Nanseikan Kendo Club 南西館剣道クラブ

ABKC - note Her Majesty the Kamiza in background Just got back from a wonderful four days in Apollo Bay. Thanks to Peter, Libby and family for their warm welcome and showing me and my family some of the many sights in the area. The Apollo Bay Kendo Club has recently been recognised by the VKR and congratulations to all the ABKC members for their perseverance up until now. I found a really keen and committed bunch of individuals who already show a solid grasp of basics and especially reigi saho (etiquette). We trained three times over the four days including all day on Sunday. There was a lot to get through as I had spoken to Peter, the club's instructor, prior to getting down there on what they wanted to cover. The two restrictions were a very hard floor (ceramic tiles on a a concrete base - ouch!) at their current dojo, and the lack of armour and armour experience of some members. For that reason we looked closely at the Bokuto ni yoru kihon waza keiko ho , as a way of teaching s

We held our annual summer training this year on Saturday 11 December. It was a relatively small gathering this year but still boasted representatives from four different VKR clubs. A special thanks to Kyohei Fujiie for bringing his Renshinkan members down from Benalla for the day. The distinctive thing about this year's summer training was that, firstly, it wasn't so hot (and that's not a bad thing!) and secondly that we practiced kata. All of them. Some people had not done kata before and finished the day having an acquaintance with all kata up to number ten. Everyone did well with the overload of information to memorise. I hope that those who attended will be able to build on what they learned when they return to their home dojo. For those who are interested, it took four hours to get through all ten kata. This included time for demonstration and some (but not a great deal of) repetition. b