Monday, September 26, 2011

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Madison, WI

I recently flew out to Madison, Wisconsin on a vacation to sound with my Dad, Gram, Brother, Sister-in-law, and new nephew.
So far on the trip I have spent most of my days cleaning out the basement and watching NCIS with my grammy.
As intellectually stimulating that my be for a young man such a myself, I have also looked beyond for other opportunities.
I took a quick Google search for any local Bujinkan dojos in the area, and easily located "Bujinkan Madison". Last night was my first opportunity to train with them.
Admittedly, I was a bit worried about driving through downtown for the first time to try and find the place, but I located the humble community center without too much difficulty.
About 7 people showed up, including Mike sensei. All but two of us were black belt, which I found unusual.
The training was completely unlike what I am used to at my home dojo in Santa Cruz, and in the end, found it to be more of an imitation of the training style in the Japan honbu dojo; Sensei shows a technique once or twice, and you mimic his movements with your uke.
Mike sensei is very skilled, and I enjoyed his concepts and movement very much. He took time to personally break down some of the movements for me and help out, which I dually appreciated.
I told him that I would going to Chicago for the weekend, and was sorry that I could not train with them again on Saturday. However, it looks like he knows some people down there, and is going to contact them to see if I can come train at a dojo in Chicago! Im super excited!
Anyway, we'll see how it goes!