Intensive training in Dresden, May 5 to 8
For several years now the city of Dresden has become our first address for practising jodo in the former German Democratic Republic. This is the reason why we have organized another gasshuku from May 5 to May 8 by taking advantage of a bank holiday on May 5 which was the Ascension Day. Our good friend Jan who is in charge of the Dresden group had planned a first training in the evening of May 5. During almost two hours we have trained kihon tandoku very thoroughly with some corrections. Considering the fact that the Dresden group is quite isolated the quality of the kihon was very good.
Friday we had the surprise to meet our friend from the Czech Republic, Patrik Orth who joined us for our training. The morning was dedicated to kihon sotai both sides. In the afternoon we did some exercices with jo cutting exercices with bokken. Following this, we divided all participants into three groups for kihon, omote and chudan. Everybody was thus able to do some free training.
The Friday afternoon training session was a little bit shorter to allow us to participate in a very interesting sightseeing tour by a guide organized by Jan. Dresden is a beautiful town with plenty of historical sites and monuments. However, during the Second World War Dresden was victim of a concentrated bombardment that virtually destroyed the city (except most of the historical monuments). After the German reunification Dresden resembles a big construction site and a great part of the city is already rebuilt. Despite the bad weather, this sightseeing tour was a cultural highlight.
The next morning, we resumed training to brush up our skills in different techniques and to learn either a new kata or a new kihon. To make the training more interesting, we also trained tanjo.
This training session did please us a lot and we think to meet again in autumn. However, we’ve got the impression that there are always more and small gasshuku sessions all over Europe and that it is virtually impossible to participate in many of them due to lack of time. Because of this, we may omit our training in Dresden in next year’s spring to participate in the gasshuku organized in the Czech Republic with Fred. We will see.
Matthias Wenderoth, SMR Oku-iri
Standing, from left to right: Rabia, Jürgen, Matthias, Gerd, Rolf, Patrik
Sitting, from left to right: Gabriel, Céline, Silke, Jan
Fédération Européenne de Jodo / European Jodo Federation