seminar

Strong turnout at the seminar: 40 people, plus Hoshina and Hashimoto and Salty to help teach.
After running through all the basics with the whole group we broke up into four blocks. I got the three 5dans.
I immediately announced "I am going to now ruin your kata", and proceeded to do just that.
We started with a basic mental exercise: for the zagi kata, is the enemy sitting butt on heels, or up on his knees? The difference in distance is about the length of the thighs, and this changes the dynamic significantly. Same thing with where and how you are sitting, too. So for example in shin, assume he is up on his knees, drawing overhead, so attack low, under the exposed right armpit. Same for ren, only he goes low so you go high. Now for sa and yu, you are sitting so he attacks on that line, but as you come up on your knees you actually clear off that line to the side, turn, and attack. Thus sa and yu and just like enyo.
More fun: musogaeshi, ryoguruma, and munazukushi are all the same footwork. Exactly the same.
Say you have your left foot forward, right foot back. Put all the weight on your left foot, then bring your right foot up to be next to your left foot. Simple.
Now do the reverse: both feet together, simply open up the right foot and move it away from the left. That's munazukushi.
Now turn right so that your right foot is forward, left foot back. Face 180 degrees to the left and bring your right foot to your left foot. That's musogaeshi. The fun bit here (the martial artsy stuff) is that the left leg, which is theoretically holding your body weight, is also turning 180 degrees, whilst the right foot moves up to come next to it. Easier said than done. But if you can figure out how to do that, ryoguruma and enyo become simple, and you start to get the difference between koshi-wo mawaru and ireru; you stop turning or rotating through a series of 180 degrees and simple face one way and then the next instant face another way. It is a much more economical way of turning that, if you are not careful, is so easy you end up overturning, especially on the second cut of ryoguruma.
After the seminar we did a quick hanseikai. So great to have Hoshina around, as she never misses anything and has been training forever (years longer than I have.) She pointed out one really key thing: we should standardize on practicing basic cuts for beginners, right foot forward and practicing yose-ashi. No real point in switching between left and right until you figure out those basics.
Expanding on that we decided we'd write up a short list of things all beginners should learn or at least recognize in their first month: kissaki agari and sagari, te-no-uchi, etc. Basic stuff but it's amazing how much things are different between groups.