Another busy day of cutting at the park

[rawnshah]

We had a good day at the park yesterday. There was a bit of a crowd at the park itself because of a soccer match, and the wind was up, but overall most people had a good cutting day.

For now we are back down to the 1-peg goza stand, but that's where most of the students are at anyway. Shihan and I tried more complicated cuts like the variation on tsubamegaeshi that starts with nikutsuke-kiriage (one-hand draw & cut) with a crossover kesagiri. So you draw a X from the bottom left to top right, and then from top left to bottom right, with one hand cuts, and finish up with some suihei's. You'll get the idea when I upload the videos.

The three students who were testing, Andrew Dicenso, Steven Waldstein and Reed Wittman all did great. Andrew and Steve were going for ikkyu, while Reed for sankyu. The ikkyu test requires kihon-toho on 1/2 goza; and then kesa-kiriage on a full goza. The sankyu test is just kesa-kiriage on a 1/2 goza. They also have to do their katas with a shinken. All three pulled it off with errors.

After about 3.5 hours we got about 57 minutes of actual cutting time--the set up and prep time was cut out. The tests take up some time, and there was need to re-roll some of the goza. We also had others at the park occasionally walking past, and kids kicking soccer balls about 50 feet away, and had to stop often for safety's sake.

It looks like time for another run to order goza, since we're down to about twenty remaining. Shihan and I usually end up buying the goza, storing and rolling it for each event. Many of them are students and simply can't store them in their apartments or dorm rooms, while others only cut one or two each time, and simply don't need a whole box. I've kept about 12 boxes in my garage before, but then I end up rolling all the goza which takes an hour or more for each cutting. Next time, I'll drag the box to class, and have the students all roll them.

-rawn