Long time by my last post..

 Since 2022 to today a lot of things happened. My wife passed away after 1 and half year from being diagnosed a lung cancer. This time was very intensive for me since I was the caregiver of my wife. No time to travel a even few time for kendo in Torino. The friendship of my kenshi at Shubukan club in Torino were very helpful in supporting me. Tough time. Recently I started traveling again and bringing bogu with me. It is nice but I still live in a world where the colours are not as brite as few years ago. But life has to go on and few week ago I went to Bern to try the 6 Dan exam. It was a strange period, I got a distortion to the left ankle, then a quite strong flu and an a night a very string tsuki out of protection. I was start thinking that maybe going to Bern was not a good idea. Anyway I went there. The seminar was held by Kamei sensei and it was challenging and interesting. Passing exams in kendo was always very tough, 4 times yondan and 5 times godan. So I did not have any expectation … I catch the suggestions from two of my higher grade friends (1st suggestion focus on your exam do not look at the previous exams, 2nd suggestion do not attach unless you have constructed the action in the way to induce the opponent to interact with you) and  I did my two gigeiko focusing in inducing the opponent to attach and in the first gigeiko it work better than the second. After I was exhausted and I start packing, one guy from Berlin told me, before packing at least wait for the results on gigeiko …. I then got a big surprise I had passed!!! I still do not believe. 

Today I am in Singapore, since next week I will run a workshop at Duke-Nus. This evening I will meet again Kamei sensei since he is doing a three day seminar here in Singapore.

My kendo journey is continuing….

Visiting Namban-tetsu dojo in Mannheim with my friend Volker

 Finally after Covin stops I managed to be back in EMBL, Heidelberg, as trainer of the Single cell EMBO course. I had great time meeting young researchers and all my friends at EMBL. 

After three years, I also managed to meet again my friend Volker, the sensei of Heidelberg Ken Zen Kan Kendo club.  After a very nice evening, together with him and his wife at Vetter brauhaus, with Volker we went, last thursday, to Namban-tetsu  dojo in Mannheim. I met again Ken Zen Kan friends and new kenshi from Mannaheim. It was a great night, summarised by the video recorded during the practice by Simon. It was nearly four years that I did not have keiko with Volker. It was absolutely enjoyable! Also the practice with the other kenshi was great. It was impressive the cleaness of their kendo, even for the ones that started kendo only recently. Definitively a great night.

Visiting London Hizen and Kenyukay dojos

 It is some time that I do not post on Kendo Travel Diary, mainly because, for family reasons, I am traveling a bit less. However, in October I was visiting Jeff Humm sensei at Hizen dojo. As usual the practice was mentally and technically challenging and it gave me a lot of things to digest and integrate in my kendo. Specifically, I found very interesting the concept of clean up kendo keiko from non-essential elements and focus on efficacy of the techniques. I have to be used to the fact that I have to place few strikes but perfect, so-so strikes are not anymore enough.

Then, I visited Yung Park sensei at Kenyukay dojo. I was very happy to meet Pasha Volodarsky, the Chief of Israel Kendo and of Aikijitsu Israel. Pasha is very friendly and clearly he is a strong competitor. I was amazed by the strenght and speed of his strikes. We had a very interesting jigeiko, extremely challenging for me 😊. The jigeiko with Yung was as also very challenging, he has a strong kamae and creating the opportunity to strike is very very difficult. Since, Yung had Pasha and me as guests, he decided to have one hour of mawarigeiko... It was very nice, but exausting 😀.  In the remaining half an hour, Pasha supervised a brief practice for the Young's students. It was very interesting to see him running the practice.

As usual the two nights in London were extremely interesting and I got a lot of fun!

Visiting Koshikan in Florence (Italy)

 Here I am again, after various Covid waves. I am trying to travel again. This time, I am in Italy in the beautiful Florence. I came to Florence for the Keystone Simposium on Single Cell Biology, where I was presenting some of our recent work. As always happen when I travel, I look for practicing kendo and this time I visited the Koshikan, where Angela Papaccio is the 7th Dan running the dojo.

It was really great to be back in a new dojo crossing shinai with kendo friends. Angela gave me some indications, that I am trying to apply in my every day practice. It was nice to practice with everyone in the dojo. I hope Aiazzi, which is a Jodan player, enjoyed playing with me, and I was very happy to meet again Corti, that I met few years ago in Heidelberg at the Ken Zen Kan dojo (kendo world is small 😃). Last but not least I was very happy to have a keiko with Yume Birardi, which is part of the Italian Kendo Lady Team.

