Blackwell Sensei wants a paper on the Seminar Experience.

  I look forward to the seminar each year. What possesses me to spend half of my vacation each year standing around for 8 hours a day in funny clothes trying to understand the teachings of Three old men who don’t speak English trying to grasp the foreign concepts that make up Kyudo. I’m either hot or cold my clothes are awkward feeling my feet hurt my legs swell and yet I am having the time of my life. Learning by immersion there is nothing like it!

   It is a time to immerse myself in Kyudo and to ignore the pressures of everyday life. I eat sleep and live Kyudo. The other people that I spend time with are also trying to understand the mysteries of this art. Although my instructor is a very competent instructor I am a very dense brained student and sometimes it takes hearing an instruction a different way or the same way by another person to get the light bulb to turn on in my head.

   There is always work to be done a gym to turn into a dojo, people to be picked up, doors to be opened, tea to be prepared, notes to be made, translating to be done, the dojo needs to be cleaned, targets repapered and last a dojo to be returned to the state of a gym. You can take as much responsibility as you want.

   When I started attending seminars the number of participants was very small 50-60 it didn’t take long for me to learn everyone’s name. Now there are over 100 participants and I would be hard pressed to name half of the attendees of the last seminar. I look forward to renewing old acquaintances and making new friends. When I first started attending the seminars they felt very strange to me. Many of the attendees spoke Japanese, and the rules of etiquette were foreign, it was very confusing. I did not know that it was not proper to wear a hat while being introduced to Yabuki Sensei. Blackwell sensei was introducing me and in one smooth motion he removed my hat and patted me on my head while placing my hat in my hands. It was obvious to me that he was saying to Yabuki Sensei that she is young and doesn’t yet know the rules but I will teach her. None of this was said with words and yet it was clear to me what had been said. Do not listen only to the words for they cannot tell the whole picture. Kyudo is learned through all of the senses do not forget to use them all.

   By the end of the seminar I have been given so much information that it will take the entire year and more to digest it. Sometimes I find that I was not yet ready to understand a concept at the time of instruction but when I look back at the notes from previous years I learn new things from old notes.