Aikido Demonstration

Here's a game for you, its called "where's gaijin?"

Anyway, here is my current Aikido troop posing after our demonstration this last Sunday. Usually in class there are about 10 to 14 participants, but for such an event just about everyone attended for this occasion. Everyone had a chance to show off their techniques on a partner for a minute or two, and ranged from the lowly basics of the white belts to cool multi-opponent sword techniques by those in hakama. It was in a community gym in a neighboring town, and the crowd was mostly composed of family members and friends, so no huge crowds or techno blasting, but I was very impressed by the group I train with. As a matter of fact, if anything this was a good opportunity to train hard with my Aikido-mates for a single goal, and now I can revel in retrospect at the past 4 months. I may actually be building on my skills, and really feel part of this group. On a more specific level though, I feel basics that were started especially in internal arts really starting to be applied more and more often such as softness/non-effort, and keeping my spine straight when I move.

Here's Gaijin loading up for a wicked technique (though a bit off-center).

But a reversal is performed mid take-down and white belt Gaijin is thwarted again!

On a side note, I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but soon there will be more so stay tuned! I'm also experiencing camera problems. Jolene was able to take many many tens of great pictures of the demo but I can't connect my camera to the computer now and must settle on these, but maybe later I can post some more photos from this event.