Okinawa October 2007

A group of about 25 of us recently went to Okinawa to train.  We all left on 28th September 2007 and returned on 12th October.

We had an initial setback after our arrival as the whole trip had been organised around one particular karate hanshi there. Unfortunately he did not live up to all the promises so by day 3 we had no training to look forward to.

Fortunately Kong Wing Loh from Melbourne was staying at the same hotel and he arranged for us to train with the Okinawa Kobudo Doushi Rensei Kai with Gakiya Sensei and Yogi Sensei. He also got us some Iado training with Hamamoto Sensei.

These three instructors were brilliant so what initially started to look like a wasted trip turned out to be just what the doctor ordered (at least for myself as I was really interested in kobudo).  We managed to get around 15 2 hour lessons which included the bo and sai along with the sword and we also practiced some tameshigiri.  A video of some of my efforts and Barry Furnivall Sensei (karate instructor who came with me) is below for you to watch (you will need the Quicktime plug in).

Virtually every training session we did was at the Budokan, a purpose built place for the study of martial arts.  What an impressive building - 3 floors each with one very large room (about 3 basketball courts size) as well as some other rooms.

The one thing that sticks in the mind was the heat, or to be more correct the humidity. The temperatures were only in the high 20s (centigrade) but with high humidity it made any slight effort hard work.  The sweat was pouring off all of us and frequent water breaks were needed. There were no fans or air conditioning in this place and you had to open the windows on each side and hope for a breeze to blow through.

Another amazing fact was the entrance fee for the Budokan - 160 Yen for a 2 hour training session!! (That is about $1.60)  We even trained on one of their public holidays and unlike Australia where they charge you double or treble to get in on a public holiday entrance fees in the Budokan were FREE!

The three instructors spoke little in the way of English but somehow we all managed to get some sort of understanding. Hamamoto Sensei, the Iaido master, had some wonderful turns of phrase.  His most memorable was (after cutting with the sword) ‘Emeny dead, ...Amen’ (and yes he said emeny not enemy).  We enjoyed his classes so much that some of us are intending to get some T Shirts made with this on the front.

Of course there was the usual sight seeing episodes with trips to Shurijo Castle, various gardens and shrines and so on. And then there were the Japanese restaurants. Most of them were really quite cheap and fortunately they virtually all had pretty pictures of the food so we could point at what looked nice and order it.  On our last night there, someone had come across a very nice restaurant which was a typical Japanese place, shoes off, sit on floor and look out over a Zen Garden. Beautiful. However, they had no pretty pictures for us to look at and the menu was in Japanese. Fortunately one of the workers there sort of spoke some English so we basically said bring us some dishes and we will eat it. What they brought out was great and reasonably priced as well.

At the end of it I certainly came away with a lot more knowledge of kobudo and Iaido. I have now joined the Okinawa Kobudo Doushi Rensei Kai under Gakiya Sensei and intend to continue my studies of kobudo using his syllabus.