In Japan, Kobo is not a practice method — they are a testing requirement. Nobody here practices kobo with the intention of improving their skills or building their technical base for jissen. Instead, most students spend a portion of the two or three practices preceding their exam to memorize the required kobo and perform it well enough to pass. What…
This is just an easy list of guidelines that will help you get the most out of your kobo and jissen practice. I figured it would be good to tidy up my series on drilling methods with a concise listing of what I think are the most important points, in no particular order. You’ll find that they aren’t all…
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 allow the interjection of…
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 team…
The two words “consider it” happen to make up one of my favorite English-language phrases. I was once asked what was required in order to be considerate — my answer was “consider it.” Taido/Blog Gets Sick So, foregoing any kind of clever segue, a few months ago, I lost the ability to do anything at all to Taido/Blog. Obviously, I have now…
