Next Year?

This is Friday and we got this email telling us Nemoto Sensei is visiting tonight. In the end I decided to get to this 9-10.30pm keiko after my Nihongo class. Dragging my bogu along the busiest district in town was definately not the nicest thing to...

A bit of info: Nemoto Michiyo (sp?) sensei from Osaka was a former AJWKC winner and is now 7th Dan. Hence the internal email actually said: "Squad members especially ladies must join." We were told that she comes around every Xmas, and was good friend with Horibe sensei's sister (Horibe Akemi - also 7thDan...)

We did some kihon for warm-up and then the remaining 45 mins for keiko.

I came 5th in the line with Wong-san being first, followed by Eda-sensei. After that it just turned into kakari keiko. I told Amy who was just behind me, "yeah, it's usually like this with visiting sensei who doesn't know you well."

Indeed. It happened to me as well after losing one ai-men, missing a kote-men, and hitting a hiki-men in empty air. Argh. My kakari-keiko must have been aaaaawful to watch. Literally I did not control my breath well enough to cut back whenever sensei gave an opening, and it seems like she *always* open when I was about to breath in. As usual, my kiai was a mess too.

Definitely not my shape with the flu /fever still in me... Had to take off men and blow my nose. Felt like having muscle cramps too.

After that I fought Yu- sensei. He had this odd kamae with shinai slightly off centre and slightly protecting his own kote. Some of my kote-men worked quite well. But he's men-uchi ended up coming in at an angle. I blocked a few, did some kaeshi-dou, but sucked up a few. Not that I complain about his kamae... Recalling what Sumi-sensei said last week about seme from any position (the question was about some sensei dropped their shinai tip before coming in - i.e. gedan seme)... So basically if you let someone did an ippon on you from an odd kamae, you lost to that second of doubt in your mind. (sorry... can't explain something highly conceptual...)

Comment to me was about my lack of power in koshi (uhmm)...

Then I had A. Lam (wearing Australian zekken... alphabets too small to read tho). We paired for once at kihon and I quite like his "foreign" kendo. Proven to be a very enjoyable keiko as we both landed some good cuts on each other. But I think I was the one lacking initiative - I'll blame the flu for now.

At the end of the session while everyone was packing their stuff heading home. Eda-sensei gave "a small lecture" to me, Amy and Fanny. Problem was that the sempai (Agnes + Jay) are all recovering from serious injuries at the moment, and that the 3 of us need to be ready for the coming Asian Tournament and the 13th WKC next year (and that's according to Kishikawa sensei...) Basically without the ladies getting some ranking at Taikai, it's quite hard to get funding/ subsidies from the government.

It totally confuses me again as it's quite hard to tell them about my situation. Honestly I cannot take that kind of responsiblity while I cannot even feed myself. (It's like if I say no they are going to ban me for ever...) But it comes to my mind that, IF I last one more month or so at the squad, I might get at least once, the experience to fight as a squad. Question is, I've been escaping from the torture for 4 months already, and I can hardly keep up with the kihon keiko - how the hell will I be of any help?