Hey there.
This will be a long post, so lie back an enjoy, i think I owe you ;-)
I'm back from the Aikido Stage with Kimura Sensei in
Farra di Soligo (Italy). Here some impressions in written first. Pictures will follow as soon as I find time to organize the hundreds of pictures taken during the stage. Stay tuned (^^)
The outward trip:We were 4 people from the german part of switzerland (Me, my personal Sempai Michi, Amanda and Dina), travelling together to this special stage in italy. We started our journey early friday morning (again a big thanks to my parents who have offered their car for this long trip - we would have had even longer without it!). Unfortunately, we had a huge traffic jam around milano, resulting in a trip time of 10 hours (instead of the proposed 6.5h by google map!). We arrived at around 7pm in our Hotel in Farra di Soligo (
Ai Archi - very neat!) - tired like nothing else. First thing was receiving a message from one of the companions of kimura sensei telling us to call him upon our arrival. Of course we did so and were short after warmly welcomed by our friends from japan. It was so great to see them again after such a long time! They directly invited us to the (unplanned) training session on friday evening. I was not too excited due to the long trip and not having eaten something. But I was convinced by the other 3 to do it anyway. Quickly eating some antipasti to have at least something in the stomach we went up to our rooms to get dressed (Gi, hakama etc.) as we were told that there's not enough space to get dressed and that it's only a 5 minutes walk to the little dojo.
The first training:It turned out that this was not an official trainig of the stage and that kimura sensei just gave a training to the local dojo and its aikidoka. It was a nice training and we had a good sweat in this little training hall. Kimura showed a lot of his well-known tai-sabaki movements and center work. I had the pleasure to receive a nice special nikkyo from sensei kimura - the one where you hold the whole forearm of uke in front of your abdomen with hands up - like in the following picture:
Tapping did not help and Kimura sensei showed me clearly that my personal pain barrier can easily be exceeded without beeing harmed - I never felt such a nikkyo-pain before... hehe. After the training, he handed over diplomas to some local aikido students who (as it seems) just passed their kyu exams (from 5th up to 1st kyu). Nice to get an official osaka buikukai diploma for each kyu you do (^^). After the "official part" finished, we handed over our presents to master kimura and his companions. Then back to the hotel, having a shower and detecting that our hotel acutally is the only restaurant in the whole town and already was closed. We headed for a pizzeria 3 km away and had a good original italian pizza and a few beers. After that there was nothing holding us back from our beds...
Saturday morning - the first official training:We decided to continue to dress up directly at the hotel. Even though we had to take the car to the training hall (3km away). We were quite on time and it turned out that it was actually very good to have attended the training the evening before. The techniques trained were more or less the same (^^). Kimura Sensei started the stage with one of his nice demonstrations with Yamada (3rd dan), his uke. I was quite surprised how his aikido style adapted over the time I've seen this the last time (in berne - 1 year ago). He seemed to be less forceful but even though more effective - how can that be? I fear that I will never really know... There were quite a bunch of people on the tatami but happily there was lots of space (around 1.5 mats per person I would guess...). I trained with some italian white belts and with my other 3 companions. It was very nice. In the middle of the training, master kimura ordered for 3 ukes and let a couple of aikidokas he knew perform katatetori shiho-nage in randori style (it was counted up to 6 for each of them). I was quite excited and would have loved to do it as well. But a white belt should keep patience and so I just shut up and watched :-) In order for us to relax a bit, kimura let tomomi have a little demonstration. I was really impressed how much she improved since the last time! Exciting! After the training back to the hotel, shower and eating something in our hotel (together with our friends from belgium - a sensei and his wife - sorry already forgot the names again - I'm just too bad with names). Then a siesta to relax until the next training session (4pm - 6pm).
Saturday afternoon training - and the party after:It turned out that the siesta was too deep and we forgot about the time (I know I know, this only counts for me and Michael, Amanda and Dina were ready on time). We had to stress up like hell in order to be on time. Michael was not even able to dress up his hakama before the whole starting ceremony started (Seiza, Bows, Shin-Kokyu etc.). However, training started and it was again very nice. I was able to train with an elder women from italy. Unfortnately my italian is not that good and she did not really speek another language (a bit a mix of french, english and italian was the way to communicate). I quickly talked a bit with her and it turned out that she also knew and trained under master kobayashi. She was full of excitement when I mentioned his name (^^). In the middle of the training, master kimura again asked for 3 ukes and this time let some people do sumi-otoshi in randori style (again counting up to six) but this time with high falls. Great to watch! After the training it was agreed to have dinner alltogether at our hotel. So we went back for a shower and short after the party began. I had the pleasure to sit between tomomi and yamada. Lots of very good local italian food and drinks (prosecco, red wine and so on). Quite impressive how loud and exciting this party became the longer it went. It was really fun! Master kimura made personal kaligraphies for some of the people and even I had the pleasure to receive one! A big "ki" sourrounded by "Aikido Buikukai", "Shihan Kimura" and "Train Aikido". Great! The party went on until around 1am and everybody was quite drunk and funny (^^).
Sunday morning training and the way back:Kimura sensei started the training easily - he warned all of us to take it easy (even mentioning the good alcohol the evening before - with a big grin on his face). After half of the training, kimura sensei divided the aikidokas into two groups. The black belts were doing some sorts of kokyu-nages whereas we white belts did different things (suwari-waza ikkyo, some sorts of sankyo). The stage finished with kokyu-ho for everybody. After that long and warm good-byes and the promise to visit japan again soon. After that back to the hotel again, shower, packing and eat something together with our friends from belgium and geneva. At around 3pm we started our trip back home. There was again lots of traffic between venecia and milano and we came back home pretty late (for me it even turned 1am in the morning).
I still have the tireness in my bones and need to stop here. If I will still remind, I might post some more aikido-specific post regarding this great stage (what techniques performed and so on) but surely will post some nice pictures (I had the pleasure to use a DSLR cam for this trip - BIG thanks to remo for using it, we will see if the pictures turn out good enough ;-).
Following the link of the title, you'll find the page of the aikido club treviso. They have put a
single page about this stage online, where I actually already found a picture of the stage. I cannot post it in here as it's just too big, but you can find it by followin this
link. Here some explanation to it:
It shows the whole group at the beginning of the sunday morning training doing shinkokyu. The second person from the right side wearing a hakama is Kimura Shihan. The white belted guy in the background is actually me (^^). And the japanese lady in the front of the group (with the long black hair and hands backward) is Tomomi. Yamada cannot be seen as he was actually leading the shinkokyu in front of everybody.The only negative thing about this trip (beside the bad traffic around milano) was that we did not really have time to sightsee the beautiful area around soligo with its famous prosecco wineries. A next time, we will surely plan some additional days in order to see more of the area and maybe even visit venecia for a day or so.
One of the best things is, that this was actually one of my first stages without any kind of injury (not even rubbed off my toes or knees). So I can keep on preparations for 3rd kyu test upcoming soon.
But maybe that's also a bit because I was taking pictures from time to time instead of participating in the training (which acutally led kimura sensei to call me "Photo-Uke" ^^).
Yours,
Lemy
Labels: Stage Kimura Farra di Soligo Treviso Italy
