Taijutsu uke-nagashi, the 45 degree step
I think most of you have heard about the 45° step when you do the basic jodan-uke for example, this does not mean that you end up in a 45° angle to the attack that I so often see. I think this is a misunderstanding, and I will explain here so that you have to be an idiot if you don't understand 
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But first let's make some reference points. To get the distance right we need to understand that the opponent will hit you in the head with his right fist. And that you want to end up at a safe distance where you can block the opponent's right arm from the inside without being to close or too far away. So you need to move your whole body as one unit about one arms length. So measure how far that is. I will use the tatami mat as a reference point so that you can easily understand. I recommend that you also use the tatami mat as I do here so that you can do the step without looking. And then look down and check if you are on the correct spot, angles and length wise.
Remember that you move the body one arm's length, it doesn't matter how long the opponent's arms is. If he knows how deep he should punch (just through the target and not an inch more!) it will be perfect distance for you.
When you move from point A to point B in the first step you should have the exact same angles but one arms length further back to the side. You should have rotated the whole body about 30° to the left, but the angles and alignment should be the same.
So when you start in the basic Ichimonji no kamae both heel's should be on the same line and pointing directly against the opponent's center. I won't go into detail about anything else than the footwork here. I might do a part two of this tutorial later?
The right foot and toes should be pointing exactly 45° back to the right against the other corner of the tatami mat. Keep a rather low position with both knees bent (in basic training, be extra low), more weight on the right leg.
Lift the right foot and push the body strongly and quickly back to the right with the left foot. You should explode from the position, so make sure the front leg is not too straight. Do not move the left foot first (I say that this is a bad habit). If you keep your right arm straight against the opponent, he will not step on the left foot, as he have to move around your arm.
The right foot should go exactly 45° towards the corner of the tatami. Note how the right foot have turned a little, but the heel should be on the line. At the same time the left foot should follow the right foot in a straight line.
As you can see this angle is about 30° from the starting point. Also worth mentioning is that the feet's is never this wide apart as it is rather a jump than step, step. It is important that the upper body should not go anywhere else but straight backwards to the side as if you where on wheels.
See how the left foot ends up on the same line. Now you have moved the body 30° back to the right. You should end up in the exact same position as when you started. Your kamae is "closed" and good, aimed directly to the opponents inside.
From here you block and take his balance... as you can see you have also opened up the opponent's lower region. You have the opening where you will place the right foot as you step in and counter with your own attack.
Training drill
A very good training drill is to stand in Ichimonji no kamae and move from point A to point B as explained above. Repeat this several times, you should move in a big circle keeping a perfect Ichimonji no kamae the whole time. Then change side and do it to the left. This is a good exercise that strenghten your legs and gives you a good foundation.
Happy training!
/Mats
TCJRNM Sanshin no Kata (warm-up drill video)
I just uploaded a new video on YouTube, please check it out, give comments and ratings 
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This is from the forth coming Ten Chi Jin Ryaku no Maki DVD coming sometime this summer. I'm not sure if exactly this segment will be on the DVD (it is a little too long I think?), I will decide this later when I have all the material filmed and edited.
TCJRNM Sanshin no Kata (warm-up drill)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A63TvGQAYg
/Mats
Bug fix on the seminar apps
Every December the Next month seminars would show the whole past year. It was a scripting bug that I have fixed now. Since it is december next month it should default to January and forwards, but there is also a tab with Next years seminars so instead I added a message that it is the end of this year and look at next year for future seminars.
Here is the PHP code if you want include it on your web site.
<?php
$nextmonth = mktime(0, 0, 0, date("m")+1);
$monta = date("m", $nextmonth);
if ( $monta == "01" )
{ $yerra = date("Y")+1 ;
echo "<p>It is probably December now, click on Seminars next year</p>";
}
else
{ $yerra = date("Y") ;
$ch = curl_init("http://www.kesshi.com/cgi-bin/SEMINARS-ME2.cgi?$yerra-$monta");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
}
?>
If you want more examples how to display seminars from the database on your web site, please don't hesitate to contact me.
I really do encourage all web masters to use any code they want (mine or modified) to display seminars from the seminar database.
Get more info from the web in shorter time…
then you can spend more time on training, I will explain it further down.
