Okay so the travelling was obviously the worst part of getting here long flights waiting at airports and delayed flights.  The car drive from Fukuoka to Kumamoto was great, such a beautiful country with lots to look at. The heat here isn’t as bad as I thought it would be but still quite humid and makes you sweat even when you are sitting down having a cool drink.

Sensai Sandra, Sami, Sam and I had our first training this morning from 6:30 – 8:00 am, first 30 minutes was in seiza which at the start was comfortable, about half way through I noticed my feet went fully numb without me realising it, and obviously it got worst to the point where I couldn’t bend my toes underneath my foot as we were meant to be standing up, when I finally got up I looked down and seen my left foot was securely on the ground but felt as though I was looking at someone else’s foot because I could not feel a thing. Was a bit scary cause I’ve never experienced that before.

As we started to train just with basic chudan-zuki in uchi-hachi-datchi, I wasn’t very stabilised as my feet were still coming back to being alive. Then we got into some basic stepping up and down the dojo, it took me a while getting use to training on wooden floors but by the end of it I was getting the hang of it. Having a smoother step transition instead of a bumpy one as my feet kept sticking to the ground.

Seeing as though it was early morning training the heat wasn’t too bad, mainly just the gi sticking to you was making it difficult to train properly. We got into doing all kata from kihon dosa ichi up to the highest kata we know and back down.  I found that a little bit difficult whilst getting used to the heat, and the floors, also didn’t help that my left eye and cheek was swollen up and my eye was hurting for some unknown reason. So I spent 80% of the lesson with my left eye closed, which did not help my balance as I was changing direction. But overall I really enjoyed the first session in the sohonbu dojo with Soke Sensai.