Our club - the very beginning

Apart from the grading and starting of the children's aikido classes, our club had also happened to be exactly two years old on the 27th January 2008 so now I take the opportunity and write about how it started.

In 2005, thanks to a friend, it turned out that there are more than one aikidoka in London who used to train at the same organisation in Hungary. It was time we met and continue what we had started before and train together. The first time we met with Karesz (aka. Karol, Charlie san, Sensei :)) was very similar to the current, regular after-training events: we went for a beer. We discussed (among many other things :)) that we should find a club and train together. So we started looking for a good club. He looked where he lived and I looked where I could. However, finding a good club wasn't very easy and quick process, given that our financial situation caused some restrictions in terms of travelling distances and training fees as well.

So in the beginning we decided to train on our own where no fees needed to be paid: in the park. With Szabi's arrival, there were four of us so that made two pairs which was almost perfect for us. Karesz, Szabi, Heni (my wife) and me went to the Bishops park near Putney bridge and trained in several weekends of the autumn of 2005, obviously, when the weather allowed us to. There were several people in the park looking at us rolling and flying. We didn't wear our gi on the grass so that's why it was only 'several' people staring. As winter came, the park had become more and more muddy and wet so we had to stop these outdoor trainings.

In the meantime, we visited several clubs. Since we trained in Aikikai style which is the traditional aikido style currently overseen by the founder's grandson, Ueshiba Moriteru, we wanted to find an aikikai aikido club. There weren't a lot of them, and we had also seen several 'aikido' trainings which weren't really resembling to what we had seen and learned from our 3-4th dan masters previously. Maybe these training were just too different and they weren't what we needed but we always thanked them for letting us watch the training (I sometimes participated as well) but then did not return. We also found a good training in Maida Vale led by a 6th dan master. We even attended trainings for roughly a month but for some reason neither Karesz nor me felt that it was the training we want to settle in. Although a bit different, they were technically very good, but I felt something wasn't right with the atmosphere. It might have been just me, someone who wasn't ready to accept a training which was not exactly the same as the trainings I was used to (my former master had even warned me about this) but at the end, we just simply stayed away.

Our trainings, however, had to continue because having skipped 2 years and having tasted trainings again I wanted to continue my aikido studies and Karesz and Szabi didn't want to lose their (aikido) shape :). We decided to look for a place where we can rent a large room and mats for an hour and train as we could. We had a 1st dan and 1st kyu in our group so to keep up our levels it was fine. Karesz was the person who found a place to train. It was in the Open door community center in Southfields (the aikido listed in their website is something very different). It was there where we first trained as a 'club' on 27th January 2006. There were three of us plus a friend as spectator.

The first aikido training in Southfields. Note the smiles :).

Not much later, other friends and friends of friends joined and started their aikido studies. After a couple of months, we moved to the Holistic Fitness studio in Wimbledon and have been training there ever since but I'll write about that when it will be two years since starting trainings there.

Banner, logo, cherry, plum

I finally replaced the default imageless banner of the blog.

As you can see now it includes our newly designed logo and three drawings.

The logo is based upon a couple of ideas.

Firstly, the shape is based on the motif which is used by several Aikido organisations in their logos. Our mother organisation's logo is very similar but it is very similar for the Japanese Aikikai and several other Aikido organisations (for example, in the logos of the Dutch Aikikai Foundation or the British Aikido Federation), too.

First, I remembered someone saying that this motif was the cherry blossom (sakura) which is

[...]Japan's unofficial national flower. It has been celebrated for many centuries and takes a very prominent position in Japanese culture.

There are many dozens of different cherry tree varieties in Japan, most of which bloom for just a couple of days in spring. The Japanese celebrate that time of the year with hanami (cherry blossom viewing) parties under the blooming trees.

