Nanseikan Kendo Club 剣道クラブ南西館

Yesterday the Victorian Kendo Technical Committee held its second grading seminar for candidates and panellists. This seminar series is becoming a valuable resource for all Victorian kenshi. It was disappointing that no Nanseikan members were involved. Let's remedy this next time! The seminar covered both jitsugi and kata, outlined the new grading panellist assessment forms, gave real-time feedback to candidates immediately after their gradings, and was an opportunity for less experienced panellists to check that their standards aligned with the more experienced sensei. As most of you know, Victoria has two new 7th dans in Matsumoto sensei and Hikima sensei. This means that according to IKF rules we could, theoretically, hold gradings to sixth dan and even 7th dan! This is not going to happen in reality, but it does mean that the VKTC is now actively designing these seminars to help those going for 5th and 6th dan in future.  This seminar included, for the first time, opportunity ...

Happy New Year! This year we will be using the dojo in a different orientation to save wear-and-tear on the floor. The first diagram below shows how we will use the dojo for basic drills including kirikaeshi. Motodachi will line up in the centre of the dojo facing north. Kakarite will form lines at the north end and practice drills the entire length of the dojo. Drills will be extended and therefore mor strenuous, but there will also be more waiting time between drills. Waiting time is, of course, valuable mitorigeiko time! The main reason is to avoid the centre of the dojo where there are the most broken floorboards. For jigeiko, (second diagram) we will divide the dojo into four quadrants, with movement between sensei/motodachi kept to around the outside of the dojo. This is a work-in-progress so let's work together to improve how we manage the dojo!