel to go to the Singapore Kendo Club. I used a combination of underground and taxi to manage to arrive on time, since traffic jam is a critical issue between 6 to 7 pm in Singapore. I arrived at the Dojo at 6:50 pm, the dojo is located in the Japanese School at 11 Upper Changi rd. The training is both for people with and without bogu. After a brief worm up all together, Mr. Zafar, I was in contact with him to join the training, and few other instructors supervised the training of the beginners. Instead persons with bogu put the men and started the training.
We started with few rounds of kirikaeshi, followed by few rounds of big men, kote men, men taiatari men. After, only person being at least 3rd dan were motodachi for uchikomi geiko made of the following set of techniques, men, kote men, men taiatari men, do, men, repeated various time depending on the kakarite level and errors. After, we started jigeiko with the same motodachi. I managed to do jigeiko with a very skilled lady. She highlighted a problem I had with my foot work. To make a longer step instead of pushing with the back foot I was using the front foot to grab extra space. I tried to correct the movement pushing with my hips but I was not satisfied of my jigeiko. After I did jigeiko with Mr Douglas, that have already met in my previous trip, and with other two students. It was a very nice experience, very clean kendo.
Unfortunately the time was ended and I catch a taxi and got back to the hotel for a quick shower and a snack with my friend Francesca.
Next day I went to make the registration to the Neuro Talk meeting and then I got back to the hotel to refine the presentations for the Neuro Talk meeting and for the SIgN. At 5 p.m. I start to pack every thing to get to the kendo training for advanced students (above 2 kyu). The training took place to the Primary Japanese School located on 95 Clementi Rd.
I was, as usual, worry about the traffic jam and I arrived too early so I had to wait about an hour before seeing somebody with a bogu walking to the school. I asked him the favour to get together to the dojo. Speaking with him I knew that few months before Sumi sensei and Honda sensei were in Singapore.
This dojo is much smaller than the one I was the day before and it does not have air conditioning. At 7.30 p.m. we started the training under the supervision of sensei Kameyawa. We started with basic ayumi-ashi foot work with out the men. Then we put the men and we started kirikaeshi and uchikomi techniques. Particular interesting was the work sensei Kameyama asked us to do on little men. We had to try to find the right time to cut putting zanshin in the technique to have powerful men. This training was very useful to me because I forced myself to remove the error of the night before: pushing more with my hips and my back foot. We also practice kote-men and tsuki. Particularly interesting exercise was also the training on the combination tsuki-men. The sensei highlighted that the men technique can only become an ippon if the tsuki is effective, so only in this case there is the time to make and effective men with the right distance. We also practised a set of taiatari combinations: men-taiatari-men, men-taiatari-kote, men-taiatari-do.
After the uchikomi I was completely wet. After we did jigeiko. I had the chance to make jigeiko with Kameyama sensei and again with the lady I met the day before. I try my best to make a clean jigeiko with both of them. After the two jigeiko, due to the temperature, I was quite exhausted and wet so I had to rest a bit because I was nearly unable to breath. The training finished again with kirikaeshi.
I was exhausted but happy also because the lady told me that this time my men were done correctly.
I packed everything and said bye bye to everybody and I catch a taxi to get back to the hotel. the the usual routine, snack beer and sleep.
Friday it was again a long but interesting day in which I did my talk at SIgN and spoken with many researcher, I got a lot of congratulations for our work and I learned a lot from them.
Today I was at the Neuro Talk meeting that was not as good as I expected, however, I got a lot of question about my talk. In the late afternoon I joined Francesca and other two local friends, Peggy and Josephine, for dinner. We went to a Chinese restaurant and we tried the hot pot. It was absolutely delicious.
Tomorrow is Sunday, I will go to the Neuro Talk meeting first and then to visit Setosa island.
Monday again to SIgN and BII and then I will fly back to Italy. My only regret is that I could not practice kendo on Sunday since at Singapore Kendo Club there are the middle year grading session. I hope to get back again in Singapore it was a beautiful experience both for the work and for the kendo.

May 2010: Back again in Heidelberg

2010-05-19T19:52:00.010+02:00

I was invited again from Vladimir Benner to be one of the instructor of the Whole Transcript Microarray Data Analysis co-organized by EMBL and Affymetrix. I arrived on Sunday afternoon at Frankfurt airport. I really like to fly Lufthansa, I got out of the plane and in the time I needed to walk to the luggage delivery my bogu and shinai arrived, wonderful!
A shuttle bus service was waiting for me and in 70 minutes I was in Heidelberg. This time I stayed in an hotel down town and not at the ISG guest house that is nice but very far away from Heidelberg center. I was lucky since on Sunday there was a warm sun and I had a nice walk in the old Heidelberg town.
The course was fine, at least from my point of view, and students seemed to be happy with the information and training we have provided. On Tuesday I did not joined the social dinner and I went again to practice at Ken Zen Kan.
It was funny because one of the instructors asked me if I was going to visit my girlfriend. Well .... my wife should not worry about it I only went out for safe and nice kendo training.
I arrived at Ken Zen Kan quite early and I spent about half an hour talking to a young kendoka about Kendo. He got recently the 4th kyu and listening to him was clear how much he liked Kendo. About a quarter to eight all the other people arrived and I met again Volker the President of the Dojo and Franco. It was nice to see them again and it was clear that they were happy to see me again. This is something that is wonderful in Kendo, you go in an other Dojo and you feel like at home.
We started the training with a warm up, running stretching, suburi. Then we did the Rei and men tsuke.
As last time I was at Ken Zen Kan, Franco was taking care of the training of the beginners without bogu. Volker took care of the others. We started as in our dojo with basic kihon, big men, big kote men, big do. I had to be very careful in listening because my broken german is getting very limited and I was sometime missing words that I should know. We did the kihon changing partner every time and on one side of the dojo a person with the bogu was being motodachi for the advanced beginners. The idea is quite nice since the beginners do their techniques always again somebody different and this improve their skill. After the basic kihon we did some double attach like as kote, do; kote, suriage men. After we started jigeiko and I managed to do nearly with every body. It was really a pleasure, clean jigeiko that allowed every level ot express themselves. I am a bit disapointed since I did not managed to do jigeiko with the young japanese that joined the dojo for a couple of years since he is studing history at the Heidelberg University. I did only an exchange of kote men during the kihon and he was like a shinkanen, very very fast. I hope I will managed to do jigeiko with him next time I will be in Heidelberg. At the end of the training I was quite wet but not too tired, probably because the "heavy" training of Sumi sensei during the previous week end was particularly effective.
After training Volker was telling me that some of the people of the dojo will take a week holidays in Italy later this year and the will probably practice Kendo in the dojo of Angela Papaccio in Firenze. After the shower I got a lift from one of the students and I get back to the hotel. In the car we were speaking about the differences in the training in the various dojo and I told him that, at list on the basis of my limited experience, training is very similar everywhere and the real variable are the kendokas. I also told him that in our dojo beginners, that are much less of those I have seen at ken Zen Kan, start quite rapidly to practice with all the other and the lesson is usually divided in two parts, in the first the higher Dan behave as motodachi for the other for kihon and jigeiko then the practice is plit in two parts and higher dan do jigeiko between them as the lower grade between them.
Since it was quite late, when I got at the hotel, I took a big Doner Kebab a coke and a bottle of water and I had my dinner in my room.

May 2010: Sumi sensei at Shubukan (second day)

2010-05-18T17:45:00.014+02:00

On the second day Sumi sensei focused the lesson on bokuto khion done using shinai and bogu.
Sumi sensei sed that bokuto khion, done using shinai and bogu, is a kihon that is particularly near to modern kendo.
The idea of this kihon is the interaction between motodachi and kakaritè as in the case of kendo no kata.
Specifically he defined 9 basic kihon on which it is possible to design variation.
The kihon techniques we did during the second day of Sumi sensei seminar were based on shikake wasa techniques (1-4,7) and oji wasa techniques (5,6,8,9) :
1) men, kote, do, tsuki
2) kote, men
3) harai men
4) hiki do
5) nuki do
6) suriage men
7) debana kote
8) kaeshi do
9) uchiotoshi men

Next three video refer to the first kihon. All techniques were done initially using tsugi-ashi and then with fumikomi. We also tried various combination of the first kihon adding tsuba-zeriai for men, kote, do.

After a brief time doing the second kihon, kote-men first witht sugi-ashi and then fumikomi we moved to the third kihon: harai men
In the next video there is a summary of the description of the combination of the first three kihon:

Subsequently we moved to the 4th and 5th kihon:

Since the morning session was getting to the end, after the 5th kihon we practice 30 minutes jigeiko as already done in the first day.
We had about two hours break for lunch and then Sumi and Tashiro sensei followed the training of our young kendokas. A total of 12 children with age ranging between 6 and 13 years old were coming from the three main Kendo children courses our dojo is taking care within Torino. All students wear a bogu and took their training very seriously.
They started with basic subury (jodi/naname buri, chioyakumen) followed by basic big techniques (men, kote and do) without the wearing men. After they wear the men and started a set of big and small techniques having as motodachi their course instructors. The two Japanese sensei followed with great attention the training. At the end of the training all our little kendoka practice jigeiko with Sumi or Tashiro sensei.
Next two video summarised the jigeiko of my sun, Lorenzo,

and one of the youngest kendoka in our dojo, Vincent.

