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August 23, 2006

Oh, Chiburi!!

Well, my suspicions about tonight were confirmed. Monday, we had just finished Iaido (swords) class and Suino Sensei looked to each of us and asked to make sure each of us would be attending class tonight. As soon as he asked, I got wary. I thought, "Hm, I know he's got something up his sleeve and I'm not sure I'm gonna like it." I suspected that he might give us a test without notice like he did for John Spengler. Suino Sensei usually makes us perform a couple of sword forms at the end of class in front of everyone and one night, he made John do all the forms you have to know for the first promotion. That's 5 kneeling forms and 3 standing forms, 8 total. But only two if you think of all the kneeling forms as one long kata and all the standing forms as one long kata--helps you remember them better. Then when John was done, Suino Sensei announced he'd just been promoted! Wow! It was cool and I was very happy for him, but it made me nervous to think I had to be prepared for anything at any time.

Like I said, my suspicions about tonight's class were confirmed. There were too many signs indicating a possible and very upcoming promotion. And I was RIGHT! We went through all the forms a few times as a practice run. Then he made us all perform them while he watched. I was thinking, "Ok, this is it. Here's our test." Then he sat us down and started to say, "As director of this dojo..." (it was more complicated than that, but suffice it to say this) "...I now promote you ALL to the rank of Rokokyu." Needless to say, I wasn't surprised. When I told Pam before class I suspected a test, she said, no, he would have told me. But after the test, I looked at Pam sitting next to me and mouthed to her, "TOLD YOU!"

Luckily for me, I suspected since Monday night that he was going to test us, so I took a couple of hours yesterday to write notes on all the forms and study them. Then I studied them some more as I sat in Dr. Jay's office waiting for him to come fix me up. When I got to class tonight, I went through them once before class started.

My logic was impeccable:

1. I remembered Sensei saying that we wouldn't be allowed to use real swords in class until we've been given our first rank. Then I thought, well, Don and I are going to Japan to BUY our own swords, and it'd suck if we bought them and couldn't use them for a while. So if he's letting us get swords, that must mean he's planning on promoting us.


2. Plus, we might be training in Iaido IN Japan and since we're not bringing our bokken, we need to use something--our new swords. So he's probably planning on promoting at LEAST me and Don.


3. Aaaaaand, he told us that he wants our class to be the advanced, senior ranking Iaido class at the JMAC dojo.

In a way, it was kind of cool that he did it this way by surprising us because then, I'm only nervous for a couple of days. But on the downside, I don't get a lot of time to "fix" the things I want to fix. But then, he wouldn't be testing us if he didn't think we were ready. Guess it's his job to know when we're ready before WE know. So there you have it. Funny, I can be so paranoid sometimes--it's nice to know it served me well at least this time!

Posted by Amy at August 23, 2006 11:48 PM

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Posted by: revjen at August 26, 2006 10:46 AM

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