Having missed a whole week for reasons domestical, I returned sweatily today, to several Sensei speeches but it all felt al ittle disconnected and I was even tighter and tenser than usual today, I'm told. One speech was that you should come to practice even if--especially when you're sick--that's how you get better (unclear whether this means at kendo or health). The other was lower body in attacking--we should be like the Hottentots, even though our butts are not the right size for all that.... The rest of tonight focused mostly on kihon men with kiai, then tame and one of Sensei's hachidan test's morals--he successfully hit a beautiful shikake harai men, but didn't have enough shinsa-jo to do full zanshin, meaning that he turned around quickly and as a result got whacked on the men, and had the point canceled. Therefore we practiced reattacking as soon as we turned around from a successful men.

My kirikaeshi, however, seriously needs work, as the tame-style kirikaeshi is somehow just ugly for me--bad contact, sloppy angle, and so on.

Tame, Sensei says, is not accumulation, but rather the fixed, immovable principal of a bank account that is never depleted.