New activity at Kampsport Instituttet, the place where I practice Aikido. This interesting training is a combination of kickboxing movements arranged together with a music coreography. The video below is the first I took and uploaded myself :-D
…after I realized (yesterday evening) that my flight from Stavanger to Trondheim was taking almost 3 hours (yep, THREE hours ), being via Bergen and Ålesund!!!
A huge queue almost destroyed my effort of coming early to the airport in order to choose a good book. The luck was finding, in the few moments before boarding, the last published novel of Haruki Murakami, 春樹村上, After Dark. I never hoped in such luck.. and especially I did not know there was new work available.. Good so I can keep up with his “speed”
..and I can keep my mind close to Japan.. since a new thought is forming..
Thursday, Saturday and Sunday we had Aikido exhibitions for the open days of Kampsport Instituttet, Thursday and today, and a special exhibition Saturday at NATO base here in Stavanger.
OK, OK, at the open days of Kampsport Instituttet it was not only our Aikido group showing off
All the activities in our club were present, even some fun for the children with the sumo, 相撲, fighting (and a lot of “weight lifting” for Linda, picking up the kids with the heavy sumo suit!!!).
From tomorrow, no more summer time, but the Fall season 2007 is going to start, and I will also have a class where to teach Aikikai Aikido: Mondays 9pm to 10:30pm..
And the best way to close the day had been with a very good Chinese meal at a local restaurant!
It was a good weekend with some practice, some sun, some pretty girls, some good food and enough fun!
One of the main difference from Aikikai Aikido (the style that I practice) is the presence, in the hard form, of tantodori competions, as shown in the next video. Notice in the Wikipedia article linked to Aikido, the part about Criticism: I do not completely agree with the conclusions of Shodokan federation to solve the “loss of realism“, if any! More will be said! Unfortunately, as in most martial art competitions, the beauty of the technique disappear and the result look more like a street fight, maybe very effective but still closer to a mix of judo and ju-jutsu.
The main question for every practitioner is what they want from the art they do.. There are in the world many Aikido styles, and I’d like to have a chance to practice all, at least once. I want to learn all I can right now, so it is ok practicing Tomiki style, soft form, and still working on my Aikikai style aiming to a slightly different but stil lvery effective Aikido, like the one of Christian Tissier sensei:
I started following the Japanese beach volley teams because of the so-called Asao-fever, 浅尾フィーバー, after I saw the two young girls, Miwa Asao, 浅尾美和, and Take Nishibori, 西堀健実, hard practicing the Norwegian evenings in Stavanger in 2006. They had been eliminated early from the tournament, in the country quota selection, but they used the free time in order to improve, under the guide of one of the Japanese sensei. So, from last summer to this I have been following a bit those 2 girls and a bit the other Japanese beach volley teams. Trying also to give a bit more visibility to Take, that I consider very cute too.
But getting a fever for a 20 something years old girl is a bit too easy and at the same time pathetic at my age! And there are already quite a few with such a disease!! A nice one, though!
Anyway, especially because of Miwa, this year I decided to have a better look at FIVB beach volley women tournament here in Stavanger, Norway, starting from Sunday 24th June, when the first arrived teams where practicing, and I met the players of Team Japan, チｲム日本。The first teams start practicing already on Sunday morning were the male team Koichi Nishimura – Satoshi Watanabe and, lucky me, Shinako Tanaka, 田中姿子 – Eiko “Kae” Koizumi, 小泉栄子 (カエ), together with their respectively trainers.
Since the first days of the tournament, I had several more chances to meet Shinako &Kae. Miwa & Take had not yet arrived in Norway, and I discovered it was a pleasure watching Shinako and Kae training. An extra pleasure when my presence there was repayed by a very pretty smile! Also the great weather of the first days helped the spirit!!
Being as shy as I am (really! I am shy!) it took some more time in order to step up and try to speak to Shinako.. and see how much English she could speak.
Then I had a chance to ask her and Kae for an autograph on my Japanese-Italian dictionary (where I got also Miwa & Take autographs too!!) and then I talked a bit with Shinako. Still, the language limitations do not help. I admit that I would like to be able to read more about the older Shinako, or find some more blogs of her fans, but it is not that easy..
It is easy to understand that the goal for her and Kae is Beijing 2008. And every point collected in the FIVB tournament must be always related to the Olympics ranking. One must not forget the very good result already obtained by this team: Kae & Shinako got the silver medal at the Asian Games 2006 in Doha.
Now FIVB Swatch league is in Aland, Finland, and yesterday qualification brought good results to Shinako & Kae: 2 victories, the second, unfortunately on Miwa & Take. But from today it will be important to gain more points!
Ok, they lost the Round 1 but that would be very important to win Round 2 against one team, Kuhn-Schwer [SUI], fighting for the same qualification slot for the Olympics!
Anyway, since the tournament here in Stavanger, I have probably got a new sickness:
Shinako Tanaka fever, 田中姿子フィーバー!!!!!!
Finally, also a small video from InDo about Shinako and Kae:
Close to my birthday, I should have celebrated another anniversary: 1 year of Pro-Flickr experience, on date July 7, 2007. In fact Flickr was a present “from me to me”, and being a bit cheaper I had bought myself a 2 year membership..
The anniversary totally slipped my mind: some of my Flickr contacts (no, I cannot call them friends) celebrated the day in a more glamorous way, like this.. but me, I did not think at all about any special “celebration”..
Probably because my interest for Flickr is disappearing respect to my interest for this blog!
It does not mean that my interest in photography is any less than 1 year ago.. quite the opposite!!! I am more and more interested in that! And in sharing my pictures with the world and having friends clicking and enjoying that. I might just get a domain for that then! It is something more intrinsic with Flickr.. with Flickr contacts and concept.. something that it is not who I am.. or not yet.. or I will never be..
I think that I made a mistake considering Flickr closer to TrekEarth, where people post pictures also to receive constructive critics and comments that are not always “wow, nice picture, you are wonderful, blablabla”..
Maybe I am a bit pissy since I am not really “popular” on Flickr, not having any popular picture, ie. artistic sexy gorgeous women! That’s one of the key for getting views and favorites.. but not having those women in my life (major problem) I do not have them on my stream..
One thing I decided to do, on flickr, was removing some of the pictures that had no views or that mean nothing, especially in the Aikido folders. And I have started a basic account where I will upload my bests.
But but, I am bad with dates, anniversaries, birthdays.. also the 1 year of blog-experience was.. delayed!
And I still have many many pictures to upload from the summer events, and friends asked me for picture-CDs that I have not done yet..
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