Aikido Seminar in Egypt

This weekend I had the privliege of attending a seminar at the Shooting Club Dojo led by Kumagai Shihan. He is a 7th dan Shihan who lives in Japan but who has lived and taught in Cairo (for one year) and Turkey (for six and one half years). He is a small Japanese man whose kiai toatlly caught me by surprise. We were warming up doing our stretches and then we were going to do our aikitaiso (basic movements). His powerful kiai roared throughout the dojo and soon we were all joining in. I would describe him as a spirited and spry person who really knows his Aikido. He is very animated whether instructing or while watching testing and likes to atemi (light tap/smack) you if you are doing a technique incorrectly and are leaving yourself exposed.

The seminar was three days long of which I went to two of the days. Friday and Saturday-Friday was one class and Saturday was two classes. The Saturday class felt like the seminars back home as I came back beaten and exhausted. We learned a lot of great stuff and did many techniques, many starting with the cross hand grab and many finishing with some sort of iriminage. The coolest part about Friday's class was at the end after we bowed out, Shihan said "See you tomorrow!" and everyone shouted back "In sha' allah!"

I also got to see a lot of testing and devlivery of certificates. The testing was all for black belts from shodan (1) to sandan (3). This means that I got to see good aikido, really good aikido, and great aikido from those taking the tests. What Shihan did for the nidan (2) and sandan tests was give nidan testers ten minutes to display what they know in Aikido and sandan testers 30 minutes. That does not mean that they had to fill those ten or thirty minutes. He would stop them as soon as they had demonstrated to him that they knew Aikido. For one aikidoka he did all ten minutes and will have to retake the test tomorrow. For the others they ranged from maybe around 2 minutes to 5 minutes.

The chief instructor at the shooting club is Hasham Sensei who is very nice and helpful. He knows his Aikido and helped me in the beginnig get through the gate to the club (with its very rule-abiding guards). The one different thing I have noticed about this dojo and my home dojo as well as my Shihan's dojo is that there is less formality in terms of the instruction and in the formal parts of testing. That does not mean that the senseis are not repsected but it means that there is more talking during instruction, people motioning the techniques by themselves behind the line of students while the sensei is instructing, and that the test candidates did not know the proper method for bowing in during testing.

This has just given me a different taste of the way a dojo is run and allowed me to see the different styles of various senseis. Despite any differences, I have really come to feel accepted and beginning to be friends with many of the students in the dojo very quickly. They are all easy going and open to newcomers, and I feel very fortunate that I have been able to find this dojo and fit in.

I still miss my Shihan, senseis, and classmates a lot, and really can't wait to go back and practice and learn with them in the summer.