I'm pretty keen on Google Video, I have to say. Yeah, YouTube is fun and everything, but Google Video seems to be geared towards (like all Google products) letting us all change the world just a little bit at a time.

Anyways, here's a video I shot eons ago of a Katori Shinto Ryu demonstration. Katori is a style of Japanese fighting arts that I was fortunate enough to study while I was living in Japan:



The video shows different dojos' forms of the same kata (at least for the last two kata) -- the folks in black (or black and white) are the people from Sugino Dojo, which is where I studied. The folks in blue are from Otake Dojo. You'll probably notice the Otake Dojo guys are a bit more senior to the Sugino Dojo guys -- Sugino sensei commonly let junior students give demonstrations. Heck, he even let ME give one at Yasukuni-jinja. I remember mainly the pain of the hardwood floor on my feet as I sat in seiza for what seemed like FRICKIN HOURS. Pretty sure I did Iaido. Maybe Omote Tachi, too. I don't recall. WAY too nervous.

Labels: Swordfighting