Some brief comments on the 10th Rensei.

The seminar led by Teramoto-Sensei seemed pretty standard, at least for someone at our dojo--how to pick up a shinai, kihon-uchi, renzoku-waza, and other forgotten minutiae.

Today's shiai was a late start for me due to weather and then I went up for nidan division for the first time in four years. Against my first opponent, she kept on raising her hands and so I could not score effectively: she scored a dodgy men on me after some tsuba-zeriai nonsense. Then, noticing that chushin almost scored a hiki-doh for me, I started trying to hit doh, finally landing a nice solid forward-one. We go to encho and after more of the same grappling in tsubazeriai, before I do one of my dodgy kote-men combos and score.

The second match is one of these perfect kote-nuki-men setups, except he keeps dodging his men. We grapple scoreless for a while, and eventually he lands a kote, and I don't have time to take it back. This is why I don't like shiai.

We brought three teams, and all lost in the first round. We were up againt the host A team, so I don't feel all that bad, actually. My match was one I lost 0-1, due to a kote again, though I think it was relatively legitimate. Always next time. Overall, the competition felt much stronger than before.