Kamakura

This summer has been incredibly busy that I have not had a chance to do any blog posts. I’ve been travelling and also preparing for the upcoming summer events!

After making new friends at the Mori Sensei seminar in Sapporo I had reached out to Shota Sensei in Tokyo about joining their training. He was incredibly welcoming and immediately invited me to both the training and beach party! I hadn’t realised how far away Kamakura was, but I had been to Zushi once before to an Aikikai club my friend was training at so it was slightly familiar.

Shota sense met me off the train and we had a great meal together. He knew I wanted to view his kids class to try and learn from him and improve my own teaching, but because it was cancelled he took the time to talk with me about teaching kids over lunch and he was able to share a wealth of insights into problems and solutions when teaching Aikido to kids and also best ways to deal with different personalities and behaviours. I hope I was also able to share some useful tips with him too.

The training was in his usual Kamakura dojo but this time there was going to be 30 people there as they were coming from all his usual classes. It was amazing to meet so many new people, I had only met a couple of them before so I was nervous and wanted to make a good impression. Everyone was so kinds and friendly, we did some kokyunage techniques in Kakari Geiko so all lined up and one person throwing everyone. It was a great solution for the number of people as there was no way we could have done it with partners. It was sweltering hot, but the students were all really motivated.

Shota Sense let me help with the higher grade kids, they are the same age as a lot of my kid students but are all brown belts and above, so they could train really well. I was very impressed with their level and how good their ukemi was.

After trainig we popped along to the beach house they had rented and had a huge barbecue with over 90 people from the club. It was a fantastic atmosphere and so much fun to chat to people in a relaxed beach environment. I evne took the time for. swim in the deep and warm water - something I would not dare to do in the waters off Hokkaido, it is far too cold!!

I was really sad when the beach party ended, I was only just getting to know everyone and speaking Japanese was exhausting but so rewarding as everyone had been so patient with me. My hope is I can bring some of our club members to the next one. The kids would love both the training and the beach party for sure!