The demise of the forum

To anyone who is remotely interested. The forum has gone it seems. Don't worry though, we have a Facebook page. If anyone is interested in kendo in Liverpool then please join our group. It's called Liverpool Kendo.

https://www.facebook.com/joe.willmott1?ref=tn_tnmn#!/groups/12481791270/

Sport Relief 2012

Just a thought, is anyone interested in doing the Sport Relief Mile in full Bogu? When I say mile there's 1, 3 and 6 mile options, I think the 3 mile one at least would be fun, so long as no one hits me I should be able to attend ;) Aside from the run there's a few of catches:

• It's on Sunday 25th March, which is the same day as Ozawa Sensei's visit to Kashi No Ki Kenyu Kai in Ollerton
• There's a £5 entrance fee.
• If it rains you're stuck in your bogu until you finish the race...

Aside from getting some sponsorship for your efforts that's it. If there's interest we could do it as a group, even those not in bogu could get the chance to get very used to wearing it for the first time. I think we'd look cool as a group, do some good for charity and perhaps raise the profile of the club ahead of the next Beginner's Night after the run.

Let me know on the forum or the Facebook group if you'd be interested in doing it

Winter Training, week 2

Once again we threw ourselves into the fire of Winter Training with over 2000 suburi in some form or another. Numbers don't really matter, the effort in keeping together and giving your all does. Thanks to all who turned up and it's a sad farewell to Inaie Park who returns to Korea. Hopefully she'll come back and we'll see her again.

Next week is still winter training, of a sort. We will be back in hakama, keikogi and there will be bogu as well, but as Sensei said we will only use it late on in practice. Also, for all those wishing to be part of the 2012 club photograph this is your one chance to show your face. This was 2011, a veritable 'where are they now'...

Hopefully we'll see some returning faces and 2012's beginners can feature in next years photograph.

Cardiff Regional Taikai

Joe posted this report of the Cardiff Regional Taikai at Akai Ryuu Kendo Club on Facebook

Well done to the lads. 

Yesterday was an amazing success. For everyone involved. After an early start (we left Jeff's at 6.30am), we talked kendo all the way to Cardiff, preparing ourselves for the first shiai of the year. It ws Jeff and Steve's first time so they must have been feeling slightly more nervous than myself.  

We arrived at the Akai ryuu dojo at around 9.30 and spent the first 20 mins saying hello as always happens (isn't kendo a lovely community), got changed and warmed up for a 10am start.  

We were pooled with Cheltenham, Akairyuu B and Akairyuu C. We were first on against a well experienced team from Cheltenham (the order was Jeff-senpo, Steve-chuken and myself-taisho). Jeff put in an amazing performance coming back from one men down to take it to shobu with good degote but unfortunately lost to a further men. Steve had a baptism of fire (very early on) with a strong competitor who scored two men against him. I fough John Richards who caught my men. I was lucky enough to score men back taking my match to hikiwake.  

We found ourselves going straight back on against Akairyuu B (the hosts). Jeff stormed in and nearly had raised flags for a kote and then a men and was unfortunate to end his match in hikiwake. Steve the did the same ending his match in hikiwake.  I managed to score kote against their taisho. A blinding result (2 hikiwake and a win) 

Our final match was tha last in the pool, so after some shinpan duty we got ready and went out against Akairyuu C. Jeff was very unlucky to have a point scored against him, but Steve managed a sprited effort to pull it back with a hikiwake. I knew what I had to do but was uinabl;e to gain the win we needed (sorry lads I did catch his kote 3 times but I had blocked the shinpan's line of sight!). We were very close to going through to the knock outs / semi-finals but I have to accept responsiblity for that not happening.   

I was incredibly proud of being part of the first Liverpool 3 man team to enter the Regional Welsh Taikai and even more proud to be able to fight along side Jeff and Steve. Well done lads, we'll get more points next time. We all have areas to work on and we know what they are. 

Thanks must go to James Ogle, Gary Mathlin and Anred Le Roux for organising this event and we need to plan another trip in August.

Apologies for last nights practice cancellation.

Sincere apologies to all those who turned up for practice last night. As you know it was cancelled due to scaffolding left in the dojo which prevented practice. As this knowledge was not passed onto us we couldn't let people know in advance not to turn up using the blog, the forum, facebook or even by phone.

 

It was a disappointment made more frustrating as Sensei Needham from Bolton Kendo Club made the journey to practice with us. Also, it would have been Dave Parkes, who has been visiting us for the past few weeks from Oxford University, last practice as he will be leaving us and travelling to Japan to train. Thanks for your attendance and safe journey.

 

Lastly, there was lots to catch up on from the Bowden and I'll be posting the remaining links to the matches on youtube, though they are easily found now if you can't wait. Apologies once again and thank you for your understanding.

