Kiss her with Ki

Spent the past few days training with Nagato sensei, plus we were supposed to have training with Soke Friday night. But Ninja masters get days off too, so Noguchi sensei took over. Still, we had a terrific class, with Noguchi running us through Gyokko Ryu kata at breakneck pace.

I trained with Darren Hovarth the other day, which if you know Darren, at 6'7", 280lbs, and wide as a bus, is like training with a polar bear, armed with a knife. Darren has been around for quite a while and now lives in Japan from his native Australia. Not only is he quite good, he's surprising light on his feet. He was good fun and very helpful, offering his thoughts on Chuto Hanpa and the perspective Soke is trying to convey.

"Anything is okay, as long as it works," Nagato said, a familiar quote of his. Sensei worked against kicks and at points disappeared on his partner when he slipped under his kick and spun behind to control him as the student crashed down in a heap, so surprised by Nagato's lithe movement and timing. Sensei just laughed. At another point, he turned away from the kick and sat down on his uke, arms crossed, yet still covering every point of attack and escape his uke could manage. Nagato sensei's size is deceptive and one might think it would be hard to fit it all into the moments he does, but just one training with him is enough to come away scratching your head.

He also talked about putting Ki into a particular strike, a shuto, as an opponent reaches for you. "Hit them like your Mom would hit you when she's angry," he laughed. "Put energy into it." And demonstrated in animated fashion. "But don't do this to your girl ... kiss her instead!"

A gambling man?

Tuesday night, Soke tossed attackers like dice. And once the dice were thrown, he sat on their faces, twisted their arms behind their backs, and generally made a mess of them. And he's not even trying. When he does try he winds up making Duncan Stewart do a front flip to keep his finger from breaking. "Hold them, without holding them," Soke was saying. Let them do the work. And he did, over and over again. Jutte, knives, swords, multiple attackers, it all came out. We even did some ground work from Fudoza and tied up our attacker, only to practice reversing the attack as well. The energy could not have been higher - it's 90 minutes of GO! By the end of the night I was beat.

I trained with Steve Olsen, long-time resident of Japan and another of Nagato's guys. Steve and I had great fun training, and not just because Steve is really good, but because training in Ayase with Soke actually allows us to move. Hombu is powerful to train at because, well, because it's Hombu. But with 100 people in the room, it gets tight. Ayase allows us all to breathe.

Earlier in the day we had the pleasure of training at Hombu with Someya sensei, the Bujinkan's resident sword master. Someya is particularly good at the form of just about everything. He took us through some sword basics and paired us with yari and naginata doing tachi techniques. Apparently, however, there are few, if any, actual techniques for tachi, because it's so old. Nevertheless, the training was great. He even set out some real swords and took us through a short history from the ken, straight sword, through tachi, han-tachi, and eventually katana, noting the differences between them.

One shinken he laid out was a tachi of very old design - the back of the blade was sharpened as well. He said it was a copy of the sword Japan's emperor has. I said, it must be expensive. He looked at me wryly. "Yeah ... it's expensive."