At the beginning of June I received a message via Facebook from fellow ACV member at large Jeremy Gilpin. Jeremy, for anyone at ACV who doesn't know him, was an Uchi Deshi at the dojo until the end of 2006 when he moved to Beijing. In the email, Jeremy told me that he would be in Tokyo training at Hombu dojo during the later part of June, and asked if I would like to join him at some point. I responded that I would love to join him for some training and planned to go to Tokyo for the one weekend which coincided with his trip. As it turned out, some friends I had made during my trips to the Ibaraki Shibu dojo in Iwama were also training at the dojo at that time. They were spending some time as Uchi Deshi in Hombu which all long term Uchi Deshi of the Iwama dojo do.
When I finished work on June 19th, I rode the train to Tokyo for a weekend of training with Jeremy and my friends from Iwama. It had been over six months since my last visited to Hombu dojo and I was pretty excited to be getting back there. I arrived at the dojo just in time for the second evening class to find that Jeremy and my Iwama friends had already become acquainted. Jeremy looked almost the same as I had remembered from nearly two years earlier. except for the foot long Chinese sage beard that he now sported. I barely had time to say hello to everyone when Doshu stepped on the mat for training. While I had seen him around Hombu Dojo before, and had watched his demonstration the month before, this was to be my first class with Doshu. I was pretty excited, if for no other reason than his geneological connection to the founder.
My first experience training in one of Doshu's class was a positive one, since it was the first day of summer the heat and humidity combined with the many bodies on the mat made the environment a little stifling. As for the training, it was quite good. From my limited experience, Hombu Dojo in particular and Dosh focus specifically tend to basic technique. In general I would say that his Aikido is plain but very solid.
After training that night Jeremy and I went to a local Izakaya(traditional Japanese style bar that serves food) to catch up, have a couple of beers and eat some much needed food. At dinner, Jeremy made an interesting comment about Doshu's keiko. He said "Everytime I have taken one of his classes I have felt obsolutely drained of all energy, even when the class didn't seem that intense." This imediately caught my attention because I that was exactly how that felt.
I spent a total of three days training at Hombu dojo during this trip and and took some great Classes with many great teachers including: Doshu, Osawa Sensei, and Kanazawa sensei. I note Osawa sensei because he is probably my favorite Hombu Dojo Shihan. His Aikido is big flowing which is one of the major characteristics of Hombu Dojo, but with and imense amount of speed, precision and martial intensity. Kanazawa sensei is the shihan who oversees the group that I train with here in Hamamatsu. I had trained with him previously when he came to teach a seminar in Hamamatsu, and will likely be the Shihan that oversees my shodan exam. One interesting sidenot about Kanazwa Sensei's visit to Hamamatsu was what he said to me at the nomikai(drinking party/banquet) after training. He asked me who my teacher had been, but before I could answer, he guessed that I had either trained with Chiba Sensei or one of his students based on my ukemi. Kanazawa Sensei's Aikido is much like Doshu's and was primarily a student of the current Doshu's father. I had a lot of fun training and catching up with old friends during that trip to Hombu, and it helped to reinforce the notion that Aikido is just as much about the connections we make on and off the mat, as it is about the training.
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