During the afternoon session we finished the series of the kihon and we practice various combination of them. It was a very interesting lesson, although since in the afternoon we did a lot of combination I do not remember them precisely. Unfortunately this part is missing as video because I run out of battery :-(
I have to admit that I was also quite tired after the hard practice of Friday evening and Saturday morning. At the end of the lesson Sumi sensei dedicated 30 minutes practice to jigeiko for persons having at least the 5th dan. It was very interesting and I registred some of them:

After we did again jigeiko for 30 minutes and I managed to practice with Zago (7 DAN) and again with Tashiro sensei.

They were two very interesting days with a lot of messages to be metabolised. Actually Sumi and Tashiro sensei had an other half day in Shubukan on Sunday in the morning, but I could not participate to it since I was leaving to Heidelberg were I will be one of the instructors of the Whole Transcript Microarray Data Analysis 2010 organized by Dr. V. Bennet. Next post will be dedicated to my sencond visit to the Heidelberg Kendo Dojo.

May 2010: Sumi sensei at Shubukan (First day)

2010-05-14T07:38:00.011+02:00

This is not a usual report about one of my trips, but the report of the visit of Sumi sensei (8 DAN Hanshi) at our dojo in Torino.
Sumi sensei and his collaborator Tashiro sensei (8 DAN) visit our dojo in Torino every year. For all the people in the dojo it is a wonderful opportunity to learn a lot from this visit.
This time Sumi sensei will be in Torino from May the 14th to May the 16th.
We started the training at 8:00 p.m. We were about 50 persons mainly from Italy but there were also two people from Edinburgh (UK) and Mr. N. Yokoyama (5 Dan), in Italy for holidays.
This time I used a little video kamera located in the lower part of the men. Although it does not have the video quality and the wide view of normal video camera it give me the possibility to record the lesson and to practice at the same time.
We started with a brief warm up with stretching supervised by our instructor W. Pomero (7 Dan) followed by basic suburi.
Before the men tsuke Sumi sensei welcomed us to the seminar and guarantee an interesting and hard practice ^_^
After few rounds of kirikaeshi Sumi sensei started the lesson describing how to do a training about kirikaeshi. In the first part of the lesson he focused on the kakaritè site, which is summarized on the following video.

I apologize for the low quality of the sound but breathing silently in the men is quite difficult, especially after few rounds of kirikaeshi.
We run on kirikaeshi for some minutes and Sumi sensei described the training for motodachi during kirikaeshi, which is summarized in the next video.

We continue to work further on kirikaeshi and then we moved to some rounds of men tayatari men, men tayatari kote, men tayatari do.

After Sumi described how next round of jigeiko should be done. He focused on the point that there must be mind connection between motodachi and kakarite. Motodachi should let kakarite hit if the attack is genuine if not motodachi should use counter attack.
The jigeiko was set in the following way: kakaritè makes three long kiai and motodachi answer, after kakaritè make for big men followed by the kirikaeshi previously described. After kakaritè need to bring down to the tanden the power throwing out the breath twice before starting jigeiko. In the next video you will find a demonstration where kakaritè is W Pomero and motodachi is Sumi sensei.

We had about 30 minutes of this jigeiko which resulted to be quite heavy since when you get finally at the jigeiko you are completely without breath.
I managed to do a total of five jigeiko and I was so lucky to practice with all three Japanese sensei present at the seminar: Tashiro sensei first, then with Mr. N. Yokoyama and finally with Sumi sensei.
In the next video there are the three jigeiko.

The way I did the video showed me a tip I never realized, till now. During the jigeiko I keep turning around to sensei's shinai tip with my tip, trying to create an occasion to attach. This results on the fact that the sensei's shinai tip never get out of the center and instead I loose the center. So, I have to clean up my kamae removing useless shinai's movements.

April 2010: Visiting Washington DC area Dojos

2010-04-17T10:23:00.017+02:00

Every two years I participate to the AACR meeting in washington DC. it is an important event for cancer researchers all over the world. This meeting was also offering me the opportunity to visit the two Kendo Dojos located nearby Washington DC: Budokai Dojo, 25 S. Quaker Lane, Alexandria, VA 22314 and Washinkan Dojo, American Dance Institute 1570 East Jefferson St. Rockville, MD 20852.
I contacted Brian Sherry, NOVA Budokai Dojo and Summerlin Walker, Washinkan Dojo. They were both very kind and helped me to define the best way to get to their Dojos. I also got a nice invitation to join Brian and other people of the Dojo for early dinner.
It was a very nice situation in principle I was expecting to arrive on Saturday April the 17th and having keiko on Sunday and Monday. Great hope! However, I was not considering the "nature" was planning something else for many travellers all over Europe.
At the end of march a Volcano, located under an Iceland glacier with a unpronounceable name (Eyjafjallajokull), decided that it was the right time to wake up.

So in the last week an enormous amount of volcanic ash has been released between 5000 to 10000 meters, where almost all flying routes are located.
The result is that almost all airports in Europe where closed in the last three days and also my flight of this morning was cancelled.
Right now I managed to contact Lufthansa reservation center, 1h 30' waiting on the phone and I have been re-protected on a flight to Chicago on Wednesday the 23th. I will miss the AACR meeting and the keiko at Washinkan and Budokai but I still manage, mybe, to present the work of my lab at Lurie Cancer Center of Northwestern University and meet again for keiko the people of Chicago kendo Dojo and visit for the first time the kendo Dojo of the Chicago University one of the most famous University in USA.
This schedule is still in the hands of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.
More news after Wednesday April the 23rd.....
....I am very sad an other cancellation for today. The only option would be to leave to USA on Friday. But staying in USA only four days is too little for the trip length, so at this time I decided to cancel the trip, waiting for an other interesting meeting that might bring me again in USA providing me the occasion to have keiko in USA Dojos.

January 2010: Visiting Kobudokan Dojo in Manchester (UK)

2010-01-10T16:42:00.010+01:00

On January the 7th I started my trip to Manchester, UK. This time I was quite afraid about the trip since I was departing, just after the heavy bad weather in UK. The day before the Manchester airport was closed and many flights were delayed. My trip in Manchester was due to the participation to the
BioC 2010, the European Bioconductor developer meeting. The trip was fine although I got some delay due to the weather forecast in Frankfurt. Nevertheless I managed to get on time to the beginning of the meeting. This was a great occasion to know the latest news from the computation open-source project I am participating. At the end of the first day meeting instead having dinner I jumped on a taxi and I went to the Bramhall Leisure centre on Seal Road, SK7 2JR, where there is the thourday joined training of the Kobudokan and the KNMS kendo dojos. The weather was very cold about -9 degree celsius and all the streets were quite slippery due to the ice. I arrived to the dojo quite early and I was not sure if somebody was coming since the road conditions were quite bad. About 8.30 pm Mark, one of the instructors of KNMS arrived. In the time we changed two students shew up as well as Lee the instructor of the Kobudokan dojo.
In total we were 5 persons and the temperature in the dojo was quite low. We started a warm up with basic suburi. the warm up was quite long due to the low temperature in the dojo. After we put the men and we did a long session of basic uchikomi geigo, that was ideal due to the presence of kyusha. We started with bing men, kote and do, then we moved to combination kote-men, kote-do, kote-men-do, kote-men-iki me, kote-men-iki do. After we repeated the same series as small techniques and finally we had a brief jigeiko and the training session ended. Talking to Mark and Lee after the training I knew that normally ,on thoursday, there are about 20 persons in the dojo, but due to the weather and road conditions many of them did not come. Well, I will meet them next time I will come to Manchester. After the training jumped again on taxi and went back to the Hotel. On saturday, after the end of the meeting, I went back to the airport and I managed to get back in Italy with only few hours in delay. This time the delay was due to the orrible weather forecast in central Europe. I was anyway lucky since somebody was stuck in Frankfurt for many hours due to flights cancellation. The only regret is that, as usual, my bogu and shinai did not managed to arrive togheter with me in Torino. I have to admit the I was not the only one since 1/3 of all person on my flight missed the luggage.
It is now my third flight back to UK via Frankfurt that my bogu/shinai remain somewhere in Frankfurt, lets hope that, also this time, they will safely arrive in Torino, also because tomorrow I have to go to kendo training.
......
My bogu and shinai safely arrived back at home in time to go to training.

