29th of July: Visiting NORTHWEST KENDO CLUB

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