I really thought I'd stop whining about the heat and humidity during practice, honest. But this was just brutal. Niina-gosoke's practice in the small gym of the elementary school in Nihonbashi is usually hot, but damn the mosquitoes we just open up all the windows and side-doors and at least get some airflow. However the inner courtyard has recently been repaved, so we had to keep all the door closed. Stuffy does not begin to describe it. Besides the fact that typhoon #10 was pummelling southern Japan, and pushing up tons of moisture so that the humid was around %90, it was hot. Hot like stop every 20 minutes hot. Hot like someone almost passed out and had to sit out half of practice hot. Hot like so drenched in sweat it looks like we practiced outside in the middle of the typhoon's pouring rain hot.
Gosoke took pity on us, giving us frequent breaks. Also as a few people are testing on Sunday, we spent most of the time going over the four "Shiho" kata: Mugairyu, Zenkenren, and Zeniren (Suio-ryu's.) Note that we don't do 'real' seitei; we learn just enough to know the moves, and how they differentiate from Mugairyu. Plus we study the forms as they were done back in the 1960's by Shiokawa-gosoke, so I'm sure they're totally different than what everyone does now.
After practice we were all dying to so we went to get some refreshments and talked about how cool it would be to have a permanent dojo. Nothing fancy, just a place we could practice 24/7. Of course, half the college students would drop out of school, bring sleeping bags, and live there!
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