US Federation of Toyama Ryu Batto Jutsu NewsLetter |
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| Hataya Sensei's Visit Well it's been a very busy Februrary for my bad self. I met Hataya sensei in Pittsburgh on Feb rurary 4th for a seminar at the Aikido dojo there. We were hosted by Will Graves, dojo-cho of Aikido of Pittsburgh. Both Sensei and I arrived within one hour of each other. We barely had time to check in at the airport hotel before being driven to the dojo by David Drawdy. He had driven up from the Washington D.C. area to train with us. Sensei started the class in the usual way but soon began doing very basic things such as handle grip, method and style of cutting, etc. My take on this is that in Japan classes tend to gravitate a little more towards the beginners. The things he showed them were invaluable! I remembered many things that had fallen way back in my mind. When I got back to class on the 18th I tried these ideas out. Hal Smith and Sang Kim were there. They both agreed that these moves were beneficial. And it really worked for me. But not to get to far away from the story... Some of the Pittsburgh dojo members are into cutting so they went into a separate room to show Sensei what they could do. I am not sure how that went as I was out front with the newbies. Since then I have gotten some very unsatisfactory emails from some of the students. Then Sensei had us all go back and corrected some cutters. I cut and did awful. Sensei cut and did horrible His sword is dull as a deer antler and he butchered a lot of cuts. Plus the jet lag must have killed him. Anyway, next day Will came out to the hotel and baught us lunch. We disucssed the new Batto Federation. At 3:30 Sensei and I were off to Orlando. We did our business Tuesday. Wednesday a seminar was hosted by the Orlando dojo. We had a fairly good sized crowd. Sensei taught some of the very basics and the new sei tei. A good class was had by all. The next night we had Dan testing. 11 students tried, and 4 passed. Sang Kim made Shodan. Bob Lampp, Tom Smyth and Mike Femal all passed to Sandan. I might add that Mike Femal's performance was almost flawless. He did the best I've ever seen at a testing. A most amazing display of cutting! Mike has just moved to St. Petersburg where he will establish a branch dojo. He is #6 in our goal of 10 Toyama Ryu dojos. I might add that theseToyama dojos will only be allowed to operate with people who have trained |
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| directly with me. No one will get in that is (A spiritual moment in Pittsburgh) considered an outsider. One consideration is that we must all be able to sit around together and get along. Meaning, within reason, we should be able to say almost anything to each other and not be offended. But back to the test, I also gave it a shot and failed really fast. my first cut was 5 in a roll. I have done this cut several times before, but not with consistancy. That is the goal of all our students. All of us cut good some times or most of the time, but no one cuts good all the time. Thru constant training and "the eye on the prize" we can succeed. Thursday night Mike Femal took Sensei to the Tampa sword show. I followed on Friday after work. Saturday night Mike Femal had a house warming party. Fran and Jesse came over and they along with hataya Sensei trooped over to check out the new digs. Very impressive! A true bachelor pad. And with a separate 2 story building with a guest house upstairs. Mike Femal, Wally Hostetter and Jason Carrol did a short cutting demo for Sensei, who by now was falling asleep in his chair. Then it was back to the hotel and Sensei left Sunday afternoon for L.A. to teach a seminar at Tony Alvarez's. I will write another story about that, and my trip to El Paso to train with Carl McClafferty's sword teacher. Bob Elder |