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February 2007 Archives

Friday February 2, 2007

I Have an Expensive Hobby

Katana by Kurihara Nobuhide
Kurihara Nobuhide was a famous swordsmith known as a pupil of Yama-ura
Kiyomaro. Nobuhide was born in Echigo province, present Niigata pref. He
changed from a mirror maker to a swordsmith in middle age. In this context,
he was also good at horimono carving on the blade. He was a swordsmith of
ability. The Emperor Meiji ordered him to forge a special sword to dedicate
the Minatogawa Shrine founded in 1869. The Meiji Government ordered Nobuhide
to exhibit traditional Japanese sword a world's fair in Vienna in 1873.

He lived in his hometown for the rest of his days and passed away in 1880.
One theory holds that he committed suicide in a similar situation of his
master Kiyomaro.

This is one of his excellent work made in 1859.

It has a beautiful bamboo horimono on one side and a bonji character with
bohi on the other.


On the other side is a short bo-hi and the character for "wisdom".

All that being said, we're pretty sure it's actually a forgery (gimei) from the early 1900s. There's a slight difference in the signature compared to other works by the same smith that we've seen. If a forgery, they definately put a lot of effort into it, since the nakago appears to be the right age and the horimono (carving) was probably harder and more time consuming than everything else. If it was authentic, it would have been well out of my price range.

This is going to be my cutter once I get new koshirae. It's sharp as all fuck and the blade is in great shape besides a couple minor nicks in the kissaki. I don't believe the existing furniture actually goes with the blade, it feels very loose so I'm going to get it all redone.

Monday February 12, 2007

Passing the Guard

Stopped wussing out and tried another class last night. Now I think I'm too paranoid about overdoing it and not pushing myself enough. I stopped at the end of the warmup (lot of running) to take a break and ended up watching most of the class. I did some light rolling at the end with a buddy and learned some basics.

passing the guard
- get position first
- keep hands on their hips
- bring one knee into their ass
- rotate opposite hip outward
- use straight arm to push down their knee and get my leg on top of it
- if they have longer legs, partially standing may help

going from there into a sidemount
- wrap arm around head and onto shoulder
- one leg crosses over other
- once on top keep weight on top of them
- bring knees into side

protection from sidemount pass
- curl into a ball
- use outside leg to help stay on side
- bring inside knee in, use it and elbow to create space

when someone is in my guard
- try to keep head control
- rubber band, don't use force just make them work against my weight

general stuff
- don't waste energy, i spent a lot of time holding on when it didn't get me anywhere
- use my weight, make them use their strength to get out

Told the coach I wanted to sign up for a month. I need to do some cardio outside of class.

Monday February 19, 2007

Locked in for 3mo

Tonight was better. The warmup was a little bit lighter so I wasn't totally spent. After a short rest I got to do some rolling with several classmates. The guy I rolled with my first night said I had improved a lot in my relaxing, that I wasn't all tense and wasting energy like before.

Still taking it a bit easy, trying to find out what my limits are.

I think I need a lot of work on my guard. I find it very hard to break out of someone elses, but they all seem to get out of mine at will.

I signed a 3mo contract and told coach I was interested in the Muay Thai class as well. He told me it'd be a good way to build up my base conditioning for the jits. The only thing that concerns me is that it's right before my Kendo class, and I can't be coming in to that already worn out.

Monday February 26, 2007

More Guard Passing

Class #4 - Made it through the warm-up with only having to stop once for about 30 sec to catch my breath, then went right back in and stuck with it till we were done.

Tonight we did passing drills :

1 - barrel - push both legs down to the ground while passing behind
2 - tripod - keep one hand on their waist and sprawl out, moving around them (pivoting on the arm). Keep the feet wide and out.
3 - push/pull - give a good pull on the leg while moving in. Outside leg goes up against their hip while passing

If I'm feeling good on Wed I'll go try out the MT class. Trying my best to not overdo it and get an injury as I'm prone to do.

About February 2007

This page contains all entries posted to Larptastic in February 2007. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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