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aikido
August 2009 
What are your plans for the New Year?
Posted on Dec 27th, 2007
by 
maornot
maornot
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for December 20, 2007:
As an aikido practicioner i am training into the New Year... half an hour before midnight the practice starts here in Tokyo. After an hour's aikido practice in the most crowded conditions, all will help to get the mat space ready for a sit-down official celebration for another hour. After that many people will go visit a shrine, in shinto tradition. i will spend a calm New Year's evening in a large crowd. May be hard to imagine for some?
As for plans for the coming year... to continue living where i am right now and help building tighter relationships between the local and the foreign community in Tokyo.
As for plans for the coming year... to continue living where i am right now and help building tighter relationships between the local and the foreign community in Tokyo.
Access: Public
A powerful way of ushering in the new year. Reminds me of a meditation on the beach one year. Can you suggest a site where I can learn more about aikido?
What a sane and serene way to enter the new year. Hopefully it will set the tone for the year to come. Happy New Year Maornot!
It is a pretty ordinary way to 'enter' a fictive new term or year. No time for pomp or excitement either. The tone reflects what i and many many other practicitioners here have been doing almost daily the past year and will continue doing next year.
To learn about aikido i would suggest seeing and experiencing it directly by comparing a few of your local aikido clubs. What you see in practice often differs from what you read or expect to see. Every aikido teacher, every aikido student, gives their own interpretation of the art… You can read some good interviews with well-known aikido personalities in this online magazine: http://www.aikidoonline.com/
i practice Aikikai style but there are other branches. Here is the website of the HQ that is led by the founder's family. http://www.aikikai.or.jp/eng/index.htm
Here is an interview with o-sensei, the founder of aikido, published in Japanese in 1957.
http://www.westlord.com/aikido/eng-interview.html
None of the aikido personalities give an easy explanation of aikido. Some say the less you define it the less you will restrict your learning.