Day 15 - Guseikai Training

Tuesday
Me and Amy were almost late for the Shiramizu English Class today, what made the thing worse was that this was the first class that I would be teaching on my own, with Lawrence just observing. When we arrived, just on time for the class to start (but by Japanese standards at least 10 mins late!), Arakawa Sensei was waiting with the kids in the English class, I was very embarrassed, but we didn't have time for any apologies as the kids were all sat waiting for us. I felt a little relieved as Lawrence was a few minutes later than us, which was sort of like a 'get-out-of-jail' card for me!

After a slow start to the first class, they all went by very easily, and I enjoyed my first taste of teaching English.

After the English class, Arakawa Sensei took us to Ikebukuro for training with Takagi Sensei, at his Gusei-kai dojo. Takagi Sensei is the chairman of the JKF-Wadokai Technical Committee, so he obviously knows his stuff. Arakawa Sensei is just one of Takagi Sensei' well respected students, we are very lucky to be training with them both.

We (Me, Amy, Lawrence) went in Sensei’s shiny new car (which is actually his wife’s car, but Sensei has stolen it!) along the highway. We got there at 8.20pm, which was a little late because Sensei had to wait for my Shiramizu English class to finish.

We bowed in and joined the rest of them in the lines were everyone was still warming up. We ran through various basics including: Junzuki/Kette Junzuki; Gyakuzuki/Kette Gyakuzuki; Tobikomizuki; Nagashizuki; Junzuki no-tsukomi/Kette Junzuki no-tsukomi; Gyakuzuki no-tsukomi/ Kette Gyakuzuki no-tsukomi;

We then moved onto Kata, we ran through Seishan; Kushanku and Chinto. We were next given some time for Kata free practise. I concentrated on Chinto and Niiseishi mostly, whilst watching other people perform very good Kata.

After a while, we bowed out and then moved onto approximately 30 minutes of Kumite drills which was led by Arakawa sensei. I really enjoyed the training, it was quite traditional stuff, but the quality was good.

Once we got changed, we headed outside were I got chatted up by one of the cute Japanese girls who had been training... which was nice, I hope to see her again (lol).
We dropped off the 3 young Shiramizu lads who had also been at the training in Omiya (Yuki; Snau; Kento) on the way home, we managed to get lost too. Sensei' new sat nav didn't want to recognise the address of the Kento's home. So we were driving around for ages, I was ok though. I just got my IPod out and started watching 'Bad Boys'.

We eventually got back to Sugito, just before the good firefights in the movie. We were all starving, so we went for some food, the first place decided to switch its lights off just as we parked up. Sp we went to another place instead, and had a very late night snack.