Bergen Kendo seminar October 2021

 Last week (15-17th of Octoper 2021) I was in Bergen, Norway.  The local kendo club, run by my friend Ioannis Karampatsos, organised a seminar held my my sensei Walter Pomero (7 Dan) with the support of Edwin Soldati (6 Dan) and Laura Imperiale (5 Dan).  It was very nice to meet the friends I could not meet since the beginning of the covid pandemic. 

On Friday we had  1 hour practice suoervised by Edwin. In this hour, we focused on subury and practice without men. The aim of the lesson was the improvement of shinai control. After we had about half an hour of jigeiko. After keiko, all the italians, together with Ioannis, were invited for dinner at the Stephanos home, an instructor of aikido. Stefanos has a very confortable house and the dinner was tipically norvegian.

 

 

The main part of the seminar was on Saturday, 3 hous in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. In the morning, after suburi and practice in pairs without men, the participants were splitted in two groups: ladies and man. Ladies were trained by Laura as instead mens by Walter.  Walter highlighed that having so many ladies offer the possibilies to them to practice together, which is a quite rare event in the every day practice in a dojo. During the morning, we practiced chudan and jodan basic techniques as well as oji waza techniques. In the afternoon we focused on kata for 2 hours and then we had open jigeiko. The night finished with the sayonara part in the italian restaurant Boccone. Two year ago we were in the same restaurant, that was at then time "Oliver Italy" and I had to admit that food was not particularly exciting. This time, it was different, we had pizza, ravioli and salad as buffet dinner. The overall quality of the food was quite good, although it seems that the chef likes a lot galic 😂. The sayonara party was very nice and the time flyed away very rapidly. On Sunday, there were exams from shodan to san dan and the overal quality was quite good since all applicant passed their exams. In the afternoon of Sunday, we grab our flight to Italy and we left Bergen. 

Looking forward to participate to the 2022 Bergen Kendo seminar. 

Getting exiting for my trip to Stockholm

 I am very excited, in few days I will be at Karolinska, in Stockholm, being the opponent of a final Ph.D exam.

This is my first trip abroad after two years of  lack of trips because of Covid pandemia.

It was a very bad time and Covid reshaped our life.

I moved from 30 flights in a year to 0. The normality became an exceptional event and even practicing kendo in our dojo became difficult.

I really hope this pandemia will be over soon, bu in the mean time I am very happy, because I will manage to go to practice kendo again at FSKA after my duty at Karolinska.

 

Singapore July 2019

This year I was asked to run the RNAseq workshop at Duke-Nus twice in a year. This time the course was enriched by our new package on single-cell sequencing, rCASC. This year I had the help of three local PhD students: Mo and Yang (Computer Scientists) and Suhas (Mathematician). The students were incredibly smart and they managed to follow explanations and were able to master all the exercises I have designed for them. We also got a great feed back!

Since the last 10 years, also this year I had a lot of kendo: Sunday SKC (Changi Japanese School), Monday/Wednesday/Saturday Tanglin Kendo Club (Tanglin Community Center),  Thursday SKC (Clementi Japanese Elementary School),  Friday NUS Kendo club (NUS Sport Hall).

At SKC I was very happy to meet friends and practicing with them and having Bak Ku Tek lunch with Sida (Nippon Budo APAC).
 

 At Tanglin I spent three out of my six days of Kendo practice.

I was very happy to practice with my friend David sensei


and with all and with the Tanglin Kendo Club people.


At Tanglin I met Andrew Wong, which is a Jodan player from Canada. I did keiko with him twice over the time I spent at Tanglin and I got some tips to improve my Jodan practice:

1. keep an aggressive posture
2. keep the back foot ready to push at any time
3. keep the long distance from the opponent
4. counter balance the men strike with right fist moving back near the body
5. just move the hand slightly on the left when executing kote

Great suggestions!



At NUS the lesson was run by my friend Oliver Ng from SKC. He did a very nice didactically  valuable lesson making in practice the concepts of "Sen no sen", "Go no sen" and "Sensen no sen". It was really a great lesson!

I would like to thank Singapore Kendo Club, Tanglin Kendo Club and NUS Kendo Club for their hospitality.

I will be again in Singapore in November to another RNAseq course at DUKE-NUS and enjoying kendo friendship!

