Reunion and Kata Unsu

Started off today by meeting Hop-senpai, he was my tutor for contemporary Japanese back in Australia. He's currently doing his own research into ODA (overseas development aid), specifically how Japan issues ODA to its mostly Asian neighbouring countries. We had lunch at the uni cafeteria WHICH I totally forgot about, mainly forgot about much value for money it is. So from here on whenever I can I'll be lunching at my uni, not to mention that the カレーライス(Japanese style curry and rice) I had was awesome and only 252 yen pwaha! I should at least gradually try out everything on the menu :) Hop gave us some encouragement, and good advice about making the effort to make Japanese friends. I thought that was quite wise considering a talk I had with Rachel about the same concept, and she replied that there are two Russian girls at her dorm/uni that constantly hang out with each other. Thus, even though they DO actually have names, they are simply called 'The Russian girls'. So with that in mind, I plan on expanding my avenues of contact from uni/karate club off-campus/church to possibly include a sports club on-campus. Unfortunately there isn't a cooking club otherwise I would have joined that in a heartbeat. I hope people are friendly in the gym, I intend to finally find out 2moro as well as meeting my academic advisor for the first time.

After bidding good-day to Hop the rest of the day was largely uneventful until......karate-time! By eventful I also wish to include that I got lost getting to Karate and so got there with about 2-3 minutes to spare instead of the 20 I was aiming for. This class was longer than normal, 2 hours. After the usual warmup exercises, we did some unorthodox. First up was a direction changing exercise consisting of 8 consecutive moves in 4 directions that make you end up facing 180 degrees away from where you started. We did this direction training with the low block, knife block and a 1,2 combo. It is really hard when you are going full pelt, racing each other as you do. For me it's even a touch harder because I'm quite tall my limbs need to travel longer distances to arrive to execution point. Which means that to even keep up with them my limbs need to be moving faster then theirs and they werent'. It was good training. After that we did some swivel training, this type of training focuses specifically on the short moment when your body snaps to face a different direction. The goal is to as quickly as possible finish a technique in a different direction to which you are facing while of course having harmony between the technique itself and the turning of your body. What I mean is if you block too early without letting your body follow the block, the block is too weak and basically just wont work, on the other hand if you snap your body before you finish the block you have lost the inertia being delivered from the turning of the body into the block so again your block is weak. Everything needs to be simultaneous, the grip of your toes engaging the swivel of your foot (we swivel on the ball of the foot), the strength from your core turning your hips and your shoulders bringing the arm to bear on the attacker. It either snaps as one or doesn't no consolation prizes.

Next we did some practice on my favourite kick, Mawashi geri, roundhouse kick. First we did some practice showcasing how the kick is practised as Kihon (basics). This differs from the Kumite(sparring) use of the kick because in sparing bringing the kick around like in kihon just takes too long, so the shortcut version is used, launching the kick from the front instead of the side. The only application of a full roundhouse in Kumite that I can think of is a the variant of the standard roundhouse that has the kick coming diagonally down instead of horizontally, for the purpose of penetrating a block or guard. The full roundhouse also has quite a bit more power, but it's no use when you can see it coming. The two shortcut methods we practised actually started with a feint. The first method involved a feigned (you can actually complete the feint though) front kick and then switched around to come across the head. The front kick feint's purpose is to draw the opponent's guard down leaving the head free. Second method is feigning a kick to the opposite side of your target side, and then switching to come back around and impacting an unguarded area. This is why I love this kick, when done right it's the sneakiest kick in the world, I think.

After kick training, Sensei helped us through some pieces of a Kata called Unsu, though I didn't know it at the time. We went through certain points of the Kata that he wished to stress and elaborate on, before performing it as a group. Our unorthodox training matched the attitude of the Kata, it was very unorthodox. My favourite part in the Kata is when we drop to the floor and execute a round house kick why lying on our sides. The Bunkai (explanation/application) of this move is that our front leg has between sweeped to a point where it has caused us to fall forward. The kick is ideally aimed at the groin area, as such an area would be unguarded after a sweep, or maybe even a knee to push our opponent back giving us time to reset to standing position. With that I bid you all good night.