If you subscribe to our RSS Feeds, please change them to the following feed instead. You gain a lot more features, you can mark, share, e-mail and more, and it looks better to.
http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedEN (English version)
http://feedproxy.google.com/SuperfeedSE (Swedish version)
Some of you might wonder what this RSS/Syndication and stuff means. Well read on...
Do you recognize yourself?
You are interested in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu (I assume that since you you found this message), and spend quite a lot of time on internet going to different web sites searching for new postings. Some web sites is difficult to find the newest postings, you have to log in and after one or many clicks you find something you think you haven't read, maybe you already read it? It is very easy to miss something interesting, because the lack of features on the web site (search function for example), or because the interesting stuff was posted on a website you don't know about. Maybe this is why you google for new web sites. Maybe you stopped doing this because it takes too much time.
Well this is the old way, there is a much better way, it is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), to put it simple is like subscribing to one or many newspapers. What you need is something that can read feeds (the news papers). I personally have a Google account and use the Google Reader. With that I can access all my feeds from any computer and phone (see the screen dumps below). I'm not bound to one computer to do this.
How it looks on my computer
on the iPhone
There is many other ways to do it, there is many different readers (Aggregators), I like the google one because I'm not dependent of which computer or device I must use. I can use any device with an internet connection and log in to my account (I mostly use the iPhone on the bus, subway or any time I chose). As you can see on the screen dumps I subscribe to several other feeds to. I only to go to the web site if the content I read interest me enough.
Note 1. It is completely up to the web master of the original feed if the content is web optimized (text formatting, pictures etc), and if the whole article can be read. We can only forward what we get, so don't complain to us because you can only read the first five words on the Kutaki channel. Just click on the header link to go to the original web site if it interest you.
Note 2. We took the freedom to add small google ads at the bottom of each post. You will hardly notice them after a while. If you click on them you are sponsoring our web sites and work.
Note 3. In the subject header the [brackets] indicate what web site it originates from, our script remove the "www" and takes the first twelve or so characters up until the first ".", when you opened the post the subject is always linked to the original posting.
My shared items
When I find something I think is good, I click "share" on my reader, then it will be posted here. You can also subscribe to my picks, articles that I have read and I think is good.
Note that there will be a lot of unrelated stuff (not only Bujinkan).
Bujinkan.ME News #38 (Seti, web updates, Budo Shop)
Hello buuyuu's!
Daikomyousai just finished (I wish I could have been there, I have to try harder for next year). I heard they trained outside, and Kihon Happo was the theme, at least for the first day. Hopefully someone will update me for the next newsletter at the end of the year.
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Web site updates & RSS
I have had a lot of time to work on all our web sites recently, so I think you should check them out.
- Kabutoshimen has become a real Bujinkan portal, I have included a lot of news sources that is constantly updated.
- Bujinkan.ME (also iPhone optimized), I created something i just call the Superfeed. It collects RSS feeds from different sources in four steps.
- Superfeed, this is all our blogs in one, if you just want to subscribe to our blogs this feed is the only one you need to subscribe to. If we create a new blog or move one, it will automatically be updated in this feed.
- Superfeed2, same as above plus selected Bujinkan bLogs we this is really good.
- Superfeed3, same as all above plus selected Bujinkan forums we think is good.
- Superfeed4, same as above plus YouTube videos tagged Bujinkan, Google Blogsearch for Bujinkan. Note the last feed is experimental, there is no way to control the content completely. I had to filter out one Bujinkan forum because it is too heavily spammed, I might do that with others to in the future if need be.
- Soke classes, is always up to date with the original web site. But our site also now includes a live weather forecast of Matsudo (which is the closest city to Honbu dojo and Ayase classes).
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Taikai 2009 Update
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Nothing new since the last newsletter. The interest seems a little low right now and we need help advertising the TAIKAI. You can help us with a banner or just a link to our web site, or talk about organizing a group trip to the TAIKAI in your dojo, anything encouraging people to go is good for us, and we appreciate it greatly.
The application form is on-line, the following instructors is coming.
- Duncan Stewart, Shihan (Japan)
- Juan Manuel Serrano, Shihan (Spain)
- Lauri Jokinen, Shihan (Finland)
- Mariette vd Vliet, Shihan (Holland)
- Mats Hjelm, Shihan (Sweden)
- Morten B. Østenstad, Shihan (Norway)
The application form for TAIKAI is now on-line! On the taikai web site you can click on the button in the top right column from all pages. Sign up before the end of the year and you will receive a gift from us at the Taikai. Please spread the word!