Attendance

Thanks once again for attending last nights practice, in particular our visitors from near and far, your efforts were appreciated. It's been a good week for kendo in that we've had two days of Intensive Training with the British Squad and two weeks where new practice partners have stretched our abilities and challenged our skills.

Summer is a time where many dojo find numbers slowly drop off as there seem to be far more interesting things to do on a warm evening than stand in a hall and sweat yourself stupid for two hours. Thankfully, for the most part, we have had relatively good numbers attending which is rewarding for us as we are seeing people week in, week out, improving through our efforts. Presumably it's also rewarding for those who attend regularly as they will be experiencing that progression first hand and not feel intimidated by the challenges ahead.

It's understandable that every day life can impact on training which may prevent attendance, therefore can you please make every effort to let us know if you cannot come to practice. If we know individuals are not coming we can aim to start practice sooner rather than later. Aside from that, it's part of dojo etiquette and common courtesy to those who do attend that they will not be benefiting from your presence. More importantly, if you have been loaned club armour you have taken on the responsibility of turning up regularly. If you cannot make that commitment it is only fair that you return the bogu so that someone else who can be at practice every week can benefit and progress. For greater understanding of this please refer to my post on Giri 義理

So, if you can't make it to practice please let someone know through the forum, facebook or email [use the link at the bottom of http://www.liverpoolkendo.co.uk/]. There's plenty of options so there's really no excuse. Thank you for your understanding and as a reminder there is NO kata on Monday, it's a bank holiday so please DO NOT turn up, you'll be disappointed!

Beginner's Night July - CANCELLED

Due to a number of factors we will NOT be holding a Beginner's Night on July 27th as previously indicated. We will decide later on whether to hold the next Beginner's Night as advertised on Wednesday October 26, 2011 or to bring it forward. Information will be here, on the forum and on the Beginners page as and when we know it.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Status Update: Kendo on Facebook

Alan Thomson, GB Squad Member and the new BKA Events Officer has just created a Facebook Group for people doing kendo in the UK. He says that the BKA website will be undergoing an update and so if you want to be kept up-to-date with the most recent news to sign up. Any problems let me know and I'll 'add you' in.

And for those that didn't know Liverpool Kendo Club is also on Facebook some of you may check your status update every five minutes and this website, erm, never. However through some arcane jiggery-pokery I have linked this news blog and our Google Calendar RSS to the group. Every time we post anything here it is mirrored on the group so you can still keep in touch with what's going on if you join the Group.

'So DO IT! DO IT NOW!'

Class photo

You may have seen that I've uploaded the Club photograph to both Facebook and our Flickr account. For some reason it still downsampled it. If anyone wants the original picture for printing out it clocks in at 3MB. Send me a PM on the forum with your email address if you wish to receive this version, otherwise you can make use of the links below:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150098444138497&set=o.12481791270

http://flic.kr/p/9bTe2E

Status Update: Liverpool Kendo Club on Facebook

For those that didn't know Liverpool Kendo Club is also on Facebook some of you may check your status update every five minutes and this website, erm, never. However through some arcane jiggery-pokery I have linked this news blog and our Google Calendar RSS to the group. Every time we post anything here it is mirrored on the group so you can still keep in touch with what's going on if you join the Group.

'So DO IT! DO IT NOW!'

Christmas meal - the morning after

Hopefully everyone got home safely. It was past midnight by the time I got in but it was a really good night and well worth going for the great company.

If you didn't already know I put the photo on Facebook of [nearly] all of us in attendance. You can find it here.
See you all Wednesday so we can work off the meal

Organisational tools

If there's one thing the club has fallen short in success over the years it's organising things. When it comes to competitions and gradings I can recall being sat at the Egg on the morning of a Bowden trying to find out who's going and how we're getting there. It makes any attendance at a competition that much more difficult and remarkable that we competed at all!

Joe has had quite a problem organising the team for the Mumeishi 3's and it would really benefit us all if everyone could get on board with all the facilities put in place to get information and keep in touch with those 'in the know'.

The technology exists for us all to keep up-to-date with what the club is doing and there are very few barriers to contacting one member or another. Hopefully you will all be checking the website for this news page [or you won't be reading this] or you can subscribe to the RSS feed [in iGoogle, Livemail or other reader] using this link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/KendoDays

Additionally you can plug the Liverpool Kendo Calendar into your RSS reader and sign up for the message board. The forum is an ideal place if you need any questions answered or wish to discuss anything about kendo or the club. By using the forum this way we'll all chat less at the beginning and end of practice and get more out of the training. It was noticeable that we were quite late in leaving on Wednesday so we really need to start using the 'extra-curricular' options to chat as opposed to in the dojo.

Lastly if all these are too much for you but you're still an avid fan of Facebook then don't forget we also have a Facebook group that will pull in this information as well, so join the group at least. Thanks for your help in this, hopefully we'll be able to organise our next event without too much hassle.