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…
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 to work out. Though quite…
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 the Nissin…
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 is a neurologist and moved…
