27th of July: Keiko at Cascade Kendo Kai

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.