“It was one of my dream to visit Japan and practice Aikido there. I have very impressed both Japan and Bridge seminar held in Kumamoto. It was very well organized and all participants were very friendly.  Thanks to Sakabe Sensei for his kind host of this seminar. We were very lucky that we have seen Ikeda, Sakabe ana Shimizu Shihans and Ayhan and Jim Sensei and learned a lot from their trainings.

First of all, I should remark that any time when I watch Ikeda Sensei I am inspired a lot but on the other side my feelings are confused because on the one hand I learn new things each time and feel a better understanding of Aikido, but on the other hand, seeing such  perfectness and details in technics I feel myself hopeless that I donot think  I can get them  entire of my life. However, ıt also shows the essense of the  life that there are a lot things to learn and we should not stop. Also, training with Sakabe Sensei was an extremely exciting  to see his effective, calm and smooth Aikido technics. Besides, it was privilage to see Shimizu Sensei. His speech about Aikido was very teachfull and posture and natural relaxation was creating excellent  technics  without any power.

Last but not least, I should also mention about Ayhan Sensei and Jim Sensei. Despite I am a student of Ayhan Sensei, each time I see new things and thoughts in his trainings which makes me astonished. On the other hand, Jim Sensei’s sword  trainings contributed a lot for better understanding of Aikido technics.

I hope to join this seminar in the following  years to exploit all those Shihans and Senseies’ inspiring and useful thoughts  and technics which I beleive  extremely  contributed my Aikido.”

Erkan Özdemir