November 2009: Visiting Hizen kendo Club in London

2009-11-21T07:41:00.009+01:00

19th-20th November...still in London for the Affymetrix Core lab directors meeting. This is a very interesting event to meet people heavily involved in microarray data generation and analysis. The meeting was held in an hotel near Heathrow airport. Thanks to the quick and efficient London transportation system, on thurday the 19th I manage to visit the Hizen Kendo Club. This is a quite old kendo club. I red the history of the dojo and I found it very impressing. The Dojo's sensei is Jeff Humm that I contacted to practice at the dojo. But now lets go back to the 19th exciting night. I left at 6 p.m. from my hotel, took a shuttle bus to Heathrow terminal 1, catched the London express train to Paddinton station and from there the Circle line to Euston station. I was there at 7:30 p.m so I had time for a quick sandwich and a orange juice bought at Easton station. Then, I went in search of the Dojo, which is locate at Sommers Town Community Centre, Chalton Street. When I arrived, already somebody was ready for practice and they were very kind with me indicating where I could change. Getting out from the changing room I met Jeff. He is a person of few words but you can feel is charismatic personality during the training. I waited a bit together with other persons till the Dojo was free from the previous practice. In the mean time sensei Jeff was speaking with Satoshi Miyamura, one of the instructors of Hizen Dojo. There were also other group of person from Lituania, I do not know if they were there for the Mumeshi 3’s Kendo Clubs Championship competition or if they were simply a group of students living in London. Finally, we enter in the Dojo and sensei Jeff came near me ans simply said "Kendo is Kendo everywhere, please enjoy the training", great words! After a brief warm up and stretching we put the men and started kirikaeshi. We nearly did 20 round of kirikaeshi and after we combined kirikaeshi with hiki waza techniques (hiki men, hiki kote, hiki do). It was quite challenging to get at the end of this part of training, but I more or less managed without stopping. After the most high in level invited the rest of the people to do kirikaeshi, some basic kihon, jigeiko, followed again by kirikaeshi or kihon.
I started practicing with Satoshi, it was very usefull training. I have to admit that could do more if I did not fall in my usual problem "to be very contracted when I practice" and therefore being more slow. Then, I enter in the queue to practice with sensei Jeff and I could get a brief rest since I had four persons before me. Practicing with sensei Jeff was very challenging but it was also very usefull since he showed me some errors in my way of striking men. I knew there was something wrong in my men strike and his suggestions will be very usefull to improve my technique, since next year I will try the sandan grading. At the end of the keiko with Jeff I was absolutely exahusted but I still wanted to practice. I rested a bit and I did the keiko with the japanese lady Miyamura. Because I was exahusted I was a little less contracted than usual and I managed to strike some good kote. The kendo of this lady was very clean and it was really a pleasure to practice with her.
After, the keiko there was again a brief session of kirikaeshi and after Sensei Jeff highlighted some of the critical issues he observed during the keiko. It was very useful to further focus on our technical problems. After the end of the training I thank a lot sensei Jeff for the nice training and I rushed to catch the last train to Heathrow. I got back at the hotel about midnight, very tired but terribly happy for the nice night spent at Hizen Kendo Club.
If my work will bring me again in London I will do my best to practice again at the Hizen Dojo.

November 2009: Visiting TORA Dojo in London

2009-11-19T08:30:00.008+01:00

I am back in UK! This time I will spend few days in London. From November the 17th to November the 18th I was in London Bridge since I did a talk at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Unit. I was invited by a friend of mine that recently moved as Bioinformatician to this Unit. It was great to see him again and to discuss extensively of science with him, his collaborators and his boss, Professor Peter Parker. I realized tha the Bioinformatics/Molecular Biology Italian community is relatively small since also an other old friend of mine was also part of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Unit. I had a very intensive and interesting day of discussions with them.
Nevertheless as usual I took my bogu with me and on the 17th night I visited the TORA DOJO which is located at London Nautical School Community Sport Hall, The London Nautical School, 61 Stamford Street. This is a relatively new dojo run by Hyun Hong Cho, which is a 5th Dan kumdo teacher from South Korea.
I met for the first time one of the person from Tora Dojo at the Italian Cup, team competition in Alessandria, few weeks ago. The team was made by Jon of Tora Dojo, Young Park of Nenriki Dojo and a local Italian Kyu grade. This team was very good and for sure much stronger than us and they cleanly won all three shai and reached the Quarter Final (best 8 of 55 teams).
But coming back to the lesson at the Tora Dojo, the sensei is very frendly outside the dojo but she is very demanding during the lesson. We started with a quick run and stretching followed by basic suburi. Then we put the men and we did a very dinamic training. We started with various sets of kirikaeshi followed by kirikaeshi do. Then we did some repetitions of men, kote, kote-men, kote-men-do. Subsequently the students with bogu were divided in two groups yudansha and kyusha. We did a round of kakarigeiko that was quite exausting, since each element of the group has to do about 10 seconds kakarigeiko with all the components of the group. It was very useful because you have no time to think you have to strike the opponent. After that we started with the same approach of a big circle ippon-shogu. A person in the center fights against everybody else since somebody strike a good technique and the person in the center changes. Also this exercise was very useful because it was very quick with no time to think.
As the final part we did ippon-shogu shai.
At the end of the one and half hour I have to admit that I was quite tired. The sensei invited me to join them for a beer at a pub. It was great I was so thirsty! After recovering I asked the sensei if they were doing always that type of training and she told me that they were preparing for a competition that is on sunday, therefore they had a couple of weeks of intensive preparation to shai. It was a very nice night. I had the possibility to speak with other students that they knew the Italian male team, the people from Alessandria and also one of my friend of my Dojo, Edwing, that fights in Jodan.
I really hope to came back to the Tora Dojo whenever I will be again in London.

October 2009: Visiting BUDO XI in Paris

2009-10-14T16:59:00.026+02:00

This time I am in Paris to describe some of the work we have done on microarray meta-analysis on the meeting of the EADGENE European network of excellence. It is really a pleasure to be here, meeting is interesting and Paris is a beautiful town. Although I have some problem with my broken French, which is only enough to understand what I am eating.
The meeting is taking place at Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, which is really a beatiful location.

Few weeks ago I contacted Dominique Aufroy to visit the BUDO XI dojo. I am going there tonight to join the training for yudansha directed by Yoshimura Sensei, 8th DAN Kyoshi, and J.P. Labru, 7th DAN Renshi.

I will do my best during the training even though I have some residual pain of the cold I catch last week end.
In few hours I will be back to continue the story....
... I arrived to the Dojo, which is located in a multifunctional sporting center, half an hour before training began. Fortunately the
person at the reception was speaking a bit of English and he shew me where to go. Going to the second floor I realized that kendo was there since I started to hear the noise of kiai and fumikomi. When I arrived there was the session of the children, which were quite a lot. I was waiting for Dominique but since I have not seen her I asked to one of the other kendokas, waiting for the training. He shew me the person to introduce myself. At this point I wear the bogu and got to the first floor where all the others were waiting for the training. I was also introduced to Mr. Labru. The practice took place in a dance room with a very flexible floor, ideal for fumikomi. The room was relatively small and we were more then 25 persons. After a brief warm up we did basic suburi: jogeburi, nanameburi and choyakumen. Subsequently we did the rei and wear the men.
The lesson was held by Yoshimura Sensei. We started with Kirikaeshi followed by Do kirikaeshi. In the Do kirikaeshi the second round was done not as in the linked video but making, at judan level, the catch of the shinai by motodachi. After Yoshimura Sensei demonstrated the men attach in four steps:

Starting from long distance seme followed by big men
Starting from long distance seme stopping for a moment in kamae crossing the shinai and then attaching men
Starting from long distance searching the right distance to strike men when the shinai are in contact
Starting from judan no kamae with the shinai crossed make a little step haed with the back foot, doing a sort of standing seme, and then attaching men

Subsequently Yoshimura demonstrated kote-men in four steps:

Starting for the judan no kamae with crossed shinai strike kote passing on the side of the opponent that start to step back.
Starting for the judan no kamae with crossed shinai strike kote, the opponent step back and strike men, passing on the side of the opponent.
Same as step 2
Opponent attach kote and we answer uchi kote followed by men in the mean time the opponent start stepping back.

After this kion practice we did 30-45 seconds kakarigeiko changing motodachi.
After the experienced persons, e.g. Yushimura Sensei, Labru Sensei etc., wear their men and we started gigeiko. I was very lucky because I was in the line for practicing with Yoshimura Sensei. As usual when I practice with such high level person I feel completely inadequate. However I did my best to strike some good attach but with very little results.
After I moved to an other line and I fought with a very tall person, I apologize but I forgot to write down his name and I do not remember it. That was a challenging gigeiko, his kamae was very protective for the kote and I could not manage to find any opening. I tried the suggestions I got sometimes ago from Olivier Perrenoud, 6th DAN, the instructor of the Budokan Lausanne Kendo Club, to induce the tall opponent to a kamae suitable for me but I did not managed. The only things I could try were uchi men and debana men which were not effective since he was arriving always before me. After I fought with a person using nito, if I do not mistake should be Mr. Dupon. It was an occasion to test my Jodan. I am practicing Jodan kamae since last year and normally with persons with experience greater then me I do not use it because I have still many things to learn in judan no kamae. However, figthing against nito in judan is really a nightmare, instead jodan kamae has the advantage that distance is greater. Mr Dupon uses the longer sword with the right hand which is actually increasing the complexity of the fight, at least for me. Never the less it was a very interesting fight. He hit my right kote many times and I could not realize how he did, until he explained it to me in front of a beer at the end of the training. He told me that he was focusing my attention on the left hand short sword and therefore I could not realize that he was attaching me with the right hand. I have already fought in jodan against nito but Mr. Dupon was using many different kamae that were making very difficult to hit him. He also shew me that the only open side would be DO and he allowed me to try it. I have to store this information for the next time I will fight against nito. At the end I probably managed to hit him not more that a couple of times but it was an enjoyable gigeiko! Speaking in front of a beer he also told me that I have to imrpove my seme doing Jodan because without seme Jodan is very weak. Unfortuantely before I managed to practice with Labru Sensei the two hours were finished :-(
I took a shower and I joined the other people of the dojo for a quick beer, I was absolutely thirsty!

