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One of the calendar items for this month is a training day down in Brisbane being organised and hosted by friend of the Club, Peter Hills, sensei.
It promises to be a fun day down in Brisbane, so please let Michael know ASAP if you are interested to go and train for the day with a variety of different instructors.
Do you have friends that you have encouraged to join the Club but they have not known what they might be interested in? Are there some of the disciplines that the Club supports that you have been intrigued with but not had the opportunity to try?
The Club will be holding an open day to the public on Saturday 15 August at the Mort Estate Activity Centre from 10.30 am till 4.30 pm. It is primarily a hands on day for people to try out a variety of martial arts offered by the Club.
Price will be $10 to participate in a session or $40 for the day. Lunch will be available to be purchased.
We will be posting a full timetable in the next issue of the Budo Bulletin, and promoting it at the Toowoomba Languages and Cultures Festival. So do keep the date free and let everyone know who might be interested.
I just wanted to thank Tom Johnson, sensei and Rob Doncaster of the Kohokai for coming up the hill in the fog and rain on Sunday to direct and participate (respectively) in Toowoomba's inaugural Kyudo training session. To quote James Archer on this one — who would of thought that walking in the door could be so complicated!
I have to say I had an absolute ball on Sunday. A testing kendo session to gauge if we are physically/mentally ready for Itakura sensei's return to Toowoomba training next month, Seitei Iaido and Kyudo to really get the synapses firing. I am certainly looking forward to a massage tomorrow! It was wonderful to see Maaike, Michaela and Tracy trying out both Seitei Iaido and Kyudo for the very first time (and making a particularly good show of it).
Tom will be next up the hill for the Toowoomba Languages and Cultures Festival in a fortnight, and I hope to be able to hive of some time going over what we did today. Tom has left some notes for us to consider and will be sending some more for us to continue out "homework".
If you are interested in getting some of the basic equipment for Kyudo (or other items for any of the disciplines that the Club supports), please talk to Michael ASAP. He will be putting in an order with Tozando this week (to strike while the exchange rate is still reasonable on a few items), so if you want to save some money on postage, please let him know.
August is fast approaching and thus so too is the Club's hectic month of public commitments and training opportunities.
This year is the 10th Annual Toowoomba Languages and Cultures Festival. The Club has been actively participating since 2008 and we are looking forward to continuing that tradition on Sunday August 9. The Club will be setting up a desk in the USQ corporate tent, and has regular scheduled demonstrations throughout the day.
We will be attempting to arrange some of our broader circle of friends in the martial arts to come and help us celebrate this year. Don Ouellette, from the Ittoshinkan, and Tom Johnson from the Kohokai have both agreed to participate this year, and we will try to secure others in the coming week. We should have an excellent spread of disciplines to put on our demonstrations, including setting up some "speed" Go boards for open public participation.
Please let your instructor or Michael know if you are available to participate this year and help with everything from demonstrations through to handing out flyers and encouraging folk to come see the display!
This Sunday we will be starting some regular sessions at the PCYC in Seitei Iaido and Kyudo with Tom Johnson sensei.
We will be starting around 10.45 am, after Kendo finishes. Depending on who is there and the level of interest, we will be doing a mix of Iaido kata and some of the core movement and etiquette for Kyudo. Everyone is welcome to come along.
Please let Michael know by Friday if you would like to borrow some equipment, so that we can have sufficient bokken with saya and obi (for Iaido) and gomu yumi for Kyudo.
In a bid to spread out the seitei iaido training opportunities across the week, we will be shifting the seitie iaido study group time at the MEAC to a Thursday night with the same start time— 7.50pm.
This change will create a better compliment for the Saturday and Monday training down at Collingwood Park, and the fortnightly Sunday training at the PCYC.
I look forward to seeing some more faces at training!
Tuesday night will be Jeanne Séronie-Doutriaux last night of training with the Club before she starts her way back home to France.
Jeanne has primarily been training in Jujutsu and Systema while on exchange to Toowoomba, and has thrown herself into things with the gusto that we have come to expect of international students at the Club!
Tuesday night training will only have one session (so no Systema or Iaido), and instead we will be heading off to the Mort Estate Hotel for a quiet ale to say farewell. Everyone who would like to come is most welcome to join us there from around 8pm.
Bon voyage Jeanne! Make sure you keep in touch!
And for some amusement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOdkcM-yR3M
Don Ouellette and Pete Armstrong will be in Toowoomba this Saturday to deliver an Arnis workshop/seminar and get folks focussed on the syllabus requirements for yellow, orange, and green belts. The idea is to provide a kick along with our individual practice, and to keep our edge sharp for Kurt Graham's next visit (and next grading), which will be in the New Year. However, new participants are most welcome to come and try out the canes!
We will be kicking things off around 11.30 am and will run through till around 2 pm. Cost for the session will be $15 for BBRD members and $25 for other interested participants.
Seize the moment!
Andy Rodger, erstwhile Queensland kendoka an current resident of Nagoya has been winning accolades for his photographic efforts documenting Kendo keiko and shiai, including being selected for the Canadian Kendo Federation's annual calendar.
I absolutely love his photos, that capture the dynamism and tradition of Kendo, and would love to have more Australians inspired by the images he is able to capture.
Make sure you check out his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/kendomonochrome
I've been talking with Andy recently and I am trying to encourage him to make the odd contribution to the Budo Blog from Japan, so it is a case of "watch this space"!
I hope that everyone is finding a little bit of mid year rest now that school and university are on holidays and that the financial year has ticked over.
In Jujutsu this month, we will be focussing on goshin jutsu (self defence) and heiki waza (weapons work), so I would ask that you bring in both protective equipment and your training weapons. We will also be working on some demonstration pieces to be shown during our usual commitments at the Semester 2 O-week Marked Day, the Toowoomba Languages and Cultures Festival and the USQ Open Day.
Will be great to see some of you return to the mat this month — lots of fun to be had!
Keep your comments polite, on topic and succinct. Play nice and everyone benefits!.