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The new web shop has been up and it works really well. Note the shipping costs is really flat rate shipping cost 49 SEK to the whole world (gratis frakt inom Sverige!), we had to adjust some prices slightly to cover the p&p costs, but the DVD prices is unchanged. There is no new products this month, the last ones was Masaaki Hatsumi - Taikai Sweden 1988, Dean Rostohar - Knife and Baton seminar and Aluminium training knifes.
We will release new/old Shinken kata dvd's very soon.
It is Christmas time soon and if you want to have the order before Christmas you should order as soon as possible. We can not guarantee any latest time for ordering to get it in time for Christmas, but we are fast, we send the items within one or two days and the rest is up to the post offices. In Sweden you usually have it the next day, in other countries 3-5 days. But being Christmas it could take a little longer than usual, but of course you know that.
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Join the Bujinkan SETI team!
Almost 10 years ago I joined the SETI by installing the “screensaver”. I discovered that you could create teams and work together. It was fun and exciting to see how we did together, then somehow I forgot about it until now. I went back to see if our team was active and to my surprise it still was! My account was still there, so I had to log in, download the new program and fire it up again and contribute to the Bujinkan SETI team.
On Wednesday November 19′th 2008 it was 2 active members, at top team no 3548, 723 recent credits (with a total of 424,647 credits) and ranked as 7,562. If you click on the links above you will see that we are climbing up rapidly.
I think it would be fun if you also joined the Bujinkan SETI team in search for extra terrestrial life. If you think this is silly, there is several other organisations you can help by lending your CPU when not in use to.
Click here for the official Bujinkan SETI web site http://kesshi.com/seti/
Please spread the word!
Update: We are now four active users and have tripled the credits produced.
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Seminars the following months
For more seminars see the Bujinkan.Me/seminars list (here is also information how to add seminars to this database). Sponsored seminar...
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2008-12-05/2008-12-07 - Tuusula, Finland
Christmas Camp, with Shihan Lauri Jokinen
For more information (price & schedule etc.) please contact nagareru@hotmail.com More info... http://shinden.fi
2008-12-19/2008-12-20 - Stockholm, Sweden
Hankyou 2008, with Many instructors
This is Kaigozan Dojo's traditional Christmas seminar. We invite all instructors that want to come and share what they have learned this year (please contact us!). If you want to have good fun don't miss this, the cost for the seminar is kept really low. More info... http://kaigozan.se/seminars
2009-01-16/18 - Helsinki, Finland
Shihan Moti Nativ Seminar (Shihan Moti Nativ)
For more information (price & schedule) please contact nagareru@hotmail.com
More info on... click here
2009-02-07/08 - Stockholm, Sweden
Keiko seminar intro to this years theme (Mats Hjelm)
Introduction to this years theme. Mats is doing his annual January trip this year to.
More info on... click here
2009-03-14/15 - Stockholm, Sweden
Keiko seminar with Holger Kunzmann (Shihan from Germany)
Shihan Holger Kunzmann from Germany will be in Japan during February, after this trip he will come here to share what was being taught there.
More info on... click here
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Short news and Notes
- On Sunday November 16'th Soke told us that you (as the instructor) should say 千早や振る 神の教えは とこしえに 正しき心 身を守るらん Chihayaburu Kamino Oshiewa Tokoshieni Tadashiki Kokoro Mio Mamoruran" as well when you do "Shikin" at your class.
Read more about it on Kutaki.
- This seems to be needed to be reminded constantly. When going to Japan and training, please do what you can to help the administrators of the classes so it runs smoothly.
- This is one of the many unwritten rules, and it always needs to be reminded! If you are allowed to take video of the trainings, you do not automatically have ok to post the video clips anywhere on internet, selling or giving away to strangers. If this is something you intend to do, then you need to ask if this is ok. This is just common courtesy, show some respect and don't take things for granted.
- There was a Bujinkan Enbu at the Fuse Benten in Kashiwa in October, celebrating a 1200 year old shrine.
New, here is a link to a 35 minute video of the Enbu.
- ...Please send me news to put here!
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