It is always easy to come to Skien, specially if I've been in Oslo for the last week. Jan Moen left earlier from Oslo with his new Harley-Davidson motorbike, but the charger did not properly, so he ended up soon stopping in the half way. I followed him the with a car and he was able to continue all the way to Skien, sometimes stopping to recharge the battery by using the car engine charger.

The trainings included Kinagare randori ichi no kata with Kinagare randori irimi no kata _and _Kinagare ninin kake shodan among the others. This year we started an annual check tradition with Jan shihan, to keep my standards and techniques in line with the development. The purpose is to go throught all the randori katas and katas and to fix all possible differences or mistakes that occur easily when I don't have a teacher in my weekly training.

In Friday we went with Hanne Gulseth, Christian Conzalvez from Paris and one of the local girls to the south coast of Norway to have a picnic and to take some nanbudo photos of ourselves. Later on that day I borrowed Hannes motorbike and went for a drive. Ah the freedom of driving.

Next day cam with the examinations. Also mine. I passed the exam for second dan black belt, which was the first grade I had in nanbudo. My earlier grade was from sankukai karate, which is a style founded by Yoshinao Nanbu doshu, who was now nominating me in nanbudo.

In Sunday morning I head back to Oslo and returned to Finland with several transportations after and before the flight to Helsinki.

Jukka Paasonen, 2 dan after the seminar