Goodwill shiai and shimpan practice

Yesterday was a pretty packed day: the inaugural goodwill shiai and shimpan practice between Sydney Kendo Club and University of New South Wales Kendo Club, yum cha with the kendo gang, trip to the cinemas with the kendo gang to watch Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The shimpan practice was quite well organised I reckon. As president, I tried to turn up early to set up the shiaijo, but right when I was about to leave, Jackson called me up asking for a lift from Chatswood station. As there was no alternative, I obliged and turned up at the dojo later than usual (you owe me a big one Jackson!). Kinda embarassing really, because the shiaijo was already half done when I got there. Payne sensei didn't look particularly impressed about my lateness too. Anyway, I'm glad that many SKC members helped out.

The format of the shiai and shimpan practice is pretty straightforward: dan grades take turn doing shimpan duties while the "test subjects" i.e. us took turns fighting 3 min rounds in the shiaijo. Afterwards, the goodwill team shiai started with the kyu and dan teams.

I played 3 rounds of shiai. First 2 as "test subject" against Dino and Johnny, then in the team shiai as taisho for the SKC kyu team against Dino (taisho for UNSWKC). In total, I scored 5 kote (I think the majority is debana-kote) and conceded 1 de-kote. While I'm glad that I didn't lose, I realised that I really need to improve my men cut. My opponents were all much taller than me, making their men much harder to strike. Still, I should have tried harder to cut men anyway. Also, my zanshin after kote cut needs massive improvement too. In the team shiai, my sempai Ben Ng is the team coordinator and he assigned me as taisho. T_T Sigh....never played that position before. So much responsibility and all that. Worse still, after the fukusho match, we were drawn at 2-all, which means that the taisho match is the decider. I tried not to think too much and proceeded to win with just 1 debana-kote - was quite relieved after that. In case I forget, my team was: Johnny Kuo (senpo), Rick Farquharson (jiho), Ben Ng (chuken), Igor (fukusho) and myself as taisho.

The dan team matches were really well fought. In particular, the taisho match between Kirby and Takeshi was electric and a pure delight to watch. Takeshi tasted first blood through a hiki-kote, which Kirby later responded with a tobikomi-kote from jodan. The match ended up in hikiwake. Chuken match between Vivian and Jackson was nice to watch too - Vivian scored a beautiful men cut on him eventhough he's so much taller! Simply superb. After the dan team, the senseis formed a team and played against the senior students. The senseis in the team were Itakura, Onodera, Yano, Fukuda and Kim, against Yoshiyuki Usami, Isaac Bober, Kirby Smith, Kim (from Sydney Uni) and Yoshiki Ohtsuka.

While the sensei's matches were on, I took a photo with my camera phone:


Dino (partly hidden), yours truly and Jackson

Afterwards, it was lunch at Kum Fook in Chatswood ($27.50 each thanks to the gluttons at my table), then off to the city for the movie. A fun and activity-filled day that's for sure.