In Chu-Shin dojo of Thomas Huijgen it was silent. We sat down while Malte Stokhof Sensei expressed the importance of the role of our teacher Otake Risuke Sensei, who we unfortunately have to miss.
We practiced and worked to improve our skills with his image on the kamiza and that of Christian Oddoux Sensei who also passed away recently. We hope to see Nobutoshi Sensei again soon and understand but regret the difficulty to travel to and from Japan on this moment.
Together in de dojo again, we payed no attention to the reason we haven’t seen each other for a long time but had full attention for the many hidden details that were illustrated from many sides by Malte Sensei with the help of Remco Sensei from our Dutch fellow-dojo in The Hague.
The amount of new information was sometimes a little overwhelming for some of us and we needed all the time to practice new insights. I’m sure everybody’s thankful for all arrangements ( even the restaurant& choice of meals..) done by Marcel & Thomas to make this event possible. We had 2 full days and 1 evening of fulfilling Otake Sensei’s advice to train with as many different people as possible. This is an important way to prevent unaware habits which can be caused by a too good of a knowledge of your opponents in your own dojo. A vivid mixture of kiai’s echoed through the dojo ánd actually the whole neigborhood.
