I've gotten very lazy, and probably will need to reinstitute some of the old habits which were paperbound and carefully checked off all practice dates on a calendar in the back, with monthly tallies and so on. Now instead I don't even do this adequately: this entry will contain two practices (in two do's!)

Monday kyudo was good, with my first foray into group shooting, which was also the first time I've shot two ya. I have been running into some problems, I feel, keeping my left shoulder straight and bringing the yumi and ya closer into my own face, at the mouth level. Getting that big rounded feel on the hikitori has also been difficult, I tend to drag too far diagonally down, I think, rather than over my ear. I also came close several time to losing my grip on the ya, which probably means I need to hold it tighter, or just better with my left hand. Sometimes I think that my shot tends to go off too high--in the one case almost clearing the top of the makiwara entirely, which seemed rather dangerous. It's comforting to see how even experienced students can lose their yumi and ya sometimes. I just need to keep going. It was also interesting, though, to see what "work night" was like--maintenance, stringing, and unstringing.

It's interesting because people there were former kendoka, or at least knew of both my dojo and the other major ones in the city. I guess cross-training is common enough or at least people try different things once in a while.


Last night's keiko was miserable, and I'm not quite sure exactly why. I just felt tired--not tentative, but overheated and under-aggressive. With even more beginners (why in the middle of August?? The worst time to start, and before the start of a new semester), the class was split and there was lot of kihon men-uchi, followed by Sensei-led counter-waza (though unspecified and unclapped) drills. Plenty of jigeiko, including both Sensei and Long Island Sensei. Sensei's main comment was that the right hand is like the cradle-thingie on a rowboat--the oars are fixed, and so the cradle-thingie doesn't move at all--it's the left hand that does the rowing, and the right hand is only the pivot. I should isolate this motion and practice it more often.