Okay, so I finally attended and participated in a Ninjutsu class tonight. Turns out that the beginner class started at 7PM rather than the 8PM that was advertised on the posters, so I ended up getting involved in the ‘advanced’ class. Advanced as in the ‘not entirely for complete clueless n00bs like Neil’ class; most of the class was 7th Kyu and lower, with the longest-standing students only having been there for about 10 months (James, the Shidoshi, only opened the classes about a year ago, apparently), so we’re not talking about super advanced stuff, but I had to be shown the absolute basics by one of the aformentioned green-belts, whose name escapes me at the moment. We started off with basic Kamae, or stances, for the uninitiated, and moved on through throwing a punch and using that punching motion to transition from kamae to kamae (ichimonji no kamae to ihen no kamae in this case), then I got taught a basic front kick, then eventually worked on doing some of the tori/uke attack/counterattack drills that the rest of the class were working on. I think I learned more tonight than I did during however many months I did doing Karate as a kid.
I gather I did okay; the green-belt that was teaching me said ‘you’re doing better than I did on my first day’, and James asked me if I had trained before (I’m assuming that’s a good thing if a teacher asks you that, in a ‘hey, you’re not bad – have you done this before?’ kinda way).
So, yeah, I’m definitely going back next weekend, hopefully get Steven to come along, and I’ll attend both classes next time.
Oh, and I’ve discovered I have great difficulty sitting in seiza no kamae (kneeling posture, with feet tucked under the bum) – my knees scream in protest if I try. Guess I should see the doctor, eh?
This entry was written by , posted on June 20, 2004 at 11:21 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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