3-5 of May Kyoto Taikai and Yuubukan. Getting back to Tokyo to return Italy.

After Yoshino visit, I went back to Kyoto to watch the Kyoto Taikai and to participate on the 4th of May to asageiko and to the World Kendo Network keiko kai organized by Maruyama sensei and Castelli sensei, the same day later in the afternoon. It was amazing to see at the asageiko so many 8th dan sensei. Because you need to be fast to do as much jigeiko as possible in an hour, I had prepared my men as japanese students do, it was already bound and I could ware it as a motorbike helmet. With this approach I did 4 jigeiko in the available time and the first jigeiko was with Tani sensei.

After asageiko, with my friends I watched the 7 dan shiai and I made a video of my sensei:


 In the afternoon at 14:00 we had the World Kendo Network keikokai and I had the possibility to practice with Castelli and Zago sensei and I asked them some advices for my incoming 5 dan exam.
Briefly, my seme seems to be reasonable, but I had to push with the back foot more effectively to have the right propulsion to strike men.  An important point is that I need to focus more on my kote and after striking I have to close distance, instead of waste it trying a slow two times kote-men.
The other point is that I have to go strait, not trying to go on a side of opponent before I finished my technique.

At the end of the day I was destroied and after a brief dinner I went to sleep.
The next day, Sunday the 5th, I went for the second time to Yuubukan with Alessia Caporaso, Luca Cerfeda and Lucilla Amerini. The two and half hours of keiko were particularly dense. After taiso with children we started various rounds of kirkaeshi followed by some basic attach and counter attach techniques. Then, we had nearly 40 minutes of jigeiko followed by few brief shai. I did with Alessia that won, then Luca did with two local Japanese and he striked a great yakudo. After the shai with Alessia, I had a shai with a local Japanese and I did the shai in jodan, I tried a couple of kote that arrived at the site, but not with the correct angle, the shiai finished without nothing done by both of us. Lucilla instead did with a Japanese first and then with Alessia.
It was a nice end of my staying in Kyoto. At 14:00 I was on the train to Tokyo, where I spent my last night and on the 6th I catch the flight to Torino.

Visiting Kawakami village

After the endo of the ISEV meeting I moved to Kawakami-Mura to visit my friend Chisato. I went to Kawakami-Mura with his brother Hiro. With Chisato and Hiro we have a long friendness that last more than 30 years.
In Kawakami-Mura I met Matsumoto sensei and I had to 30 minutes keiko with him for two days. Great experience.



I stayed in Kawakami-Mura village in the  Suginoyu hotel. All personnel is extremely kind and the onsen is very great. Japanese style breakfast and dinner are absolutely gorgeous.
I had a talk nearly every day with the chief of the hotel, which speak English quite well and he was so kind to give me various information about the Yoshino area.
With Chisato and Hiro I visited the country side. The Yoshino area is very green and it is a country area mainly devoted to the wood business. The majority of the forest is created by man and the wood is sold all over Japan for its high quality for furniture and houses.

5th day in Kyoto

On day 5th I went with Donatella Castelli and Alessia Caporaso to Osaka to see the competition of all the Japanese prefectures. Teams of 7 people from high school student to kyoshi. The tournament was held in the same place where some years ago I have seen a Sumo tournament. We met there Lorenzo Zago (7 Dan) and we spent the all day watching the competitions.

 It was interesting to note that there was a jodan players in at least one out of two teams. Below you can see the video of one of the semifinal in which a jodan player was involved (Ibaraky white, Osaka red).
After the end of the  tournament we came back to Kyoto

and we finished the evening with udon!

4th day in Kyoto

Today is Sunday and it is the last day of the ISEV meeting. After the end of the congress I moved to the Miyakoshi Kaikan Sakyotobuikiiki Shimin Katsudo Center, where the training of the Yuubukan dojo take place on Sunday for 2 and half hours. Maruyama sensei invited me to practice in this dojo.

