Clear Lake Iaido

Joe, Paul, and I headed out in my van Friday morning, and after a few stops for food and to stretch our legs, we arrived at the Menger and headed for the just-opened dealers' room for shopping. At 8 we retired to the bar to have drinks with sensei and others from Denton who had arrived that day. After a while I left for my sister's house while Joe and Paul retired to their room at the hotel. The next day there were demonstrations from 10 to 5 including many more tameshigiri demos. Our demonstration was in the afternoon and showed a typical class,-- lining up, opening reishiki, sensei demonstrating, then the rest of us doing the technique (we did 1-7 of batto ho). Sensei demonstrated the oku iai (8-11) of batto ho by himself, then all joined in closing reishiki (including Mae). More shopping after the demonstrations. Last year's sword show was pretty good, but this year's actually topped it with a bigger and better dealers' room, and more and better demonstrations. In addition to swords & sword furniture there were books, videos, wrapping cloths, clothing (Bu Jin and Bushido Designs were there), fine porcelain, antiques, paintings, posters, etc. We all bought a Homer Simpson / stupid gaijin T-shirt. The next day I picked Joe and Paul up from the hotel and we headed for the Goodwill Practice at Incarnate Word University. After waiting at the wrong location, we were headed out when we happened on the practice just underway. This year they had a representative of each school present lead the whole group through a kata from that system. Tom Thomas was the ranking MJER representative present and lead the class through Junto sono ichi (ni?). After the Iaido practice the kendo people started theirs, so we decided to have lunch with my sister and head back home. We are looking forward to going back next year.

--Emily

For photos taken by Will Schutt go to: www.hasuji.com/mjer/swordshow2001/

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