1st Day of School

On Friday this week, I went to a new dojo in Marseille to participate in a Jodo and Iaido class at the Shinfukan dojo http://www.shinfukan.com/.  The sensei there is Daniel Chabaud renshi 7-dan jodo.  As I was driving to the dojo I realized that the inertia that I had to overcome to get in the car and drive the 50km to a dojo I had never been to, in a city I had never been to, to be taught by a person I had never met; in a language that I struggle with, might be quite similar to the difficulty new students have in getting themselves in the dojo for the first time.  The big difference of course is that I know what jodo and iaido are all about, and I know how a class generally goes.

Anyway it was interesting to reflect on the butterflies that I was experiencing.  With some more thinking there might be something concrete that comes out of this to help new students understand what to expect on that first night in the dojo - maybe a section on the website and other stuff...

The dojo is fairly small, roughly square, and I would estimate 30 feet on a side.  On Friday nights Iaido runs from 6:30 until about 7:30, followed immediately by Jodo until 9:00pm. The Iaido class was 5 of us, we did seitei (maybe to accommodate the new guy?)  Instruction was all in French, with the usual admixture of Japanese (at one point I found myself saying Hai, Oui, Yes well you get it).  There happened to be a professor of English in the class who was put to work translating for me...I stopped him after about 2 sentences, as I understand 80% of what the French is.  The Iaido was fun, their seitei seems to be a few iterations back of what is being done in Canada, you see it for sure in Uke-nagashi.  But when in Marseille do what sensei does.  The basics are the same, and if you focus on what they are doing in terms of cutting, seme etc there is always something to learn technique and timing are variable from place to place, but the intent is constant.

Jodo had MORE participants than Iaido, we lost one Iaido person (the English prof) and picked up some Jodo folks, putting the Jodo class at 9 participants.  The group practices Fukuoka style SMR Jodo under Namitome sensei, hey look here he is now:  (Those of you who go to the Seidokai spring seminar in Guleph will recognise this figurine, just put your thumb out and cover up the head.)

We worked through kihon and seitei Kata 1-6 before time ran out and we all headed home.  Overall a very enjoyable first night at the dojo!  I plan to start typing my notes to put them up on the Iaido-Jodo Canada website.