Donatella Castelli this time could not join us and I went there with Alessia Caporaso. This was a family kendo practice there where children with parents and adults. We started with a warm up done by two little kids. After, we did few suburi and we ware the men. At this point adults and children were divided. We made few lines in front of motodachi and we practice various basic techniques as well counter attacks. Then, we started nearly one hour of free jigeiko. It was a nice time and I did, with the majority of the people, keiko in chudan followed on the last ippon to jodan no  kamae. It was nice because with one of the opponent we did both an ippon shobu in jodan and I was striked by a wonderful kote in the stile of Chiba sensei. On the last keiko I was with the main sensei of the dojo. He asked me to go in jodan and after few strikes in chudan he move to jodan no kamae too, it was very great! After a while he striked me with a men that arrived before mine. Great keiko!
After, Alessia and me when with Maruyama sensei and his wife out for lunch. I had a nice sea food ramen. Then, I moved to the hotel, had a shower and I had a walk in Gion, then I when out for dinner with Donatella, we had a great unagi set to end smoothly the evening.

Third day in Kyoto: Budokuden

This was an exciting evening. I went to the Budokuden. We arrived early with Donatella and Alessia and before changing we had the possibility to have a look at a kyudo practice in the budo center.

Before our practice there were the children, very very committed!

Senseis were very friendly and some of them talked to me briefly. We started immediately mawarigeiko and I start my practice with a lady from SKC, which is in Kyoto to try the 6 Dan exam. Mawarigeiko was about 15 minutes (5 keiko) and then we had open jigeiko. All keiko were very challenging but, because of the quality of the all sensei all keiko were very useful to me to improve my posture and the work to find the right time for making an ippon. I had also a keiko with a very old sensei and I was amazed by his strength! It was practically impossible to strike any kind of technique to him and he was constantly pressing me.
At the end of the practice we quickly left and we went to eat gyoza with Maruyama sensei.
Great evening!

Asageiko at Kyoto Prefecture

This morning I had the wake up at 4:45. Then, I walked to the Kyoto Prefecture where I met both Donatella sensei and Alessia Caporaso, one of the ladies of the Italian team, which is in Kyoto to study Japanese language.
The practice at Prefecture last only one hour but it is very intense. We started with a brief warm up and then we had suburi practice:

• 2 men moving ahead and 2 moving back, then 5 big men passing, this was repeated 6 times. 
• 10 haya suburi followed by 5 big men. This was repeated 6 times and the last repetition we did 10 passing big men.

During this practice I got some suggestions how to improve my movements.
The sensei running the practice, Ito sensei, at a point stopped the suburi and asked me to do the haya suburi. I was a bit stressed but then my suburi partner, Jack Champion, told me that Ito sensei used me as example of how haya suburi should be done 😏. For few seconds I was very proud of me, then we wear men and we made few rows in which we practice aiuchi men (three times), kote and aiuchi kote-men (three times). After three rounds of kirikaeshi, we had mawarigeiko for 15 minutes, then three 7th dan did a test for the 8th dan exam. After there was free gigeiko and I did with a 6th dan lady, the last 2 minutes of the gigeiko I was in Jodan no kamae. It was a nice keiko and at the end of it, as far as I could understand with my broken japanese, she told me that I was good and I striked a couple of nice kote. Then, she asked me when I was going to make my go dan exam and I told her in June and she wish me good luck 😊.
Then, I rapidly went back to hotel,  and after a quick shower I run to the ISEV meeting  were I spent all the rest of the day.

 

In the evening, I had a very nice dinner in an Indian restaurant with friends of Donatella. What can I say, challenging practice in the morning and friendly and relaxing dinner in the evening, it was a great day!

Keiko in Nara

I arrive yesterday in Kyoto.
During the day I started following the ISEV Meeting and at 16:00 I met Donatella Castelli (7 Dan) at Kyoto station. We went together to Nara to visit Inoue sensei. After a coffee at the station we went to the Nara budo center and we had gigeiko for one hour with Inoue sensei and an other 8th dan sensei.
In total we were 6 people and three of them 7th Dan. I was the last in the line ^_^
First we all did keiko with the two 8th sensei, then two local 7th dan did a test for the 8th dan exam. Then, we had free gigeiko and I did ippon shobu with the 8th dan sensei, in Jodan, and two brief gigeiko with a man and a lady. Those gigeiko were in chudan and only on the last ippon I move to jodan no kamae.
After keiko I got some comments from Inoue sensei. He told me that my upper part of the body shows a good posture and power, but my legs do not show the same power and frequently the tip of shinai reach the opponent before the right foot stamps on the floor. He told me that I need to better integrate upper with lower part of the body.
So I have some work to do ....
After keiko we had a nice dinner with Inoue sensei and we got back to Kyoto.
During dinner Inoue sensi said that when we do gigeiko any of our opponents has to be consider as our teacher and, independently from opponent level, we have to approach him/her with full spirit. I find this observation very important and complementary to a comment from one of my instructors, Bolognesi sensei (7th Dan), which told me that I have to practice as much as I can with people to whom I find difficult to interact and practice during gigeiko. Arialdo said that since the opponent is somehow difficult it mean that I need to add something in my kendo to be able to control and effectively practice with such person.

