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Where to begin? The first thing to understand is that, to a large degree: Unsoku is Taido. Unsoku is the primary technique of Taido. We have a lot of flashy kicks that are quite ingenious, but unsoku tops them all. Most martial arts have stances and techniques. Taido introduces unsoku as a linking principle to…
On 23 December 2008, the Toyonaka Dojo hosted the 20th Kansai Region Year-End Tournament. There were a total of about 30 participants from Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe Gakuin University. Since this year’s National Championships were so late, we only had about two weeks to rest and prepare before this event. This included creating tenkai and…
Toyonaka Taido is my dojo. Well, not my dojo, but the dojo I primarily train at. Toyonaka is one of the northern suburbs of Osaka; I live in neighboring Suita, so the commute is fairly painless. We practice at Budokan Hibiki, which is a large public training hall, and we usually have plenty of space…
This past weekend, I traveled to Tokushima for a one-day training camp and learned a few things. All together, there were almost twenty of us coming in from Tokyo, Kansai, and Hiroshima. Among these were a few people I hadn’t met before and a few I met at the recent camp in Tottori. Tokushima Taido
I’ve lived in Japan for a few years now, and I’ve gotten to see and experience a lot of really cool things. I’ve practiced zazen at five hundred year old temples in Kyoto, admired Picasso ceramics at the Hakone Open-Air Museum, picked tea in the hills around Mt. Fuji, made my own Cup Noodle at…
Every year, the Japan Taido Association hosts four national tournaments, one each for children, students, and adults, and the all-Japan championship. The Shakaijin Taikai is a tournament for “members of society,” which can be taken to mean adults. Basically, it excludes children and undergrads, but anyone else is free to compete. This year’s event included…
This past weekend, my dojo joined Taido students form several other prefectures in Tottori for some training and play. Tottori is a small costal city. It’s known for fishing, hot springs, and the sakyu (about which, more later). The local Taido scene is a small, loose-knit group held together by a guy named Uchiyama. Uchiyama…