September 2009: Visiting Nagamitsu Kendo Kai Dojo

2009-09-19T13:11:00.018+02:00

Summer holidays are finished and Kendo trainining started again in our dojo in Torino. I was really missing the training and it was wonderful to see friends and practice again together. The first two weeks of September were very working intensive due to exams and two meetings I have been invited. Yesterday, 18th Sept, I came back from UK where I was to participate to the UKAffy8 meeting.
It was a very interesting meeting and also gave me the possibility to visit, in Birmingham (picture below),
the Nagamitsu Kendo Kai Dojo.

I got in contact with Sean Starr, the UK Kendo Squad Manager (left picture),
and Malcolm Goodwin. The British kindness was perfectly represented by these two gentlemen. They offer me to pick me up and and bring me back at the hotel after training.
In the first email contact I was a bit worried since I have understood that Nagamitsu Wednesday training was based on half an hour of katas and one and half hour of shiai. I have to admit that not even at the end of one year practice I am able to survive to one hour shiai. So I was a bit worry. Sean pick me up at the hotel. The Nagamitsu Kendo Kai Dojo is located in the suburbs of Birmingham in a leisure center. They practice in a dance gym, which has a soft and flexible wood floor. It is not as flexible as the wood floors in Japaneses dojos, but it is one of the best I have seen in my trips in Europe. Unfortunately I could not meet Malcolm since it was in holidays.
The training started with half an hour practice on katas. It was very good for me since I have to improve the 6th and the 7th katas since next year it is the time to try the sandan exam. I initially practice with Christopher Westley (picture on the right)
and then with Sean. I got some very good advise on the timing and other useful tips.

After the katas Sean directed a brief warm up and subsequently the lesson was driven by Derek Raybould. Fortunately my initial worries of one and half hour shai were cleared since we started with basic suburi and after we wear the men we did several rounds of big men, kote kaeshi men, kote debana kote men and finally kirikaeshi. Subsequently we started mawarigeiko I had the chance to practice nearly with everybody. Unfortunately I could not fight with Christopher we never managed to get in front of each other during the mawarigeiko. At the end of the training all people made a large circle and we did ippon shobu. When I was in the center I moved from judan kamae, which I used over all mawarigeiko, to jodan kamae. Since I am studying it, I try to apply it always at the end of jigeiko practice. I am still not so good in jodan but I like the posture very much and the only way to learn it is to practice.
I was very proud of me since I managed to get to the end of the training without stopping although I was very exhausted at the end. As usual when a kendo session ends I am happy because I am tired but also disappointed since it is finished and I like the practice so much.
I had a very nice time in Birmingham and I hope to meet them again. I got the promise from Sean that for the next Kendo World Championship, that will be held in Novara (Italy), we will keep in contact and I will bring him around Torino for a tour and a dinner.

July 2009: Visiting FSKA Dojo in Stockholm

2009-07-02T08:17:00.010+02:00

Any time I add a new visit to this blog I realize that I am very lucky to have the opportunity to meet and practice with many Kendokas all over the world.
This time I am in Stockholm for the ISMB/ECCB meeting. I have contacted Micaela Ahlstam (picture on the left) which is one of the instructor of the FSKA Dojo in Stockholm.
I arrived in Stockholm on Saturday June the 27th and the visit to the summer training at FSKA was scheduled on Wednesday July the 1st. I was quite lucky because the weather was really exceptional clear sky and 27 C, nearly incredible! The meeting was very interesting but during these days in Stockholm I was really looking forward to practice Kendo. Yesterday night I went to the summer location of the FSKA Dojo (picture below)

and, getting out from the underground, I met an other kendoka that was so kind to introduce me to the people in the Dojo. I also knew from him that FSKA is the largest Dojo in Sweden.
We started the training with a basic suburi and than we put the men and started a long session of various version of kirikaeshi. I have to admit that this was the most exhausting part of the training. After we practiced big and small men and kote. After the first 45 minutes we had a break of 3-5 minutes and I had the chance to meet Isak,

a kendoka that was fluently speaking Italian since he spent some years in Firenze and Milano studying and working. It was also amazing to know from Philipp, an other instructor of the Dojo, that he started Kendo in Heidelberg and he knew some of the people I met during my last visit to the Heidelberg Kendo Dojo. After this little break we did something quite interesting: it was a competition on being very quick in wearing the men. After wearing the men we aligned, in the center of the Dojo, on the basis of the time needed to put the men on . Then the person that was the last in wearing the men started to do three times men on the second person and so on till the end of the long line of persons. In the mean time also the second last person started the three men and so on till every body had finished the men series. It is an interesting way to speed up the men wearing. It can be very exhausting making that long series of men when in the Dojo there are 20 or 30 persons!
After we practice some iki techniques and then there was the free gigeiko with the experienced persons. I had also the possibility to make a brief gigeiko with Micaela. After we did mawarigeiko and the training ended.
I was quite exausted but very happy. I enjoyed a lot the training and the people and I hope to be back in Stockholm to practice again with them.

May 2009: Children Kendo training at Lancini's Dojo, Brescia (I)

2009-05-25T07:47:00.011+02:00

This time I have visited Lancini's Kendo Dojo (Sei Chu Do Dojo) in Brescia. This trip was not linked to one of my business trips but it was due to my interest in learning more on the Kendo training for children. The Sei Chu Do Dojo has a training session only for children on friday. The training is held by Mrs Yoon Sook Ma (4th DAN), the wife of Livio Lancini (7th DAN).

I met Yoon Sook, for the first time, during SUMI's seminar at Shubukan. She, Livio and Jun, their son, participate to the seminar and I hear about the nice work Yoon Sook is doing to train children in Kendo.
I then asked if I could come, with my sun, to participate to one of their children trainings. On friday May the 22nd, my family, together with the family of my instructor, Walter Pomero (7th DAN), went to Brescia. The Sei Chu Do Dojo is located at liceo scientifico N. Copernico
via Duca degli Abruzzi, 17 (ingresso da via Balestrieri) Brescia.
The training started with the rei and at that training participated a total of 8 children, including Lorenzo (my sun) and Sasha (Pomero's sun).
All the training was organized in a way to make Kendo exercises as a game.
They started the foot training to synchronize feet, with hand movements and kiai. Initially the exercise was done without shinai and then with shinai.
After they made a nice game to improve synchronization. Children were in a circle keeping their shinai parallel to their bodies with a finger on kensen. When Yoon Sook was giving the ajime they have to leave their own shinai an catch the one of the child nearby.
After there was the training for MEN. Children were organized in couples, one in front to another, and motodashi keeps the shinai parallel to his body and the other child has to hit slowly the kensen of motodachi shinai, with a large MEN movement. Then, children were organized in two rows and, for each row, the instructor throws slowly a ball in front to a child and he has to hit the ball with the shinai doing a quick movement with his wrists, then child move to the back of the row and game continue with the second child.
After there was the DO training the instructor was keeping, like a flag, a tenogui and when the tenogui is left the child has to hit it. The child has, as start position, the shinai placed on the left sholder, an example is give in the picture below.

An other exercise was made to understand when the opponent is attaching by looking on his eyes. Children are located one in front to another and motodachi keeps a tenogui parallel to the floor on his open hands. The opponent rises his hand and looks in motodachi eyes. Motodachi has to understand when the opponent is trying to remove the tenogui from his hands looking only in the opponent eyes and closing the hands to keep the tenogui.
All the training was done with a reasonable amount of happy caos, which is an important part of children life, never the less Yoon Sook was able to make children doing all exercises.

At the end of the session children put on the full bogu and they did a brief gigeiko between each other.
As last exercise various adult motodachi were collected and children did on them a DO slalom.
Training finished with the rei.
It was really a wonderful night. My sun was absolutely enthusiast of the training.
Mothers took care of dressing the children and after they all went to a nearby pizzeria. In the mean time Pomero, her wife, Simona (3rd DAN) and me joined, for half an hour, the mawarigeiko for adults. I managed to practice with Lancini, with an other guest from Milano (6th DAN) and with part of the people of Lancini's Dojo. As usual gigeiko was exiciting and exhausting. Making gigeiko in an other Dojo it is always an occasion to find some weak points in my Kendo. This time I realized that, when I am in tsubazeriai, I lack completely in protecting the men from opponent attach, I have to work on it.
In autumn, I hope to organize again a trip to Brescia with my sun.

