New Year, new things

Damien Martin and  crew from Queensland are on the plane to Okinawa, to spend a week or so with Taira Sensei. First trip there for a few of them, and I hope we'll get a bit of a trip  report from the first-visitors to get a flavour of how they  felt about it all. Damien tries to make an annual pilgrimage to Naha, doesn't always make it, but he tries.

There's a pretty full program of seminars in the offing for this year. First up is probably the Gold Coast in March, followed by melbourne and maybe Canberra. Ooooh, Canberra, exciting. Well he first time anyway. Then Italy in April, Iowa coming up, the usual France and New Jersey, California in July/August, NZ in Oct/Nov. We'll fill in the slots.

I've taken a leaf from Taira Sensei's book and have been doing a fair swag of kobudo over the holidays and through much of last year. It will be interesting to see if I ever get good enough to do more than hit myself in the head.  The aim is to improve coordination and strength, and to get familiar with these percussive weapons, and to see if we can apply Taira sensei's primciples there. He certainly seems to in his execution.

The various shibucho are making efforts to teach Taira sensei's material to a few more people. While it's tempting to keep 'my precious" just for ourselves, it's not Taira sensei's view or intent, so it can't be ours.

Keep training. More details on Oz seminars shortly.