My personal journey to Go Dan exam: - 2 months

After 6 years I am back to Japan for a Business trip. Yesterday, 24th f April, I was at Riken Institute visiting the lab of Dr. Hishikawa. I gave a talk on our vision of reproducibility in Bioinformatics and I had extensive and interesting discussions with him and his group.

Today I am traveling to Kyoto for the ISEV2019, the meeting of the  International Society for Extracellular Vesicles. This afternoon I will just made the registration to the meeting and try to role out how to handle the next days tight schedule of the meeting.
This evening, I will be with Donatella Castelli sensei visiting the dojo of Inoue sensei in Nara. I have meet Inoue sensei during one of the Italian taikai quite long time ago, and I very happy to be able, thanks to Donatella, to have the possibility to visit his dojo.
More about tonight keiko tomorrow ^_^

My personal journey to Go Dan exam: - 7 months

Last weekend I was in London for the OG Single cell sequencing meeting. On Thursday I had the opportunity to practice at Kenyukai dojo with my friend Young Park. As usual it was a very nice evening with basic suburi, basic techniques with full bogou and finally jigeiko.
I had keiko with Sudo san and Park sensei. I was not satisfied of my jigeiko both in chudan and in jodan, and my feeling was confirmed by Young. My kamae was not strong enough and my seme was  ineffective. At the second dojo we were discussing on the rising difficulty in passing exam getting older. Regarding this I found very interesting two articles of Geoff Sensei, which unfortunately pass away last week, and, since I am now near the 60s these phrases inspired me and made me thinking: 

• Kendo – More a marathon than a sprint! 
• Mochida sensei said - When one becomes 60 years old, the legs are not as strong as they once were.  It is the spirit that overcomes this weakness.  It is through a strong spirit that one can overcome the inevitability of the body becoming physically weaker."

 and  

• Grading examinations for older kendoka. 
• and "Geoff sensei said - I was fortunate to receive some concerted coaching from Chiba sensei when in my mid 50s that made me realise that I had to adapt my kendo to my age. The key points were that you needed to find your own distance, keep your footwork light, but still forward, and use your opponents’ movement to your advantage. Rather than making your attacks bigger and harder, they should be smaller and lighter. The more you advance in grade the more important seme becomes. This does not mean that you should constantly push in to take shikake waza, but you should also use hiki-dasu to make your opponent move towards you so that you can execute debana and oji-waza. The logic is that when your opponent steps towards you, you need only take half a step to reach the target."

The above phrases agrees with the Young indications suggesting me to use as my reference old kenshi with level greater then me to focus more on spirit strength than on physical strength. So now I have an other little piece of the puzzle for next exam and I have to find the right place where to place it in the full picture.

Although my weird Japanese knowledge,  I also found very interesting this YouTube video

My personal journey to Go Dan exam: - 8 months

Last Thursday I went to the evening practice at Shubukan - Massari, the dojo where I usually practice when I am at home in Torino. The instructor of Thursday practice is Arialdo Bolognesi (7 Dan).

Sumi sensei seminar 2018

Usually the practice is divided in warm up, kion and jigeiko. During Thursday practice usually we have the majority of the people that is below nidan and we dedicate quite some time to basic practice.
This time I was running the warm up and the basic kion. I focused the lesson on the combination of techniques and on changes in techniques repetitions to keep the attention of everybody always high. On the last 20 minutes we had  mawarigeiko. During mawarigeiko I was focusing my attention to seme, inducing my partner to attach. On the last jigeiko I was practicing with Arialdo. It is always very challenging, because I have to find an opening and, although I know that his preferred technique is kaeshi do, there is no way to avoid to be catch by him.
However, this time instead of kaeshi do, I was blocked a couple of times by the tip of his shinai during the attachs.   At the end of jigeiko, Arialdo told me that I was not searching the center and for this reason he stopped me with shinai. He suggested me to add more shinai work to improve my seme. It is something on which I was already working, but as frequently happen, at least to me, during the practice your attention focus on other points and this time my tip was definitively out of my attention. Looking forward to test again the combination of tip center and seme next week.
Last but not least, as frequently happen in kendo, suddenly something you were unable to do for a long time it comes out. I was very surprised that simply changing a little the grip of my left hand on the shinai make me able, finally to strike some decent kote from jodan-no-kamae.
This is the nice of Kendo there is always something new to learn and something that suddenly comes out smoothly.
 