May 2009: 2nd day in Heidelberg - Germany

2009-05-06T14:10:00.009+02:00

On my second day in Heidelberg I joined the Kendo practice at the Ken Zen Kan Dojo.
I have to admit that, even if I like a lot practicing Iaido, I feel more comfortable when I enter in a Kendo Dojo. This happened also at Ken Zen Kan Dojo, with the other advantage that many persons were speaking English and I meet also two Italians. I was also very happy to know that my German understanding is sufficient to practice Kendo :-)
It was nice to see that there were also many beginners, that are important to make a Dojo growing.
The training started with a warm up followed by a quite heavy suburi.
After we put on the men and started kion focusing on zanshin, practicing big men, kote and focusing on the right way to make do. After we move to counter attack techniques: kote-nuki men and men-nuki do. The lesson passed very smoothly and we finished with mawari geiko. This was an extremely enjoyable part, very clean and challenging fightings. At the end I did keiko with Frank, the Iaido instructor, and he is a nito user. This was a nice opportunity to test my jodan. It is about an year that I am practicing jodan, as side training in Torino, but I am quite a beginner, however to fight against nito in judan is really difficult, therefore I switched to jodan. It was a nice fight, difficult to find space within the nito but interesting and enjoyable. At the end of a refreshing shower the President of the Dojo was so kind to bring me back to the EMBL Hotel.
It seems that it is possible that I will be part of other workshops in Heidelberg and it will be a great opportunity to practice again at Ken Zen Kan.

May 2009: 1st day in Heidelberg - Germany

2009-05-04T23:11:00.005+02:00

This time I am in Heidelberg for the EMBL/Affymetrix workshop. It was a great pleasure to be back at EMBL not as a student but as instructor. The first day of workshop was very interesting and students interact a lot during the various talks.
At 6:00 pm I left EMBL to go practice Iaido at the Ken Zen Kan Dojo. This is the first ime a practice Iaido in a other dojo. It was a bit difficult to find the Dojo but at the end I succeded and I was lucky to meet Frank Gottschalk, the Iaido/Kendo instructor, just out side the Dojo. Frank speaks fluently english and he was so kind to make the lesson both in German and in English.
We practice Seitei and he also highlighted the presence of similarity/dissimilarity between Seitei and Muso shinden. The lesson was very interesting but I realized that I did not manage to give my best.
He highlighted the fact that my cut is still too small, but I have a reasonable timing. Never the less I could do much better.
At the end of the training he was so kind to bring me back to the Hotel and during the trip he said, a very important think. I was saying that I normally practice Iaido focusing in removing my mistakes. He said that it would be better to make all possible efforts in understanding how the technique should be correctly done instead of focusing on the removal of mistakes. He said that this positive way of looking at Iaido is more efficient than simply trying to detect and remove errors. I like this idea and I have to work on it.
Back at the hotel I still managed to have a kebab and a fresh beer even if it was quite late at night.
Tomorrow I will have and other interesting working day and at night I will go practicing Kendo with Frank.
Now it is time to switch off the light and get ready for an other day in Heidelberg.

March 2009: Fukuoka - Japan

2009-03-14T09:52:00.032+01:00

March the 14th
Back again with one of my scientific/kendo trip.
This is the third time I go in Japan and I hope it will be a great experience (素晴らしい経験) as it was the other two times. Japan is an amazing country especially for somebody practicing martial arts.
I am, now, at Torino airport ready to go to Fukuoka for the workshop in Intelligent Informatics in Biology and Medicine (IIBM 2009) held at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology as part of the Third International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems (CISIS 2009). The paper I have submitted to the conference was accepted and I will have my presentation on Thursday March the 19th. Being in Fukuoka I contacted SUMI Sensei (8th DAN Hanshi) which is the mentor of our Dojo in Torino and the Sensei of my instructor, Walter Pomero.
I am very lucky and happy since I will have the possibility to practice Kendo from Sunday evening, when my flight will arrive in Fukuoka, to Wednesday evening. I hope I will survive to training & jet lag. Probably being very exhausted I will sleep and I will overcome jet lag, hopefully . It is the first time I will practice Kendo in Japan.
I will be back with more news at my arrival at Fukuoka, tomorrow.
......
March the 15th
Trip was long but absolutely on time. I managed to catch also the internal flight from Nagoya to Fukuoka, even if, at the custom, they ask me to unpack all the presents I have made for my friends. It was deadly long but, due to the efficiency of Japanese people, I managed to arrive on time in Fukuoka. Sumi Sensei and one of his student, Ishi, were waiting for me. We had lunch together and then I went with Ishi to do mitori-geiko, "watching Kendo", for a couple of hours since there was a Prefectures teams competition going on at Fukuoka Budokan. It was incredible to watch the tournament, the fumikomi were so heavy that all the gym was vibrating.
Subsequently, Sumi Sensei was so kind to lent me his bogu to go practicing Keiko in an high school. It was amusing wearing the Sumi's bogu, it is so light, nothing compare to mine.
I have to admit that I was a bit shy, because I understand few words in Japanese. Anyway everybody was very kind with me and even from a short Keiko I think I got something on which I have to work. I realized that I am pushing very little with my left foot and the power is non coming from the hips. Furthermore, the tip of shinai should keep the center after kote.
It was also amusing as Ishi and his friend Ikui were completely different wearing the bogu. They were quite shy with me, also because of the difficulty in speaking in English, but with the bogu the became really two tigers.
Now I go to sleep, let hope to be fresh for an other day of Kendo adventure in Fukuoka.
......
March the 16th
The beginning of the day was quite complicated. Took me quite a lot to figure out which train I have to take to get to the Fukuoka Institute of Technology. Actually buying a ticket and finding the station were get off was fine, but the labels with the trains switch from English to Kanji very quickly and the station indicated on the label is the terminal one, at the end I asked to a person at the gate and finally I detected the train. Last problem was the lack of English labels into the train, so I had to be very careful at each station to be sure to get off at the right one.
Finally, I managed to catch the train and get off in Fukodai mae. Meeting registration was easy since it was in English :-)
Later in the afternoon, I meet Sumi Sensei at the FIT, we had a very good tempura together and we went visiting the Raizan Sennyoji Dai-Hihouin temple.
It is the only Buddhist temple remained out of those initially present in that area. It is characterized by the presence of a very big Budda (16 feets tall) made of wood from a single camelia tree. In the temple there are also 500 statues of Budda.
After this visit I went to the Kendo shop of Tashiro Sensei to get a Keikogi for my 10 years old sun. Tashiro Sensei make very beautiful bogu and he showed me old bogu belonging to Sumi Sensei and Chiba Sensei. After this we moved to Karatsu town and we went in a private dojo to practice Keiko. The wife of the Dojo owner offered us a very good green tea and we get ready for Keiko. It was an amazing night all the participants had many more Dans that me but nevertheless I made Keiko with any of them and got from them useful hits. For example, I realize that when I make men my left hand is not perfectly straight and the hit it is not precise.
Also Tashiro Sensei joined the keiko, but unfortunately I do not know the names of the other Sensei present at the Keiko.
It is extremely nice to practice with somebody that has a grade much higher, everything seems so simple in their hands but it is not true at all. Actually after this Keiko, I started trying to use the "Seme" to make men, trying to imitate an action that I have seen many times on me during Keiko.
When I receive a seme-men I realize that the opponent is invading my space, with Seme, but I cannot get the center anymore and I catch the men on my head. However, when I try doing seme-men the number of successes are about 1 on few dozens....I have to work on it.
At the end of Keiko Sumi Sensei took me to an hot springs, it was fantastic, we stayed in water not too hot and all pains residual of the Keiko disappeared. I have no words to thanks Sumi Sensei for that beautiful night in Karatsu.
....
March the 17th
As suggest by Sumi Sensei, I have contacted Honda Sensei, which is Associate professor of Health and Phisical Education at Fukuoka University, because he is responsible of the Syobukan, the Kendo dojo of the University. Since there was the graduation party of some of the Kendo students we had not a lot of time for Keiko. In Syobukan, I met again Ishi and Ikui that are practicing there. We did just 30 minutes of Mawarigeiko after a worm up. Students are very strong and fast. It was really a pleasure trying to catch them although it was very difficult, I had really a lot of fun.
The picture show the people involved in the Keiko, Honda Sensei is the one with the brown Do.
I met also Max, last person on the right of the picture, a British post-doc student that took one year work holiday to practice Kendo at Syobukan.
After the Keiko there was a shai where all graduating students have to fight against the rest of the Dojo. It was an experience to watch them fighting. After, Sumi Sensei was so kind to invite me to join the graduate party. It was really fun, good Japanese food and a lot of beer.
Tomorrow is the day before my presentation at the meeting and I have still to make some revision to my presentation but I will also take the last chance to make again Keiko at Syobukan.
....
March the 18th: Last Keiko in Fukuoka.
Honda Sensei organized a Keiko at 14:00 at Syobukan. This time no problem to catch the right train but some problem to find the Dojo. I asked to a very king Japanese woman in the University and she kindly took me there. Japanese kindness is incredible!
Back to the Keiko, eight students participate to it, I have to thanks them very much since the night before they had a very long graduation party with karaoke. Nevertheless, they were so fast in the keiko!!!!! We did a worm up, one round of kirikaeshi and 8 x 4 minutes mawarigeiko. I think my body is improving, I was sweeting a lot but I finished without being completely destroyed. I really had a great fun! I was very sad to leave the Dojo but this is life. On my way back to Hakata station I met also one of the students participating to Keiko, he spoke with me in English during all trip to Hakata. However, he did no say any English word to me in the Dojo, I think he was very shy of his English but he managed very well on the train, I think he needs only some more exercise.
I had four wonderful Kendo days in Fukuoka, the hospitality of Sumi Sensei was really amazing. Furthermore, practicing with many Sensei, and with Honda Sensei and his students at Syobukan I have collected many useful suggestions and informations to improve my kendo. I will get back to Italy with many thinks to put in practice during the kendo session at my Dojo.
This ends the Kendo part of my visit to Fukuoka. Tomorrow, I have my presentation at IIBM and many other interesting talks to listen.
Before ending a tip on the parquet in Japanese Dojo. They are very different from those where I am used to practice in Italy. Usually in Italy, we practice on parquet used for basket and volley ball. Parquet in Japanese kendo Dojo are more flexible and strong fumikomi is not painful.
....
March the 20th: Yagi visiting Yoshimura Sensei.
I arrived this morning in Osaka and my friend Chisato pick me up at Itami airport. After dropping the laggage at the Hotel and having a light lunch we moved to Yagi, the town where my friend live. Chisato introduced me to Yushimura Sensei, which practice Enshinryu. We spent together an extremely interesting half day. He introduced me to the Enshinryu which is a combination of various martial arts with weapons, i.e. sword, bo, etc., and with bare hands. If I have understood well the philosophy underlying this martial art is the detection of the early movement of the opponent and a counter action, with a lot of usage of taisabaki. He showed me some of the ancient kata with the sword and he was so kind to show me is old sword. He told me that the kata he is practicing were developed to allow fighting into the narrow streets of Osaka. Actually it was impressive as he could extract a long katana when the opponent is only at 30-40 cm distance. He also how me some techniques with the bo. It was a very interesting afternoon. After we had dinner together. It was a very pleasant dinner with a lot of talks and a very good shabu shabu. I have to thank my friend Chisato for the opportunity to meet such interesting person.

