Hombu Dojo Kangeiko

Every year Hombu Dojo holds a 10 day training course from the 4th Monday in January. The requirement is to attend at least one class each day, including the Sunday which falls in the middle of the event and if this achieved, the attendee receives a certificate and a small memento – a tenagui (towel) detailing the event.

I have attended this event on 3 previous occasions but for 2023 I was accompanied by my brother, Rob, as, due to the Covid pandemic, neither of us have been able to visit Hombu for 3 years and we felt it was about time we returned.

We arrived in Tokyo on 21st January in time for the training event to start on 23rd and registered at Hombu Dojo. The plan was to attend the first class every day, conducted by either Doshu or Dojo-Cho plus a variety of others, including classes led by Kanazawa sensei, Sugawara sensei, Kobayashi sensei and others. I particularly enjoy Yokota sensei’s classes so I managed to attend a few of those as well. Everything in his class is heavily based on sword work and is extremely interesting to participate in.

We made it through the 10 days and to celebrate we were invited for lunch by Kanazawa sensei on our last day, which was a very pleasant couple of hours spent with him and Pablo, a Spanish friend who works in the Hombu International Department and we were given our certificates and tenagui.

A very long flight home followed as we could not fly over Russian airspace and had to fly further north but it was an extremely good trip, we managed to meet up with many old friends and made some new ones.

David Yates