My personal journey to Go Dan exam: - 10 months

In May 2015 I passed my Yon Dan exam, now the time to test my personal Kendo improvement trying the Go Dan exam is getting near. For the next 10 months I will try to describe the challenging I will try to overcome to be prepared for the June exam.

Concerning Go Dan exam comments I found very interesting and in frame with my personal thought the comments on Go Dan Grading from Andy Fisher between, see between  6.44  and 12:20 mins  in [KENDO RANT] - Practicing for 5th Dan?  . From his comments I would actually highlight, for my personal journey, the following sentences:

• Not doing Kendo by yourself 
• Do not attach randomly 
• Having a conscious influence on the opponent not just a reaction to opponent action

Other keywords from www.kendo-usa.org:

• seme
• zanshin  

At the beginning of September I visited Heijoshinkan  in Voghera and I asked my friend Claudio Scacheri (6 Dan) to make some rigorous comments on my Kendo to identify points to be revised in these months.

It came out that:

1. my left heel should be kept more near to the floor. 
•  I tried and I realized that my posture and ability to push improves, now I have to make it part of me.
2. The other point was referring to seme. In an exam simulated jigeiko Claudio told me that I was not exactly doing seme, since I was simply finding the right distance for the attach, by getting progressively near to the opponent till I reach a position to make my attach. Claudio indicated me that from Issoku ittō-no-maai I have to search for the opportunity to attach then with seme I will step-in to Chikama, inducing a change in the behavior of the opponent. At that point either I strike my attach or my opponent reach and I have to execute an oji-waza.

• Till now I was focusing on interacting with the opponent and forcing him to react to my pressure. The problem is that I was always too much near to the opponent to make a decent oji-waza. I got the point to keep my pressure in Issoku ittō-no-maai.

An other interesting point of the practice at  Heijoshinkan, was the execution of Bokuto Ni Yoru Kendo Kihon-waza Keiko-ho. Usually I do not practice them usually, but they very useful to fill more the body posture.

Singapore 2018: Chinese new year, the year of the Dog

It is a bit of time that I do not post on this blog but the work is always keeping me very busy. Nevertheless I still love kendo and I do my best to practice as much as I can.
I am writing this blog in Frankfurt airport, I just get off of the Singapore flight few minutes ago. I have to write this post now because when I will be home I will be too busy with the everyday work.
I have been in Singapore nearly 10 years, just one of two weeks, but every year.
This is the 4th time I run a RNAseq/ChIPseq workshop at Duke-NUS. It is a quite challenging task since I teach for nearly 7 hours every day for 5 days with the help of three local Bioinformaticians. It is challenging, but it is very nice to see people so interested to the topics I teach. This is the first time I am in Singapore during the Chinese New Year. I had the possibility to be part of three Loh hei, at Duke-NUS with the  Bioinformaticians, at Tangling Kendo Club and with my Singapore friends.

This time I did my best to have keiko nearly every night during my week in Singapore. This is a brief summary of the "fun" part of my Singapore trip.
Arrival on Saturday February the 17th late afternoon in Singapore, no keiko on Saturday evening, but I was struggling to have some Dim Sum, a kind of filled pasta cook by steam, I went to the Din Tai Fung restaurant in China town and I enjoyed dim sum.

On Sunday morning I went to the Singapore Kendo Club at Changi Japanese School. It was a light training because many people were in holidays. After I was guest at the home of my friend David Yeo, the Sensei of the Tangling kendo Club. It was a nice afternoon with kendo friends.

 On Monday and Friday evening I had 2 hours keiko at NUS Kendo Club. The club is made by young NUS students and it is very nice to see their participation to the practice. The only problem, in the training at NUS, is that air conditioning is not present, so you run two hours of kendo at 32 Celsius and 100% humidity. I can tell you that it is very challenging, but it was great to be there. On Friday I had the honor to be one of the motodachi for the last 40 mins of jigeiko. Although many students  are just beginner they had a very good attitude in kendo practice and their kendo is quite clean.