Visiting Kendo Munchen e.V. in November 2008

2008-11-08T09:21:00.021+01:00

Also this year I managed to participate to the Core lab Directors meeting organized by Affymetrix. It is always a very good occasion to be updated on microarray news. This time the meeting was held in Munich (DE) and I was one of the invited speakers and I presented our recent work on exon array data analysis.
As usual when I visit some country I try to practice Kendo in local dojos. I contacted various dojos but I was unlucky because the first week of November is part of the autumn school holidays and many dojos, that have their practice in School gyms, are closed. However, when I contacted Kendo Munchen e.V. Dojo, it was nice to know that there was the possibility to do some keiko even during the holidays. Therefore, in November the 5th I visited Kendo Munchen e.V. Dojo. The dojo is located in Halle der Rudolf-Diesel-Schule in Schulstraße 3a 80634 München-Neuhausen. It was very easy to get there by underground.
I have to say that I was a bit worry to follow a full lesson in German. Although I worked, long time ago, for 3 years in Germany I have only a survival German, enough to understand what I am ordering at restaurant and how much I have to pay. However, Germany is a country where many people speak English. Bane, the person I contacted by email, told me to introduce myself to the person running the keiko. He is the toll person with the grey hairs (yellow arrow) you can see him in the picture I have borrowed by their Dojo web page. Later I knew that his name is Hans and he has founded the Dojo 28 years ago.

I got there at 18:30 and we have an open katas session. I did my practice with a beginner on the first 3 katas. I think I managed to give him some advice and it was easy because he was speaking English pretty well. Half an hour later the men in the picture, indicated with a red arrow, run a worm up session. There were a lot of Kendokas, roughly half with bogu and the other beginners without bogu. During the worm up we did basic suburi like Zenshin kotai men, Zenshin kotai sayumen, etc.
Subsequently, we make the salutation and wearing the full bogu. At this time the training was split in two groups, beninners and bogu people.
We run kirikaeshi few times, and we started some kion. Initially we had a series of big and small men attacks, then we worked on iki men and debana men. We also run complex series of attacks and this was the most critical point because due to the german language, noise and complexity of some of the kion series I got a bit confused. Subsequently we had more than half an hour of mawari-geiko and it was very nice because I had the chance to practice nearly will all the kendokas. Some of kendokas were really very tall and for a 1.63 meter person like me Jigeiko with them was quite challenging. I try to follow the suggestions of Olivier the Sensei of Budokan Lausanne Kendo Club. He is about 2 meters tall person and when I made jigeiko with him he told me that I have to try to force the opponent to lower down his kamae and practicing attacks like kote and do since men can be difficult to rich for me on a tall person. However I realize that I have some work to do on kote since, as it was highlighted by the instructor of the Munich dojo I have a reasonable men even on tall persons but my kote get only the tsuba, it is too slow and predictable. I managed to make a couple of nuki do but the timing is not perfect, yet, since I was a bit slower that the men attack.
After the mawari-geiko there was free Jigeiko and I practice with Bane and few others that I could not meet during the mawari-geiko.
The overall impression of the training was very good. The main limit was the language that did not allowed me to interact deeply with the other kendokas. They have a very clean Kendo and due to the nice friendly atmosphere I enjoyed a lot to practice with them.
I hope to join again their training in case I will travel back to Munich.

Visiting Shubukan Voghera Septeptember 2008

2008-10-11T09:54:00.006+02:00

On september the 3rd I visited Shubukan Dojo in Voghera. The Instructor of the Dojo is Claudio Scacchieri 5th Dan and he is helped by Laura Imperiale 3rd Dan. The two instructors come every Monday to the training session at Shubukan, Torino, which is the Dojo where I started my Kendo practice. September is the beginning a a new year of training and I suffered very much for the impossibility to practice Kendo during August. Since Shubukan Voghera starts the activity one week earlier than my Dojo, I took this opportunity of early opening to enjoy again the Kendo practice. This was not the first time I go to the Shubukan Dojo in Voghera. Usually, in June when my sun gets to the sea in Liguria with grandparents I manage to visit Claudio's Dojo at least twice. I know all the persons practicing there and I always have a great time there. Claudio's way of training is sometime a bit rough but I always learn a lot by his comments on my way of doing Kendo.

Since this year they started also the Iaido course, the lesson begun with a brief Iaido demonstration of seitei and Muso Shinden katas. After we started the Kendo training. we had a brief worm up under the supervision of Laura, then we started the kion. Since in November I have to make my 2nd Dan exam, Claudio focus a lot on the right way of cutting. My problem is that I stamp the foot on the floor when I hit the opponent with the shinai instead of cutting with the full body. I realized that I push little with my left foot, which is something that I am trying to improve before the November exam. After kion, we applied what we have learned practicing gigeiko. An other point that it was raised from Claudio is that I have to be more quite when I am practicing giving more homogeneity to my attacks which are imprecise since I am speeding up too much the action. After gigeiko we did ippon shobu with Claudio. As usual I lost :-) but at least, I was trying to apply all the tips I learned during the lesson.
It was a nice way of starting the Kendo training season.

July 2008: Visiting Toronto Kendo Club

2008-07-21T17:17:00.007+02:00

On Saturday July the 19th I visited the Toronto Kendo Club. The TKC is located in an area of Toronto where a lot of Italians live. It was impressive listening people speaking in Italian entering in the J. Picinnini Recreation Center where the TKC is located. There were many old man playing cards and discussing at various table.
The gym of the TKC is very big but for some reason it was terribly hot. I arrived quite early and I had the opportunity to say few words with the other kendokas and to meet Bill Leong which is the person I contacted to join the TKC training.
I participated to the cleaning of the gym, in the mean time arrived Paul Nakamura and Nobi Nakamura instructors.
We started with a general warm-up both Kendo and Iaido students. After, Iaido took 1/3 of the gym, and we continue on the other part of the gym with some Suburi. The training that followed was very similar to that we have in Torino at Shubukan, beginners and intermediate students work all together. We began without the bogu doing basic ashi movement and subsequently we combined tsuki-ashi with men technique. This part was followed by basic training for suriage men and do. After we wear the full bogu and practice Kion, pritty like we do in Torino. After we had about 30 minutes Jigeiko, that was very hard, people at TKC is very good, they have very clean techniques and I needed all my attention to make some reasonable Jigeiko. My main problem was the hotness, as happened in Chicago after the first Jigeiko I had to stop and take out my men. However, this time since Paul told us that we could do it after asking to the instructor I could recover and drink some water. After it was much better and I managed to finish the Jigeiko.
After the training I was invited to participate to a training session the day after but unfortunately I could not accept since that was the central part of the ISMB meeting and I have to attend to it.
I was also invited to join the the Dojo people for a drink. It was a great time, good beer and good talk about Kendo and other objects. I realize that they are a very tight group, it was really a pleasure for me to practice with them and enjoy few beers after! I hope to get back in Toronto to practice again with them.

