Sankyo sandwich, toasted tenchinage, or how would you like a front roll?
by Kato Perdue
Noon hour classes at the Bloor Valley Club are exciting, challenging and fun—not that these classes are any different from any other aikido classes, in this respect. They are generally a little smaller in numbers and are frequented by similarly dedicated individuals. All of us who attend noon hour classes absolutely need this time; otherwise our aikido practice would suffer greatly. Most of us are unable for many reasons to attend any other time. We are all very appreciative of Fran Sensei's efforts to get a noon hour class started—in fact this class started about a year ago, and it is getting larger and larger—the last few weeks have seen numbers of eight or so on the mat, when the average attendance usually has been about five people.
One of the charms of aikido at noon has been the tight-knit nature of our practice. If you come to our noon hour class you will feel like you are visiting the small town part of Shugyo Dojo. We are very friendly, (we want to grab your wrist a lot), and we know so much about about each other that we want to know all about you too. A visitor to noon hour classes is never forgotten. Often after class, the five or six of us get together and say, "remember when that tall guy was here, what was his name...you know, he had short hair, pale skin..." If you do come to noon hour classes you might notice that we are all pretty laid back and have a good sense of humour. This is because some of us work at night, are bringing up baby, are in between jobs, are on ambassador duties from France*, or have taken that day off. People are generally in pretty good moods because we do not have to rush back to work, nor have we just put in a good eight hours. This might also attribute to our small town nature of a slower way of life—Sensei is forever trying to get us to pick up the pace! If you come to our noon hour classes you might expect to see a lot of smiling faces—well, you will see a lot of smiling faces—including Sensei's.
P.S. Even though it is noon hour aikido we have found it preferable that aikidoka do not bring sandwiches into the dojo—people had a tendency to slip on the bananas and gi's were getting stuck to the jam...the jelly donuts, well...I won't get into that...See you at noon…
*Remi is our enthusiastic noon hour regular who is on a one-year visa in Canada.
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