(Source Japan-guide.com)

I was looking for confirmations that the flower was really a cherry blossom but I couldn't find anything that would confirm this theory (and memory) of mine. After a couple of ours I told myself to stop looking for cherry blossom and start looking for something else in case the flower is not cherry. I remembered that the number of 'petals' in the logo is always five no matter which organisation uses it. Starting my search from this fact brought some unexpected results: the flower is a plum blossom! I also found a quote from O'Sensei explaining what the five petals mean.

Three thousand worlds
Burst into bloom
The flower of the plum
Now, if you are able to read this and say to yourself,
'Of course, the plum blossom has 5 petals,
each one represents one of the five elements:
earth, water, fire, wind and void (air),'
then you will be able to say that even a tiny plum flower is able to teach you something of the Universe. The blossom is an expression of the spirit of the Great Universal.

(from O'Sensei's Memoirs)

Now back to the logo. I took the sunrise-mountain (is it mountain Fuji?) part of the previous version of our logo by fellow aikidoka Janos Molnar. Changed the colours so that the new logo's middle part is primarily red, and changed its main image from the picture of Charlie san and me at a demonstration to a picture of a samurai. The samurai picture is an stylised version of a photo I made about a samurai doll in the British Museum a couple of years ago.



Banner: Although the initial idea for the header background was a Japanese style landscape drawing, I put on three aikido drawings instead. I made them when another fellow aikidoka lent her graphic tablet to me for a couple of weeks. The decision to put these was rather simple: currently I don't have Internet access at home but I felt the need to urgently create a banner picture during the weekend :D (..and I don't have the tablet now but would be unable to create a nice and stylish landscape anyway). If I find a good Japanese landscape online or people start complaining about the drawings, I might replace them. Or maybe I replace them regularly whenever something new comes to mind :).

If you like the new logo and header section please leave a comment. Leave a nice and constructively critical comment if you don't like them ;). I'd also appreciate if you wrote comments regarding the flower-problem.

Hakama - colour and who can wear it

The colour of the hakama in aikido is much easier to write about (than about belt colours). It's normally black, while sometimes indigo blue. O'Sensei also wore white ones and I think I remember a video about the late doshu Kisshomaru wearing fairly bright hakama but never seen the current doshu wearing non-dark hakama (he even wears white belt!).

As far as I understood if you are higher in dans you can have your name (in Japanese) embroidered on your hakama (right-back). You may also have the logo of your dojo/organisation in the front.

The hakama colour guide might be easy but whether you can wear them it's a bit more complicated. This wasn't the question with belts as you always need to wear one to hold your gi together, but since you can train without hakama there are various regulations about it.

According to hombu (centre of aikikai aikido, Tokyo, Japan) men can wear hakama from 1st dan, women from 3rd kyu. Our organisation belongs to (or reports to) hombu but we wear them from 2nd kyu regardless of sex. In some other aikido organisations you wear them from day one, at other places you don't wear hakama at all (for safety purposes, see the previous post). There are also places where you can wear hakama whenever you want but people usually wait until their first kyu exam and start wearing them afterwards.

I think an aikidoka in hakama looks much nicer :) which is probably due to the fact that everyone I saw in hakama had some aikido skills (and a proper posture) already. One of my reasons I kept up training was that I wanted to earn the right to wear hakama. Now I'm getting used to wearing it and my next aim is to be able to change my white belt to black.

All these variations (this applies to belts, too) and changes are part of the human nature, I guess. Noone thinks exactly the same way as anyone else, and hadn't been diversity of individuals of species there wouldn't be a civilisation today. So maybe one rule for belt colours and hakama will emerge in some time proving to be the 'best' practice but these rules may still exist parallel to one another. Just like squirrels and kangaroos :).

Let's do Aikido

I will discuss anything that is related to Aikido, sometimes specifically related to our club in Wimbledon, hopefully get some others to write as well.

For now, let's start with a link to the page of our club for those wanting to feel and do it instead of reading only:
http://www.holistic-fitness.net/classes/aikido/

Articles, photos, stories and news coming shortly.

Zolley




ps. You may have noticed that my English is not perfect but I'm willing to learn so any messages about the language are very much appreciated (you can contact me through my profile).