My Visit to Japan
Radi Arnaudov
My Name is Radi Arnaudov, from Sofia, Bulgaria. With my friends
Maria and Dimitar, we arrived at Tokyo at 2nd of September 2014. We stayedtill 29th of September 2014 and it was one of the best periods in my Life.
Uchideshi life was very hard, with early waking up, several trainings daily
and uchideshi work. This, combined with time zone difference first week, mademy life hard.
But we were around 10 uchideshis andwhen there are many people, always there isfun, even in the hard moments. When you
find nice friends, life smiles at you :).
Koyanagi sensei said that uchideshies areeither sleepy or tired, and he was very veryright with this conclusion.
But man is made to get used toeverything, so after the second week I just get used to uchideshi life.
After every hard thing and effort, a man receives something precious,
which for me was the feeling how the aikido just happens. After several weeks
training, there was this nice feeling of practicing, without thinking about it.
Just like after a man learned to drive car, without thinking, about thedifferent moves, that needed to be done and their proper consequence.
Somehow the car just goes in the direction where you driving it.
Another aspect of trainings that I enjoyed a lot was the way of teaching
Aikido in Kobayashi Dojo. Demonstrating a technique several times, without
speaking and explanation. Then practice. Then, another technique and practiceagain. During the moment when the instructor is showing one technique, a manneeds to be really concentrated and to observe very carefully. It was very
interesting, and this really impressed me.
Very nice moment was the 45th anniversary
and the preparations for this event. With uchideshis,from Tunisia, Greece, Serbia and Chile, we had tasks
that required to work very much together and to bevery organized. One of the tasks was to prepare
posters with different photos from Kobayashi sensei’slife. Kobayashi sensei told us interesting things about
these posters.
On one of the posters he was squeezing his gi,
when he had been uchideshi at Aikikai.
He was smiling, while telling us, that they
didn’t have washing machines and nowadays we'relucky, because we have washing machines.

These moments make me feel that
actually uchideshi life is not so hard, atall :). I really appreciate this small andimportant lesson.
One of the facts that really
impressed me was how in the dojos, thatwe’ve trained, there were sometimes morethan 30 people and there were no injuries
or clashes. People were very careful,while practicing. The training atmosphere
was very friendly and positive.
There were many people that taught me interesting things and there werepleasure for me to train with them.
Many thanks to Kobayashi Dojo for organizing this live-in training
program. It was a wonderful experience for me.
Many thanks to Kobayashi Sensei, Hiroaki Sensei and Kobayashi Dojo
instructors for their efforts to transfer their knowledge and for their open-minded
attitude.
At this month everything wouldn’t be the same without Recep
Büyükgüzel and his help for many, many issues in my everyday life, and his
introduction into Japanese habits and dojo etiquette.
Many thanks to all the people that we trained with. All of this can besummarized in one sentence - I strongly want to come back and to be uchideshi
for longer period.
Arigato Gozaimashita!!!