Monday, July 13, 2009

Exam week!

Erica here!

This week has been exam week at the Shiramizu dojo for all coloured belts. Everyone from the little kindergartners to the older high school kids and adults were subjected to grading.

The structure of all the exams is the same. Four or five students would go up at a time to do basics such as punching and kicking (tachi kihon & ido kihon). The cycle would repeat until everyone had gone up and the same would happen for kata.

It was interesting to see the difference in attitudes within the different ages. The little ones, although knowing they had to be more behaved than normal, were generally just having fun and running around in during breaks while the older kids were very serious, practiced during breaks and looked quite anxious.

Many of the kindergartners passed the exam, but the older the participants got, the number of passes decreased. But it is not too discouraging because exams occur every 3 months. So those who did not pass have this time to train harder and hopefully pass the next one =)

The kindergartners warming up before their exam.

Waiting quietly for their turn

(left to right) Suzuki Sensei, Arakawa Sensei, Uehara Sensei and Kikuchi Sensei lost in thought.

Taking a stretching break

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