Soft Sensei and all of the crowd from our little sister dojo somewhat upstate came today, probably because of Easter Sunday, or some other observance. I mention Soft Sensei as opposed to Sunday Sensei or the other Sunday Sensei because in the last keiko today for some reason, he was practicing with the other Sunday Sensei, and then (presumably after ippon shobu), just starting running and screaming with zanshin. Now, it's one thing to start running around and making noise to sell a point in shiai, but what happened today was that he ran around two other pairs in the middle of keiko. All the way around. I was in one of those pairs, and I just couldn't stop laughing. It must have been good ippon.

Sunday Sensei led, meaning the good old routine I love so well, plus ura-harai-kote and ura-harai-do. The latter is something which I absolutely cannot understand, at least not at this point. We were cautioned that with degote it is important to step a little to the left, and even to angle the left hand a little bit to get the proper angle on the strike, which is not kashira, but the vertical portion of the, um, tube-y part of the kote. Datotsu-bui!

My five actual keiko weren't that great, overall. I just don't know how to get the most out of practice with kohai. Either I wait too long before I counter or I do something else wrong, but I don't have the right kind of kikentai. Meanwhile, my immediate sempai and I need to get into a new groove, as we aren't practicing aggressively enough, somehow. I really need to go for more men against him. Luckily, I have no fear of his tsuki. I am tempted to start using tsuki too, but I think I'll wait until nidan. I should note that my tsuki couldn't hit a cat, it's so bad.