3rd year of kendo begins

I have been sick for the past 2 weeks, and just got back into kendo tuesday. It was quite a tough practice for me. I was leading the warm up, and the line up, lost my voice shouting. I'm glad that Hiro from SFU kendo made it to UBC practice this time. He looks like he is going to keep on practicing once here every tuesday.

Dualling Hiro has made me to learn how to deal with people who don't go straight and hit fast kotes. Harding's idea of kendo is always going straight and fast so before they can hit your kote, you already striked men. however, there are multiple wazas that doesn't require you to go straight, instead, going side ways to strike a kote or men. Those are extra hard to deal with, and they are often employed by higher level people. what i realized is that, whenever i'm surely able to strike a men and raised by hand, there is no going back, i can't just disable opponenent's kote if they hit me fast, and the only way is to retrieve my own kote and go for a punch style men. I have deviced the technique, and is going to try it out this practice. Though, I must first distinquish the distance, that it will only be effective if opponenent is at his/her optimal distance to strike kote and not the too late stage, if it's at that stage, i should defend and then go men.

maybe i should focus on kote for a while... and forget about men, just keep on training kote until I become a kote master, hmm...

and Setobu (sp), the new Japanese san dan girl was teaching me a lesson not to stop after initial hit, if i miss, try to do a backup right away, and then rest. this way your opponenent may not be able to defend the backup hit right away and you score.