July 2008: Visiting University of Toronto Kendo Club

2008-07-20T21:47:00.015+02:00

On Thursday July the 15th I moved from Chicago to Toronto for the ISMB meeting.
As soon as I got to the hotel I prepared every thing to go to the University of Toronto Kendo Club.
I had an appointment at 6:30 PM with Glen, which is taking care of the UTKD web site.
Since also Toronto in this period is very hot, I was very happy when I entered in the hall of the Athletic Center since it was air conditioned. I meet Glen and he managed to find a ticket to enter in the Athletic Center since the entrance is limited to students of the University of Toronto.
After changing I got to the gym where they practice and unfortunately air conditioning was not present in that gym, but it was not so hot as in Chicago. All people were quite young. The lesson was held by a young instructor, unfortunately I forgot his name. We started with a worm up followed by Suburi. Then, we wear the full bogu. The focus of the lesson was the preparation to counteracting techniques. The instructor was very good in sliding each of the techniques in pieces to allow and ease understanding of each of the single actions and then all pieces were combined together. We practice debana kote, hiki men, hiki kote and hiki do. The overall lesson was devoted to understand how to get a point in shiai using these techniques.
After we did mawarigeiko. This time the overall level of the students was more near mine and Jigeiko was nice and not too difficult. After the training I was invited to join again their practice on Saturday, when their Sensei was present, but unfortunately I could not do it since I had already an appointment at Toronto Kendo Club.
I also got an invitation to join the other persons for a drink but I was a bit to slow in taking the shower and I could not find any one in the hall of the Athletic Center.

A collection of videos from University of Toronto Kendo Club

July 2008: Back to Chicago Kendo Dojo

2008-07-13T22:29:00.011+02:00

I just arrived in Chicago, now (13/07/2008). It was a very nice trip. I traveled in business class (Lufthansa) due to overbooking of my flight in the economy class, it was absolutely wonderful! We were on time and none of my luggage was lost!
I am actually waiting for my Chicago's friends coming back from Italy. Since they are coming with an Alitalia flight I was expecting a bit of delay but not 5 hours! I have to wait anyway since I am going to stay at their home during these 4 days in Chicago.
It is my first time in Chicago in July and the weather is nice and worm , quite different from freezing April.
On Tuesday evening I will be again at Chicago Kendo Dojo. I hope to see again Matsumoto Sensei..... As usual I will do my best and I hope I will not suffer to much of jet-lag.
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On Tuesday the July the 15th I was again at Chicago Kendo Dojo.

A picture from Chicago Kendo Dojo web site

It was very nice to be back there. I arrived few minutes before 8:00 PM and I found Jeehwan Kim Instructor
and few other people finishing the cleaning of the Dojo. I introduced myself and after a while Kim reminded about my previous visit at the Dojo. Few minutes after 8:00 PM Matsumoto Sensei entered in the Dojo it was very nice to see him again. He is now 86, with a very bright mind. I think their students are very lucky to have a Sensei with such long experience. We started by practicing for half and hour alone and Matsumoto came around to give some advices. The first time I came to this Dojo I was 1st Kyu and Matsumoto's suggestions were very useful to improve my Kendo. Now, I was proud of my improvement since I got my shodan. However, Matsumoto highlighted some critical points I have to work hard to improve. Specifically, I have to focus on fighting with my full body and not only with my arms.
Subsequently, we started a warm up with basic Suburi and then we started the practice with the complete bogu. Summer in Chicago is very hot and humid. Believe me, it is quite unpleasant when you wear the bogu. We did some Kihon and this time it was much easier since I have improved a bit my Kendo ability. After 20 minutes of Kihon I was completely wet and nearly unable to breath. Immediately after the Kihon we started Jigeiko. It was a real nightmare, I try my best but after the first Jigeiko I need to stop and I took out the men. I knew that it was something that I should not do but I was very near to get unconscious . I took all my remaining strength and I started again. The persons in the Dojo are very good in Kendo and all my attention was needed to give my best in the Jigeiko. However, even if I have rested between the first and second Jigeiko also after the second one I had to stop and take out the men again. After recovering I did an other Jigeiko and as last I had the honor to make again Kakarigeiko with Matsumoto Sensei. I was exhausted, but I tried my best. During Kakarigeiko Matsumoto Sensei gave me some useful advice to improve my Kendo. I was really exhausted, but I knew that if I was not making my best the Kakarigeiko would never end. I still remember my last men, I took out everything from my body and I knew I could not be able to do an other one. Fortunately, Matsumoto Sensei allowed me to stop after this and I could finally rest and recover.
After the practice I thanks everybody for the opportunity to be part of their practice.
I am very happy that I managed to get back to the Chicago Kendo Dojo for a second time and I hope to get back in Chicago in the near future to visit them again.

A collection of videos from Chicago Kendo Dojo

April 2008: Budokan Lausanne Kendo Club

2008-04-26T14:02:00.009+02:00

I came back yesterday from the wonderful European Bioconductor developer meeting. I catch a lot of interesting ideas and information for my work.
I also managed to contact Olivier Perrenoud the Sensei of Budokan Lausanne Kendo Club. He was very kind to allow me to participate to one of their training session on Thoursday April the 24th. This was the first time I practiced Kendo in a non-English speaking country. I was very lucky because one of the senior Kendoka, Eric, working at the Lausanne University where the Bioconductor meeting was held, picked me up to go to the training.
The training started with an open session of katas. I practiced with Eric first and then I had a nice time with two young Kendokas (I think about 8-10 years old).
It was very interesting to practice with them, and since I am helping my Sensei, in the junior Kendo course I really would like that our young kendokas will behave like them. The limits was my total lack of French speaking.
During kata training Olivier Sensei told me that I have to take care on the position of the left foot, since I loose the stability of the position when a move back and my zanshin is lost. It was a very useful observation, I have to work on it!

During the kata session many persons arrived at the Dojo and at 18:30 there were about 30 persons. I helped them to remove the tatami from the training area and then we started some basic worm up suburi. Also in this case I had the chance to learn something regarding my Chudan-no-kamae. As, highlighted by Olivier Sensei, I have some weakness on the position of the left foot which affect the overall kamae posture.

After the suburi we made the rei. During the rei I was located at the position of a formal guest, at the side of the sensei and at the side of the other trainers, in order to introduce me to them and give me the chance to see, by their location in the row, their level.
After the men (wo) tsuke, I practice with many people, and, although we were really a lot and sometime practicing in group of three, everybody was very experienced to avoid to crash with the neighborhoods. We did some kihon changing the type of techniques in function of the level of the opponent. Olivier Sensei was very kind translating nearly everything in English, although I am very proud that I could understand quite a lot of the overall mixture of Japanese commands and French explanations. After the kihon we did gigeiko. I have to admit that I could do better than what I did, but I was quite tired since I waked up at four o'clock the same morning to reach Lausanne in time for the beginning of the meeting.
The last gigeiko was with Olivier Sensei, I forgot to tell that he is a tall man. I normally practice with tall persons in my dojo, since I am quite small, but .... Olivier is really tall! It was very difficult gigeiko!
At the end of the training Olivier was very kind to give me some advices. Specifically he focus on two points, I have to keep my body compact without changing anything in my posture before performing a technique in order to avoid to make aware the opponent that I am going to hit him. Furthermore, the movement of the shinai tip should be driven by the left and not by the right hand! He also told me that I have to keep more low the kamae when the opponent is tall since I have to force him to keep his kamae also low. This position will give more chances to make various techniques. If I keep my kamae too high I can only make men and the taller opponent will be more faster than me.
After the training I joined the Sensei and some of the kendokas for a quick beer. It was a very nice experience and Olivier Sensei invited me to get back to their Dojo if I am in Switzerland, think that I will definitively do!

March 2008: Cambridge Kendo Club

2008-03-30T19:22:00.010+02:00

Sunday 30th of March
Today I arrived in Cambridge, UK, to participate to a workshop on "High Dimensional Statistics in Biology" at the Isaac Newton Institute. I room, for the time of the meeting, is located at the Wolfson Court which is near by the Institute.
On internet I found the Cambridge Kendo Club, which is a "virtual" dojo, meaning that they practice in any place where they can. The Sensei is Italian, Frank Stajano. I contacted the Captain/instructor of the Dojo, Satoshi Yamazaki, to practice with them. This week I will join their training on Monday and Thursday.
Monday 31st of March:
It was a tough night, since I walked 45 minutes with the bogu and shinai to get to the Dojo, then I had two hour training and other 45 minute to get back to the Wolfson .
I am tired, thirsty but happy. Whenever I get to a new place I am quite nervous, and this was also true in this case when I arrived at the Dojo, since Satoshi arrived only when we enter in the Dojo. However, I manage to introduce myself to Sensei Frank and I joined the practice with them.
The training was divided in katas (40 minutes), followed by a quite hard worm up especially for the sonkyo suburi, I am still filling it in my legs. Subsequently we wear the bogu and did few rounds of kirikaeshi and kihon.
Then, Satoshi was also describing some of the training he had during the previous weekend with his training with a Japanese Sensei. We focus on the practice of debana men and debana kote. The last 20 minutes were used for jigeiko.
Thursday 2nd of April:
This time I was more relaxed and, being back to the Dojo, was like meeting some old friends .
The training was very similar to that of Monday but we spent some time on kaeshi do and nuki do.
I managed to make jigeiko with nearly all the people in the Dojo. I have to admit that on Thursday I was a bit more slow because the night before we had the meeting social dinner and few beers in the pub where researchers claim that Watson and Crick finalized their idea on the double helix structure of DNA.
Getting back to the Thursday training, Frank suggested me to work more on the extension of the left hand when I do men. It is a very good comment and I will work on that.
Finally few words on the Dojo people, the vast majority of the people is quite young as expected in a town where Colleges and Universities have an extreme density. It was very nice to talk with them and having training together.

