Okay, well that was a good class. We worked on all the stuff I'd planned (see the last post). Especially cool was the chain - Rob asked one of the classic questions, "What if you're in an enclosed space?" Well, we did the chain on less than one 6x12 mat space and Rob came up with the answer, "Oh, it's worse on uke..." I really wasn't trying to punish him or smear him (I promise) it's just that if you spread the fall out over several seconds and several feet then the impact is less than if you are thrown face first straight into the ground right where you are standing. Really, all the aiki that people see where tori moves around in these giant arcs and uke takes these beautiful long falls - that's all gravy. The technique happened and was over with fifteen feet and 5 seconds ago and all the rest was just zanshin.
After class we had a lovely session of crawfish eating and beer drinking. It was mighty fine. Rob and Andy and I talked about knife-fighting and grandmasters and the women-folks talked about Easter dresses and babies and we all ended up half drunk with very spicy fingers and smelling like crawfish.
