"you all suck. remember that."

Didn't get any time to practice, as I lead basics and when Tanaka-sensei showed up I spent the whole practice teaching two newbies.
At 8:30 regular class ended and thankfully Niina-gosoke began his Hour of Power. We did the first form shin for over half an hour, with Gosoke correcting our angle, timing, and hip movement. Then we tried inchuyo, trying to get the parry-and-cut action right, which prompted the quote of the title. Gosoke used The Dowel (a thin dowel of wood the length of a sword -- lighter than a wooden sword so easy to carry all the time) to demonstrate that if we all tried to parry a real sword cutting down at our head, we'd all be dead, mostly from our own blade getting deflected into our own head. Then he used The Dowel again to show how, even if we managed to parry the attack, our counter-attack wasn't actually hitting the attacker's left abdomen, leaving us open to further pummeling.

After practice I collected Hoshina-san's sword and sai, went to the office to get the Pelican sword case, and dragged all that gear home on the subway, in preparation for the seminars in California and Canada next week.

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