April 2007: Singapore Kendo Club

2008-01-23T18:54:00.008+01:00

In April last year I was part of the training staff in a microarray course in Singapore. Unfortunately, I stayed there only four days and could not manage to visit that beautiful country.
Moving from Torino to Singapore it was a bit of shock since I passed in 10 hours flight from 5-7 C in Torino to the 32-35 C in Singapore. I had to buy some shirts and shorts to feel comfortable outdoor. However, my Torino's cloths were very useful for the training, since in the training room the air conditioning was a sort of winter thunder storm.

Searching over internet, just few days before departing from Torino, I find out the Singapore's Kendo Club, which is located in the Japanese school very near to the International Singapore Airport. I contacted them and I packed my Bogu.
Since my hotel was located quite in the center of Singapore town (the pictures show night/day view from my room),

I had to get to the Japanese School by car. In Singapore taxis are quite cheep there fore are the best way to move around. Sigapore has a lot of traffic and the trip to the Dojo was about 60 minutes long. Even the trip to the Dojo was very interesting since the driver was a martial art maniac and he told me many stories about local martial arts.
I arrived to the Dojo a little late, but fortunately they have only started the warm up with the beginners, so I managed to prepare myself. As usual every body was very kind with me.
A other wonderful characteristic of the Singapore Kendo Club is that the Dojo is conditioned. Trust me, the air conditioning is a wonderful invention if you are wearing the bogu and on the street there are 32 C and 100% humidity.
We started the training together with the beginners and subsequently the beginners continue their training with an other teacher. The training was quite nice and a bit exhausting especially because I was suffering for the jet-lag and I did not know their training schedule. Therefore, I did all my best in the open gigeiko, which I was expecting to be the end of the training but... after we did a lot of mawarigeiko, which finish to destroy me.
I got back to the hotel exhausted but very happy, the way back was again with the martial art maniac taxi driver but was only 30 minutes long. My night ended searching a still open restaurant, at the end I was eating in a sort of Chinese food market but I have to say that I could not manage to recognize what I have eaten, even though it was good.

March 2007: Choyokan Dojo, Chicago/USA

2008-01-23T18:53:00.011+01:00

In March 2007 I had the opportunity to travel a lot. I was in Chicago at Northwestern University for a brief lesson on "microarray data analysis and mining" as guest of Platania's Lab. During my stay I had the opportunity to visit two dojos.
I contacted Sakamoto Sensei at the Choyokan Dojo and I joined their Sunday Practice at UIC Sports and Fitness Center 828 S. Wolcott Avenue, (South of Polk near Damen).
In my opinion it was an high level training session and I was very happy that they allowed me to participate even if I was a beginner. In March 2007 I had only one and half years of kendo practice and I was still 2nd kyu. As usual everybody was very kind with me.
The lesson was two hours long and it was hard, at least for me.
We started with some basic kion techniques. That part was easy, but after we started uchikomi geiko with a lot of practice on complex actions to counteract an attach. I found this part very complicated due to my limited coordination to keep a correct tsuba-zeri-ai and my poor hiki waza techniques.
After that there was mawarigeiko. At that time, I was mainly doing kote since I am quite short and I found difficult to reach the speed and the correct position to make a good men on a tall opponent. Furthermore, I was unable to create the right timing and occasion to perform a good technique.
The jigeiko with Sakamoto Sensei was very useful. After it, he told me that my feet were feeling to be too young with respect to my age (I was 46 years old). After his comment I realized that I was just moving my feet back and forward on the same place without any effect on the full body and it was useless. An other very useful observation was related to the need to keep the center of the opponent with the shinai. Those hits were very useful to improve my overall way of doing kendo.
At the end of the training I was a bit depressed and embarrassed of my low level of Kendo but happy to have practiced with persons more experienced than me.
Anyway the two hours of training were exhausting.

A collection of videos from Choyokan Dojo

March 2007: Chicago Kendo Dojo, Chicago/USA

2008-01-23T18:48:00.012+01:00

During my staying, in Chicago, march 2007, I also contacted Mizuuchi Sensei at Chicago Kendo Dojo to ask for the possibility to practice at their site. The dojo is located at Bethany United Church of Christ, 4250 N Paulina Street, Chicago, IL 60613.
The dojo is very near to the house of my friends in Chicago. Gianni, my friend, drove me there about 45 minutes before the training, I always prefer to arrive early than late :-).
In front of the Dojo, we met a Japanese man with a broom. I thought he was a caretaker of the gym. He asked me why we were there and I told him that I asked for the opportunity to practice at Chicago Kendo Dojo.
He also asked me how long I was practicing Kendo and I told him about two years...... I was shocked when he told me that he was practicing Kendo from 74 years! That phrase was amazing, he had a very young face and I was not expecting he was over 80 years old.
He introduced himself saying that he was Frank Matsumoto. Since nobody was still there Mr. Matsumoto told me and my friend something about his long life. It was wonderful to know the many things he did during his life. He was in Europe during the second world war, it was an amazing story. But, still I did not realized who was the man in front of me.
In the mean time somebody start to show up and greeting Mr Matsumoto saying "Sensei". Furthermore, a young japanese man asked to Matsumoto Sensei to have his broom and he had to discuss a bit to avoid that the Sensei continue cleaning the Dojo.
In few minutes, about 8:00 PM, many persons arrived and finished to clean the Dojo. Many of those were Japanese. Also an other old japanese man arrived, Mr. Kadoi, the administrator of the Dojo.
When everybody was ready, we started the training and also Sensei Matsumoto participated to it. Together with Matsumoto Sensei there were other three teachers.
We started with basic techniques and suburi to warm up, then we practiced kirikaeshi and some basic kion. Subsequently, I practiced with an other student how to keep the center of the opponent to make aiuchi-men. After, we practiced a bit of gigeiko and I had the honor to practice kakarigeiko with Matsumoto Sensei as motodachi. He told me that I have to push with the left foot to make a correct men. All his comments were very useful and I still keep them in my mind during my Kendo practice.
At the end of the training all the other teachers were making general comments on students behavior. Unfortunately, due to my broken english, I only got part of those useful hits.
One of the teachers told me that I have a reasonable kirikaeshi as uchitachi but I have to work more on the motodachi side. Actually it was an important hit on which I am still working.
It was a very nice training and I was really feeling as I was always been practicing at the Chicago Kendo Dojo.
At the end of the training Mr. Kadoi and Matsumoto Sensei gave me their business cards, and I knew that Matsumoto Sensei was a 7th DAN Hanshi.
It was an honor for me to ear his stories and learning from him.
Furthermore, any time it happen to me to speak with other kendokas on my time in the Chicago Kendo Dojo, I say that I wish to be as Matsumoto Sensei when I get older than 80.
Definitively, if I will manage to come back to Chicago I will do my best to visit again the Chicago Kendo Dojo.

Dicember 2006: Nenriki Dojo London

2008-01-23T07:53:00.002+01:00

In December 2006 I was 2nd kyu. Since I was in London to teach in a course, I took the opportunity to see if it was possible to visit a Dojo. I decided to ask to participate to a training session at the Nenriki Dojo, since there was a training on friday, which was my first free day after the course. I contacted the secretary of the Dojo and I also got the opportunity to borrow one of their bogu instead of bringing mine.
Nenriki Dojo is situated in central London, near to Elephant & Castle underground station. The Dojo is located in the Geoffrey Chaucer School.
I was a bit nervous before to attend to the training. It was the first time a was training in a new dojo. Took me some time to find the dojo, but following a tall man that was carrying a shinai finally I found the dojo.
Everybody was very kind with me and they told me that friday was a day in which less people are practicing. However, it was amazing to see the ethnical diversity present in the dojo. I even meet an other Italian.
Thinking on what I did during the training, I realized that my performance was very poor, e.g. I was stepping back when attached by the opponent, being inefficient in controlling my body, thinking too much, etc. Despite all my errors it was a very nice training and after I joined Victor Harris Sensei and the Nenriki people for few beers in a local pub.
This is a video about nenriki Kendo dojo I found on Youtube:

Why I started this Kendo blog.

2008-01-20T16:47:00.000+01:00

20 Janury 2008
I started practicing Kendo in September 2005 at Shubukan Dojo after 10 years of martial arts black out.
It was really a new experience after having practiced Judo, JuJitsu and Karate. When I started I was thinking that Kendo was simply a way to fight in a more safe way with respect to other martial arts, but, after a while, I realized that there was something more in Kendo practice.
At the beginning the concept of KI-KEN-TAI NO ICHI was very loose in my mind as the idea that Kendo Jigeiko is a crosstalk between the two opponents, searching for the opportunity for clean and perfect strike.
The training in my Dojo is exciting but since we know each other it is very nice to practice with guests coming from other Italian towns or from abroad.
These visits offer the opportunity to learn from the differences existing between the training of different Sensei. An other way to test the improvements in the way I do Kendo is, off course, given by the participation to Kendo competitions, but, since I have a quite busy life it is nearly impossible for me to do that.
However, I learned that that Kendo is a large world community and anybody is welcome to practice in an other Dojo as guest. Since my work give me the opportunity to travel through the world two/three time every year I decided to see if I could learn more about other way of doing Kendo visiting Dojo trough the world.
In this blog I will try to describe what I got from any of the practice I did during my trips.