On Wednesday and Saturday I was at Tangling Kendo Club. It is always very nice to practice with my friend David and all people at Tanglin. The Tangling club has many foreigners  practicing there and it is very nice to see how kendo is the same even when practiced by people from many different places in the world. I was very touched by a little kid, Rafa, great great spirit and good technique.

Off course kendo and food are friends and I had the possibility to test a lot of Chinese food.

Last but not least I did also keiko at SKC in Clementi Japanese Primary School on Thursday. This training is limited to 2 Dan and above. We were few people, but the one hour practice was very intensive and I got quite useful tips from Damian sensei, teaching  in Clementi that night.
At the beginning of the practice Damian sensei asked everybody to have a goal for the evening and I was focusing in keeping the center during the jigeiko. At the end of the training, I told Damian sensei that I was realizing, during our jigeiko, that he was controlling the fight with his seme and I did not want to be controlled by him, but I could not find the right way of doing it. Damian sensei told me that keeping the center should not be a static condition, but it has to be dynamic, because must exist a mental iteration between the two opponents. Thus, response to a seme could be setting the conditions to perform oji waza or stepping back to grab again control of the action. The most important point is however the constant mental contact with the opponent. So, I got something to think about and try, till my next time to Singapore.

So taken together I had a really great time in Singapore, the only thing I unfortunately I missed was the Dragon dance. Let hope have the opportunity to see it on an other of my trip to Singapore.

Thank you to everybody for the warm welcome I got in every dojo!

2017 Singapore and Hong Kong

Last week I was in Singapore for the the RNA/ChIPseq course that I run at Duke-NUS. This is the 3rd edition of the course, focused to give to biological scientists the basis of NGS data analysis.

Last week I also manged to visit the Singapore Kendo Club and the Tanglin Kendo Club. Unfortunately the NUS Kendo Club was closed because of the examination period.
It was a nice time, enjoying Singapore with my Kendo friends. As you can see a very important activity in Singapore is having lunch/dinner with friends and my friend Yeo sensei decided that I must have a 360 degrees experience of Singapore' food, so a different type of food every time we met :). Great experience!

Below you will see a short video of the jigeiko of the children on the Sunday practice at SKC. There is one little guy in particular that is really very commited ^_^.


Since I had the opportunity to practice 5 times in Singapore, I also asked for suggestions to Damian sensei, Takamori sensei, Yeo sensei and Suresh sensei. Damian sensei highlighted that I have to improve my ki ken tai.  I do not have to care very much to hit the opponent but to setup the ki ken tai.  Takamori sensei told me that I have to improve my seme, I have not to wait for the opponent attach, but I have to induce it. Easy to say very difficult to apply.
Suresh sensei told me that, during keiko I have already decided what to do before any attachs, thus my kamae change slightly if I do kote or men. Yeo sensei told me that my kendo is reasonable mature, I have a good posture and now I have to develop my way of doing kendo.

After the week in Singapore, I went to Hong Kong for the Recomb 2017 meeting. This was my first time in Hong Kong. When I arrived I was a bit confuse, a lot of people, my hotel very far for the center of the town ... , so I was a bit worry of such large city.
Anyway after the first half a day I realize that I could handle my staying in Hong Kong. The conference was interesting and I managed to visit the Hong Kong Kendo Association and the Gudo Seishinkan kendo club. I had the first keiko at HKKA dojo and it was a quite challenging keiko.
The training was done by Kishikawa sensei. He is an incredible person, I was feeling his seme simply listening his keiko indications. All students were quite young and very athletic. I also met Nakamura a French kendoka working in Hong Kong, and it was funny to discover that his sister is actually practicing in the Do Academy dojo in Torino, where my friend Mirial teach.
The week before I realized that my friend Fagani sensei, from Fudokan Dojo in Washington DC met my friend Yeo sensei during the Miyamoto seminar some years ago.
So the concept of six degree of separation seems to work pretty well in the kendo world.
The time in Hong Kong was rich of experiences and of new friends. I had a very nice evening with Eda sensei and some of the people from Gudo Seishinkan kendo club. I asked to Eda sensei about my kendo and what I have to do for the go dan exam. Her suggestions indicate me that I have to work with seme and I have to be calm inside during keiko. I have still something to do with my foot work but fortunately I have still a couple of year before the next exam to try to implement all the suggestions I received.

Now I am ready to get back to Singapore and the to Torino in the next 24 hours.
These two weeks were rich of new experiences but I missing my family in Torino ^_^.